5 original takes on common songwriting themes
Fuel for the old creative fire
“You know, I would say that songwriting is something about the expression of the heart, the intellect and the soul.” — Annie Lennox
Words and music go together like wine and cheese, beer and nuts or pretty much any other perfect combination that you can imagine.
In songwriting especially, lyrics are a vessel to express thoughts, feelings, emotions, document poignant moments in time — and convey vivid imagery in unison with melody.
Words are powerful and often, can serve to make or break a song, deeming it either a throwaway novelty or an enduring trans-generational hit. And style or genre aside, many song lyrics focus on many of life’s common events — with love, heartbreak, death, politics and coming of age among the most popular themes.
There are countless songs that have covered these common themes over the centuries — some enduring, some throwaway — and it’s often the timeless classics that feature the most prolific lyrics.
With so many songs that have touched on these common songwriting themes, these days, it’s hard not to be a cliche. But, there are lyrical approaches you can take to avoid sounding like a poor imitation of a well-trodden classic.
To help you do just that, here we explore five original takes on life’s five most common songwriting themes: arrangements with standout lyrics that will help you take a fresh approach to your own words.
Love
“Fade into you, strange you never knew; fade into you, I think it’s strange you never knew.”
The most striking thing about Mazzy Star’s “Fade into You” is that despite the song’s hypnotic and melancholic overtones, at its core, the song does carry a message of enduring love.
In the lyrics to this song, there’s a forlorn element to the tale, one that displays the challenging uncertainty of love, and one’s will to trust it blindly. And that’s exactly what takes it away from the typical bubbly, whimsical imagery of the classic ‘love’ song — those that talk about falling head over heels or holding hands in the park.
Takeaway: While love anthems from the likes of The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Al Green are essential to popular culture, if you want to write original lyrics on the theme of love, the best thing you can do is consciously avoid the word love or phrases like, I’m in love.
Rather than thinking about falling in love in a general sense, you should drill down into one specific element of love or build a story into your song’s lyrics, one that may not be entirely optimistic but overall, offers a positive message of love. In addition to “Fade into You”, reading Aesop’s Fables will give you inspiration on building an original tale with a valuable message or moral.
Heartbreak
“And we’re changing our ways, taking different roads, then love, love will tear us apart again.”
For the theme of heartbreak, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division is arguably one of the world’s best examples. In this beautifully tragic and entirely iconic track, Joy Division’s Ian Curtis documents one of life’s most common reasons for heartbreak: the growing apart of two people and the slow death of a once cherished relationship.
A haunted poet, Ian Curtis took his life not long after the birth of this song, which makes the hypnotic rhythm section and the familiar, heart-wrenching imagery all the more intense. Here, Curtis keeps his message simple, using imagery like the turning away on your side at bedtime to document how love can bring two people together and ultimately, tear them apart.
Takeaway: In this heartbroken anthem, Ian Curtis structures each stanza or verse in the same fashion, loosely using rhyming couplets to conjure imagery that we can all relate to, as opposed to being abstract or obscure. But, perhaps the biggest lesson we can take here is that although the poet was speaking from deeply personal experience, he didn’t write with bias; he simply wrote about what had happened.
When writing about heartbreak, if you want to be original, you should draw from personal experience but avoid being too bitter or personal, otherwise, you run the risk of using tired turns of phrase that we’ve heard thousands of times before. To gain a wider perspective of heartbreak and gain more fuel for the creative fire, you should read about other peoples’ stories of heartbreak before putting pen to paper.
Death
“No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white, just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark.”
Death is life’s only certainty and as scary as it is, it’s something that we as mortals cannot escape, which is why there are so many powerful songs about dying, losing people, and moving on from our mortal coil.
“I Will Follow You into The Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie is a song that takes a refreshing stance on death and mortality. Rather than focusing on one particular element of dying, or one particular person, its message is that we are united in the inevitable. Of course, the inevitable is death, and phrases like “the time for sleep is now, but it’s nothing to cry about, ’cause we’ll hold each other soon in the blackest of rooms” states plain and poignantly that we all lose people that we love and one day, will cease to exist ourselves. The song’s a clear message and the delicate turns of phrase within it, the song is, in a strange way, as much of a love song as it is a death song.
Takeaway: Death is a difficult theme to cover, and while writing a tribute about someone you’ve loved and lost is a beautiful thing (and no one has the right to tell you how to write tribute lyrics), if you’re looking to scribe something on mortality that doesn’t sound too ominous or on the nose, focusing on something communal about dying, or writing about something a little more obscure, is the way forward.
For example, you could write lyrics on the cycle of life (how when something dies, something is born), the death of a caterpillar and the birth of a butterfly, the death of the planet of the death of a regime, which brings us onto our next theme — politics.
Politics
“The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.”
Politics is an emotive and subjective theme with a whole spectrum of scope for lyric-writing.
That said, of all the common songwriting themes included here, it’s perhaps the easiest one for seeking out a fresh take where words are concerned. But, while that may well be the case, it’s all too easy to come across too angry and either miss the point of what you’re writing about or scribe down words that are too narrow in theme, excluding many people from your song’s content.
Political songwriting should help to cultivate change, hit people in the head as well as the heart, and command attention, which is why the best political lyrics often don’t contain too much jargon or centre around one person or party.
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” by Gil Scott-Heron is a masterclass in political songwriting. The phrase “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” serves as a poignant hook for the entire arrangement. And, lines like “The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox”, spoke out against the mindless American consumerism during the time the song was written.
A series of tragic college campus-based events inspired Gil Scott-Heron to lay down these percussively potent lyrics and despite brimming with emotion, the content is made powerful by an astute observation of the state of the things around the author, with words alluding to the fact that before any change is made, the revolution, or will to make a change, must take place in your mind.
Takeaway: If you’re writing politically (and let’s face it, there’s plenty to write about in this day and age), you will no doubt have deep-rooted opinions on a particular subject or event. But, the key to delivering something powerful and potentially timeless, is by writing without a seething rage that will transform your lyrics into a mindless attack.
Instead, allow your emotions to explode onto the page. Step away for a few hours (or days even, if that’s what you need), before returning to your lyrics and using fragments of your thoughts to create something constructive.
For inspiration, read the story behind “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and you will better understand Gil Scott-Heron’s masterful approach to writing political lyrics.
Coming of age
“And listen closely to what I say, And if you do this it’ll help you some sunny day.”
The coming of age or right of passage song comes in many forms and can be as sad as it can be joyful. But, regardless of whether the lyrics are doe-eyed or teary-eyed, the best coming of age songs are both nostalgic and laced with a message delivered with retrospective wisdom.
An immense coming of age anthem, “Simple Man” by Lynard Skynard offers a fresh take on the theme of growing up and going through changes. A song that was more tender than most of the band’s other arrangements, the lyrics here explore the vital importance of the mother-son relationship.
Here Ronnie Van Zant tells us, the listeners, the advice his mother bestowed onto him when he was transitioning to a man, driving home the message of how some things we’re told and offered early on never leave us, particularly if it’s worthwhile.
Takeaway: Written without too many syllables or words compressed into each line, this song is easy to follow from the outset — a slice of life that has propelled this track into legendary heights.
To craft a coming of age song that doesn’t mirror the likes of “Summer of 69” or Ed Sheeran’s “Castle on The Hill”, you should think about a particular memory or moment in your life that means something to you and rather than writing about what happened, think about what it meant to you or how it has helped to shape your life.
Like “Simple Man”, if you write coming of age lyrics that hone in on advice, wisdom and a feeling, rather than documenting a holiday or a season, you stand a fighting chance of cutting through the noise and writing something original.
Lyrics, by their very nature, are unique to the person that pens them. But, by stretching beyond the ideas, imagery, and lines that have been worn out, crafting something original will become a lot like death and heartbreak — inevitable.
It’s time to start writing.
