The Songwriting Process - 3 Techniques to Writing Your Best Songs
John Prine wrote the lyrics to “Hello In There” while delivering the mail on his postman route. Later, he found the chords and melody to go along with the words. John Legend prefers to write the melody first. The “All of Me” writer says “I usually start playing a melody and find the chords I like. Then I start singing something to it to see what works.” Dua Lipa’s song, “Levitating,” started as a beat and a keyboard riff by producer/co-writer Koz long before Dua and Sarah Hudson added the melody and lyrics. They all ended up with a song with lyrics, melody, and harmony but they didn’t arrive at them in the same order.
Let’s talk about these 3 different approaches to the songwriting process and how you can use them to write your best song.
WRITING THE LYRICS FIRST
The benefit of writing the lyrics first is that, based on your lyrics’ message, they can help mold some of your later decisions regarding melody and harmony. Song lyrics can be simple or complex. They can be truthful or fictitious. Happy or sad. Profound or nonsensical. All of these things can help dictate the key, tempo, groove, and melody of your song. If your lyrics are inspirational or about finding love, you’ll probably choose for the music to be in a major key. If they are sad or about loss you might decide on a minor key.
If you’ve written melancholy lyrics you might choose the Dorian mode for your melody which has a brighter minor feel like “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaac.
Lyrics and Phrase Length
Phrase length and the natural spoken cadences of your words can also steer your melodic decisions. Short lyrical phrases may call for short melodic ideas like “Get Down Tonight” by KC and the Sunshine Band:
“Do a little dance
Make a little love
Get down tonight
Get down tonight”
Longer sentences may need to be broken up like “Make You Feel My Love” by Bob Dylan:
“When the rain is blowing in your face,
And the whole world is on your case,
I could offer you a warm embrace,
To make you feel my love.”
Lyrics and Song Form
Lyrics can help you decide on the form of your song too. If you’ve written lyrics with 3 different vignettes like Tim McGraw’s “Don’t Take the Girl,” you may decide that they work best as verses and choose a Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus song form to tell the story.
Or, if you’ve got a section in your lyrics that feels like an emotional or contextual shift, you may decide that it should be a bridge with a new melodic idea. Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” is a good example of this:
“I’m drunk in the back of the car
And I cried like a baby coming home from the bar
Said, “I’m fine, ” but it wasn’t true
I don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep you
And I snuck in through the garden gate
Every night that summer just to seal my fate
And I screamed for whatever it’s worth
“I love you, ” ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard?
He looks up grinning like a devil”
Making these decisions with your lyrics can help whittle down the endless options available for the song’s music.
WRITING THE MELODY FIRST
When you write the melody first you can create the world in which your lyrics will live. It can be a dynamic melody with a broad range like “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele:
It can have a playful melody with lots of chord embellishments like “You’ve Got A Friend in Me” by Randy Newman:
Or, it can be a fairly static melody with very little range like “Wonderwall” by Oasis:
You can chase ideas based on what sounds cool, pretty, interesting, anthemic, etc. You are not locked into what the lyrics are telling you to do.
Stone Gossard wrote the music for most of the songs on Pearl Jam’s debut album, “Ten,” before he even met Eddie Vedder. When Vedder joined the band, he had to pair his poetry to the existing musical compositions and decided that the music Gossard wrote for “Jeremy” felt like a song about bullying and teen suicide.
Would Stone have come up with that music if Vedder brought him the lyrics first? It’s impossible to know. But the result was a powerful, mega hit song. Alternatively, by writing the melody first you may have to work extra hard to find the right words, as Cathy Dennis, co-writer of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” explains:
“I beat myself up for seven days, not sleeping,” Dennis said. “The melody came first, then I had this puzzle of trying to fit words to the right number of syllables. It was really weird. I kept writing and then re-editing myself again, and again, and again.”
WRITING THE TRACK FIRST
When you write from a track first, you can choose the song’s vibe, instrumentation, tempo, key, chord progression, and song form before the melody and lyrics.Typically this method plays into the strengths of a producer. For decades, songs were written and then recorded. But recording software has made production tools more readily available and cheaper. (10 Best Computers for Music Production) So, a songwriter/producer can fully realize which instruments will be accompanying the singer. They’re able to easily move sections around, speed up or slow down the tempo, and change the key in seconds.
As a result, they can create radio-ready sounding tracks that are only missing the singer’s words and melody. This track-first process of songwriting first became popular in Los Angeles, where producers will often complete a fully fleshed out production of the backing music and then get one or more top-line writers to contribute to the melody and lyrics. Even in Nashville where the songwriting process has typically always started with a lyrical hook and a strumming guitar, songwriters are now often writing to a completed track.
The radio-ready professionalism that track-first writing offers can be inspiring. It can keep your melodies and lyrics pointed toward the prize of pop radio.
YOUR SONGWRITING PROCESS
Knowing and developing your own songwriting process can help you start and finish more and better songs. It can empower you when co-writing and finding co-writers. It can also help you identify your strengths as a writer so that you can lean into them when an idea comes along.
And in the absence of an idea, your songwriting process can help you get the creative momentum going.
- Lyrics-first writer? Grab a notebook and start free-writing.
- Melody-first writer? Reach for your instrument of choice and start humming along to a chord progression.
- Track-first writer? open up your DAW and begin chasing a beat or loop.
When should you turn your back on your process?
You don’t have to be married to your songwriting process. If you’re a melody-first writer but your melodies are starting to sound similar, try writing the lyrics first to unlock some new melodic possibilities. And if you’re a lyric-first writer but many of your lyrics have the same flow and feel, try starting with the music to challenge your lyrical intuition. If you’re a track-first writer who’s uninspired, try composing from a title or phrase.
Sometimes writing outside of your practiced comfort level can open you up to writing your best songs—ones you had no idea were waiting to be written.
About The Author
Dean Fields is a singer, and songwriter, as well as a mentor at American Songwriter. His songs have been No. 1 on the Texas radio charts, featured in film/tv and commercials, recorded by Lori McKenna, and produced by Garth Brooks. He is also director of American Songwriter’s dynamic Membership Hub where members get access to exclusive content, a community of songwriters, and the tools to take their songwriting to the next level.
