How Songwriters Use Pictures in Their Lyrics

Great lyrics often engage their audience because of the pictures they paint. Lyrics like,

I was working part time in a five-and-dime My boss was Mr. McGee

-Prince

Belief is a beautiful armor, but makes for the heaviest sword

-John Mayer

I took a walk in the city To clear my head for a moment Turned my collar to the wind On the street, it was blowin

-Kacey Musgraves

They show instead of tell something, and the effect pulls on our emotions. Picture writing in our lyrics engulf the listener in the world of the song, and make the characters vivid and believable.

We see the man struggling in Jason Isbell’s “Speed Trap Town,”

It’s a Thursday night but there’s a high school game, 

sneak a bottle up the bleachers and forget my name

We can feel the anxiety of “You lock the door, you're drunk at the steering wheel,” by Halsey. Instead of just saying ‘I’m happy’, Pharrell says “I’m a hot air balloon that could go to space.”

Pictures can be symbolic - we know that Pharrell isn’t literally riding a hot air balloon into the stratosphere. He’s making a comparison. And so some picture-writing in our lyrics is figurative, while some is literal. And depending on our music and personalities, we may find we lean more towards one or the other

I think the challenge for us as artists and writers is determining what kind of lyric writing, literal or figurative, expresses our artistry best, and then doing a few regular exercises with our pen to coax that kind of lyric language out.

Detail Vs. Imagery

Pictures in our song lyric fall into two categories: Detail and Imagery. Detail leans literal, setting a scene, or giving the facts. Artists who are grounded and tell stories set in a place and time do well with this kind of language. It’s almost 2-dimensional, not overly complicated, and doesn’t infer layers of meaning.

Tom Petty says: 

She’s a good girl, loves her mama, 

loves Jesus, and America too.

She’s a good girl, crazy ‘bout Elvis

Loves horses, and her boyfriend too

Detail doesn’t call for interpretation, and rarely feels cheesy. It is what it is.

If you are more literal in nature when you write, you’re in good company. A lot of great music across all styles has been written this way.

But what is interesting is how “detail-leaning lyrics” share a piece of our personality that tends to extend through other elements of our songwriting. You might notice that like Tom Petty, the chord progressions you choose are simple and strong, without a lot of complexity, nuance, or sophistication. Sting, you don’t belong to this club. Green Day, you’re a long-time member.

The other category is imagery. When our lyrics lean heavily towards imagery, we find ourselves saying things like the Foo Fighters:

Send in your skeletons, sing as their bones 

go marching in again they need you buried deep

Or like Radiohead:

She lives with a broken man

a cracked polystyrene man 

who just crumbles and burns

Imagery uses pictures as symbols, are highly interpretive, and hold layers of meaning that change with us over time. From Joni Mitchel to Halsey and across every style of music, imagery is esoteric, abstract, and metaphorical. It’s what we mean when we say something is ‘poetic’.

Leaning Towards Picture Language

The trick to writing better lyrics is pushing our imagery and our detail to their extremes, so we can really feel the difference between them. Then when you know what you’re dealing with, you can better understand when and where to use each type.

I’d like to focus on two detail-leaning songwriters, and look at how they use detail and imagery to show their songwriting personalities. Then, I’ll give you a few exercises that can help you determine for yourself where you sit on the spectrum from detail to imagery, literal to figurative.

Kris Kristofferson

On the highly detailed side is “Sunday Morning Coming Down” by Kris Kristofferson.

I woke up Sunday morning 

with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt 

and the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad 

so I had one more for dessert

To practice this kind of writing, be direct. Write like you speak, and use plenty of detail language. That’s the language that sets the scene with who, where, and when. 

Practice:

Each day for two weeks, take 10 minutes and describe an ordinary scene. It could be going through the motions of showering and dressing, or driving home from work, taking the dog for a walk, or making dinner. The goal is to stay conversational, grounded, factual. These scenes are the backdrop over which the real concept takes place. It isn’t the concept of the song itself. 

If your music runs acoustic, organic, gritty, could be described as ‘storytelling’ or grounded, you can use these scenes to set your character in, and build a song from.

Jason Isbell

Another highly detailed writer is Jason Isbell. He’s got the same grounded character as Kris Kristofferson, only with a bit more metaphor and poetic language.

On a lark 

on a whim 

I said there's two kinds of men in this world 

and you're neither of them

And his fist 

Cut the smoke 

I had an eighth of a second 

to wonder if he got the joke

And in the car 

Headed home 

She asked if I had considered 

the prospect of living alone

With a stake 

Held to my eye 

I had to summon the confidence 

needed to hear her goodbye 

And another brief chapter 

without any answers blew by

-“Songs that she Sang in the Shower” by Jason Isbell

To practice this style, you’ll need to get comfortable drawing out a scene and using repetition. Each verse of Jason’s tune describes a single moment or event in time. He starts with ‘on a lark’ and continues with ‘on a whim.’ He involves quotes in his lyrics, introducing them with “I said.” He extends a moment almost as if the fist is moving in slow-motion through the smoky bar and slamming into Jason’s face. The key here is making the ordinary moments more significant by dwelling in them. 

Practice:

Make a list of ‘ordinary moments’ to write about. Add to the list regularly, and draw from it when you need ideas for songs. Just let the ideas flow, like this:

Bonding with a stranger on a plane

Feeling left out of the group

The first two weeks after a breakup

Finding the perfect item at the thrift store

Getting yelled at by crazy people on the train

Going to therapy for the last time

Going home after a party 

In the bathroom at a party

Then, for 10 minutes a day, write short lines of lyric that dwell in each single moment. Feel free to rhyme or not, and use rhythm, or not. The important point is to practice drawing out your scenes to at least four lines of descriptive language before moving on to a new scene.

Over time, you’ll find that these little prompts lead to genuine lyric writing that blooms into finished songs. 

If you'd like to dive into more detailed-leaning lyric writing tools, come join me at one of my songwriting retreats.

Stay creative,