Songwriting...It’s All In Your Head

With most of the songwriters I’ve been coaching, lyrics are the biggest mystery. Some people write in a stream of consciousness style, it just pours out. Others have to slave over every line.

All of us are trying to make the connection between whats in our head and what shows up on paper. This is where we all tend to dis-connect.

We have the images in our head, all the color and detail but when we start to write we get  kinda formal. We lose all the magic stuff.

The really good ones, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Tom Douglas, Matraca Berg and Leonard Cohen just to name a few are master storytellers. They bring you in with small details, they pull in all five senses  until you’re seeing what they saw.

What they wanted you to see. Just enough good stuff to let you in but still leave room for your own version of the story.

One of my oldest and best friends, Kye Fleming is a master of this. She can paint a Picasso with 3 verses and a chorus and make it look easy. We all know it’s not.

The encouraging part is that it is all in your head and if you can get it from there to the page it’s bound to be an original.