My lyric process is, first and foremost, to overthink and then say now, how do we say that?
Like we're not nerds.
Hey, you.
Yes, you.
Is there music inside of you?
We've recruited working musicians from throughout the industry to help you hear it, hold it and share it with this wild and wonderful world.
I think a great lyric, it does two things.
One, I think it helps if your lyric is unique.
It's really important where someone can listen to it and be like okay, this is a lyric that I have not heard before, or a take on something that I have not considered in this way.
But then I also think a great lyric is honest.
When it comes to lyric writing, I really love, I love a noun.
I love a picture.
I feel like people really hold on to nouns and they can be really sticky.
I like colors and textures and smells and I like to feel like when you see the title, you can imagine the music video.
That being said, you can also write like something that's a little headier, that's a little more just like emotional or internal, and that can also be super, super powerful.
So there's not only one way to do it.
To make the personal universal is so good.
I would say my favorite example of that is a Stevie reference, Living for the City.
He says, to find a job is like a haystack needle.
They took that colloquialism, crunched it up, flipped it over.
To find a job is like a haystack needle.
And, but it makes perfect sense and it makes it's it makes universal sense though.
It's a really quirky way of doing it.
I do feel like I have to tell the truth.
So if there's something that feels really resonant, it's really hard not to write about it.
And I find it really cathartic and therapeutic to write about what it is that I'm going through, because there's always something i learn about my own inner experience by writing about it.
It depends on the genre and it depends on the topic.
Party time songs, for example, usually are going to be more rhythmic and you want it to be something that everyone can kind of like pump their fist to and sing along to.
And then, when it comes to love songs, sad songs whatever, i think when it's more introspective, i like to have more of more emotional detail.
Olivia Rodrigo's Driver's License is a great example of a heartbreak song that has really specific little things.
The details of the things that you miss about someone or the things that remind you of someone.
When you're talking about heartbreak or something more introspective, it's nice to kind of find the everyday things and think back to a time in your life when you were feeling that way.
I try to stay away from being overly cryptic.
You can be poetic and vague even, but I think it has to be something that anyone could listen to and be like.
I know what that means.
There's not an original feeling under the sun.
You know, if you felt it, there's billions of other people who have felt that same exact thing.
But what does become original is your way of expressing that feeling.
How one person says I love you is very different than the next person.
Experience sincerity, imagination are what make lyrics great.
As far as i'm concerned, i've got to be genuine in in the emotion that i'm trying to communicate, if not transmit.
I think i know i'm on to something when it strikes a chord in me emotionally, when this song is something i'm excited to share with the world.
However, the ultimate test is the 24-hour test.
Because i've had that feeling, I relistened the next day and I questioned what on earth I was thinking to have imagined this being good.
But that works on the opposite end.
There has been work that I've questioned.
The entire time I'm questioning and I'm writing, I'm playing, I'm going back and forth.
I put it away, I listen the next day, and I'm shocked at how connected I am to it.
That cuts both ways.
So it's a matter of trusting the process and know that no one is going to say what you have to say the way you have to say it.
And lean into that with everything you've got.
When I'm evaluating a song, the first thing that I'm looking for is authenticity.
Most humans can feel when something is not real, and that could be based off of whether a lyric feels real or whether it feels like three songwriters got together and tried to write the most poetic thing.
I think lyrics are great when they feel like natural poetry, when they feel like you didn't craft them, they just were.
I've always felt that life was as much being lived as being inscribed.
That recognition means that the song's always being written.
It's just whether or not I'm paying attention.
I try to be ready and worthy of whatever sound is attempting to come through me.
I always use Bob Dylan to make you feel my love as an example, because it doesn't sound like a genius wrote it.
It sounds like anybody would just be like.
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 like it just feels like a thing that existed right.
No one.
It doesn't feel like Bob Dylan wrote it, except he did.
And If you try to do it again, it's impossible.
It's so perfect.
So that's always one of my pinnacles of lyrical perfection is like, see how natural that feels.
I would say that I have a lot of different processes to write a song.
One of my go-to tools is I have a word bank, so I always have phrases and words that I'm thinking about.
So you know, in life someone says something and suddenly it'll make me think of a lyric or think of a song idea, and I'll write it down.
And then when we actually go to the studio and go to sit down and write a song, I have this bank of phrases and ideas and titles.
My process is funny because I start with collecting ideas.
Whenever I'm on an airplane, I think of it as my.
I'm locked in in this little missile shooting across the sky.
Nothing else I can do.
So I start listening to records and I start writing down thoughts and ideas.
I write things in the notes in my phone.
I am constantly writing down titles.
And there was a moment I remember, when I first was really getting in the trenches of the songwriting world, where I had an aha moment and I realized that there were song titles everywhere.
If you're looking for them, so um billboards, um the covers of magazines headlines, listening to people talking in line at the grocery store, um eavesdropping, listening to your friends talk about their breakups, whatever it is, and also like one title can go so many different ways.
You know, if you think about like, since you've been gone right, so that's like a female empowerment, like i'm over you like, sort of like an angry revenge, sort of celebratory anthem right,
But it could have been a heartbreaking ballad.
It could have been like a party song where it's like, I just want to forget my troubles.
Like there's so many different ways to spin the same title.
I have never sat down to try to write a song in my life.
I don't go, you know what, I'm going to write a pop.
You know, I'm going to write a record.
It just is.
It's just always being written.
Always.
That's what makes songwriting so fun and so interesting is There is no real formula and sometimes the songs that you think are gonna be big don't land, and sometimes the songs that you really don't think are gonna be big end up landing for some reason.
And it's really fun to just make music and then see what happens.
Start exploring your voice today and embark on a journey that will last a lifetime.
For more insights from beloved working artists on what it means to think like a musician, check out another episode in this series.
