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I’ve written many songs over the years.  Some have aged well, others haven’t — and I feel like I’ve gotten into a pretty good approach that has the highest probability of producing lyrics that I feel happy about.

It goes like this:

1. 95% of my songs start with the music, usually the guitar, then the melody.
2. I listen and live with the music for a long time, trying to discern what kind of feeling it represents for me.
3. I try to nail down the emotional core of the song.  A single feeling that the song conveys.  Sometimes this is obvious, but a lot of times, I just have to pick based on the music and what’s going on in my heart at the time.
4. Then I start throwing out some lines that convey that feeling for me.  I usually start with either the first verse or the chorus.
5. After I discover a couple of lines that I like, I pick out the final words of the phrases and hit a rhyming dictionary.  I look up words that rhyme and see if any of them fit. Sometimes it’s a stretch to make them work but that’s part of the fun/discovery.
6. My lyrics start to take shape.  I do pay attention to the cohesion with music and structure — make sure that accented syllables fall on strong beats and saving the punch lines for choruses and bridges.  I like it when bridges, or the section before the last chorus, contains the most revealing line.  It’s like the whole song is a mystery up to the point, and then the answer is revealed, and then the final chorus feels like a resolution.
7. I tweak and tweak and tweak.  I swap pronouns liberally (I vs. you vs. s/he/they) and see how they sound.  This is a pretty intuitive process — I just work it until it feels done.  Sometimes it’s just the matter of living with the words for a while.  Other times, some unfit words/passages become more and more apparent, the longer I live with them.

To me, the funnest part of this writing approach is that there’s ample room for discovery for me, the writer, myself.

I always try to make sure my lyrics don’t tell too literal of a story and that it shouldn’t make too much sense, as funny as it may sound.  Because the more it makes sense, the less room it leaves for interpretation.  What is fun about appreciating a song’s depth is to tackle the mystery in the words, trying to figure out what it means to me.

Of course, I’m not saying a song can’t tell a story — on the contrary, I prefer a song with an “arc” to it.  There are some songs that just list stuff, for example — and from the beginning to the end, you don’t sense any change in protagonist’s point of view.  To me, that’s a missed opportunity.  Why take up a whole song to make a point when it can be done in one verse?

So it’s always a tricky balance.  To have an arc but the story can’t really make sense.  To have a clear emotional core, but still be poetic and evocative enough not to be too plain/obvious.

I don’t hit the high notes all the time.

Anyway, below I’d like to share lyrics from my songs, to serve as examples:

I see you in the dark room
Painting your own mirrors
I see me in the dim light
In the world of no errors
Sometimes, you feel the need
Come talk to me, come talk to me

I see you in the water
Wondering why you can’t walk on it
All alone in the dark room
You can’t see when you see it
All my nights, all my love, all my drowning seeds
Come talk to me, come talk to me

I see you with the flowers
You touch, but no feel
I see me in the dark room
On the way to the seal
Then you run, you run from me
Can you talk to me?  Can you talk to me?

– “The Dark Room”

That one’s one of my old favorites, a wispy, gentle folk tune.  It doesn’t contain any strong emotions musically — it’s one of my less dramatic songs — and over the years I just kept discovering different ways this song can be interpreted.  I’ve always thought that the important part in this piece is how the “you” person starts out in the dark room, but in the end the “I” person ends up there, and “you” person runs away. I actually didn’t realize that “a dark room” is where films (now sadly going the way of vinyl) are developed — I originally meant just a room that’s dark.  This adds a whole new twist/layer to the story.

Hey, let’s go down to hell
When the north wind rings the bell
Bring your sister’s shell
Out here it’s so hard to sell

Kill her secrets, one by one
Sacrifice to the sun

Hey, this will surely be fun
We’ll never tell the nun

Maybe…baby…mayday.

– “Shark” from Aries9: Darkness Reveals Beauty of the Truth

The opening track from my debut album is obviously a very special song to me.  There is some heavy word play going on here, so it’s harder to make head or tail on this one, but I see it as a conversation — with the verse being one character and the chorus being the response.  It’s an invitation, but to something rather twisted and sinister.

I give permission for you to die
I hope you go like a fly
With insides all exposed
You came on just like a knight
All dressed up to fight
Only outsides composed

Smell the stench inside your armor
Never take it off for paramour
XXXXXXX (this line still needs to be written)

When you go march like a metal wave
(save your anger)
Going on, chanting, “we must save”
(save our hunger)
Elephants will never know
The ants they run over in fit of rage

– (untitled song, still very much in progress)

Now, here’s a very angry and bitter one, that much is clear.  I like the opening line very much — it just comes out strongly.  But in my mind, the only person I’d allow myself to be this intensely angry at, is myself — so I’m still exploring where this is all going to go.  I want to see to it that the venom in here will not get watered down somehow, but I also don’t want it to be some kind of tantrum song either — we’ll see what will happen.

Ultimately, I think lyrics that leave room for interpretation are more powerful, lasting and satisfying.  It may be a bit frustrating at the onset but the investment it takes to come up with your own interpretation makes the songs mean more to each listener.  And the fun part for me is that with my approach, I am my own listener as well — I am discovering what the songs mean to me after it’s written, and the meanings change and evolve as I go through more life experience and gain new insights.

It’s really an immersive art form, this business of writing words to songs.  I am so grateful I discovered it.