How to Write from the Title
Developing songs from titles isn’t everybody’s style. I’ll admit, I didn’t start writing title-first until I set my sights on writing within the Nashville market. Up until then, I’d been employing the ‘seat-of-my-pants’ songwriting strategy, which involves combing through 300 voice recordings with music ideas and random scraps of lyrics that mostly only resonate with the barely lucid at 2am. My songs ideas were held together with mental super-glue, no real seed or focal point to be heard as a ‘hook.’ If I was going to be commercial, I knew at least that single component had to change.
When I went into songwriting as a career, I felt like most of my titles were forced, as if they flashed neon “this is the hook” or “look how clever I made this turn of phase!” I worked so hard for the few titles that sold their message with subtle cleverness. Then sometimes I’d have a good title, and like an archer I’d aim for it only to hit everywhere but the bullseye. Saying what was essential while still pointing towards the title message proved to be a very hard endeavor indeed. Furthermore, it felt like everything I wanted to write had been written already, and titles were no exception.
Over the years, I’ve learned to embrace writing from the title. I’ve also learned a bit more about why some titles seem like moving targets and how I can tame them. I’d like to share a few of those thoughts here, in the hopes they tame a few of your own errant seeds.
With the title in the palm of our hand, we’ve got the most important part of the song. Whether the title is repeated often, or even placed in the conventional positions at the top or bottom of the chorus, knowing ‘what’ sums up our message helps us writers focus. We can always come back to that title phrase and ask ourselves if the idea or line we’re working on relates back to the title itself. If the answer isn’t an emphatic ‘yes,’ we can cross it out and pursue ideas that do align.
Some titles offer up their message right from the get-go. ‘On a Bus to St. Cloud’ has got to have a bus in it somewhere. ‘My Front Porch Looking In’ has to relate back to a front porch. But other titles like ‘Try’ or ‘Someday’ leave room for us to fill in the rest - sometimes too much room. When the title doesn’t beg for specifics, the song can actually be more difficult to write, because we’re not being guided anywhere conclusive. A song that’s about everything is more often about nothing, and if lyrics are the leading edge of what we do, generality is murder on our end result. You can tell when this is happening if you’ve been staring at your lyric for hours, swapping out one equally beige line for another. No matter how much you work the lyric, it just doesn’t feel like it gets any better.
Instead, try daring to get specific. With regard to words, we get specific by going specific with imagery. A ‘bus’ is specific, as well as a ‘front porch.’ Try narrowing the idea, such as with ‘Because you love me’. ‘You love me’ is a big idea, but ‘because you love me’ chips off a chunk of the larger idea. With our own titles, we can identify a title that’s too big by adding smaller words like ‘because, but, so, if, when, just, if only, maybe,’ or other similar words before the title phrase. Let the small precursors narrow the idea, and thus, give you something more specific and potent to say.
A common frustration for us songwriters is the feeling that if we’re specific, we’re no longer universal. It’s counterintuitive, but the reverse is actually true. Only when we’re specific are our words able to strike a nerve in the listener. “But wait,” you say, “what about all of Adele’s songs?” I love Adele as much as anyone. But I don’t sit around and read Adele’s lyrics out loud as if they were poetry. They take on life in context of her music and well, because she’s singing them. Songs are never the experience of a single element. They are beautiful collisions of multiple elements that have come together to create something better than their individual parts.
A great way to work a little more title writing into your process is to take a few hours a week and generate titles. Grab a book off your shelf at home and lift out words and phrases that could be titles. Listen to a podcast, movie, YouTube video, or your Aunt Mable from the perspective of title generation, writing down anything that holds any interest to you at all. Just focus on the sound of the words. If they flow, carrying a certain sparkle, they’re worth writing down.
After you’ve got a list going, take a day a week and quickly draw up a simple outline for three different titles. An outline uses everyday language to quickly summarize the gist of each section of the song. Brainstorming this way ensures we don’t get muddled in writing actual lyric, but rather practice generating content for those niggling second verses and bridges. It also teaches us to summarize the main idea in the chorus, while letting the verses support the main idea with points that make the chorus seem true.
Writing with the title first is a great way to focus our song towards a single, potent message. Whether we drive the title home in the chorus, or let it remain a breadcrumb in the third verse, knowing what drives the song we’re making is a big help to our creative process. We can say, with greater conviction, which musical and lyrical ideas belong in our song and which ones can wait for another tune. And knowing that can lead to something wonderful - a finished song. Try grabbing a few titles this week and daydreaming what they would say as a song. Over time, you just may find you have many more ideas than you once thought, each a distinct and unique expression of your artistic sound.
Stay creative,
