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Has this ever happened to you? You finish a song, tweak a few lines here and there, and do a decent demo of it. You're proud of your song, and it gets a decent response at last week's writer's night. Then you take it to a publisher (or a critique). They don't turn it off after the verse...good sign. They don't turn it off after the chorus...good sign. Then when they do turn the song off their comment is "Good idea, but you should dig deeper." Of course, in their presence, you are calm, cool and professional, but in the back of your mind goes the "what just happened" blitz through your mind.
So what does it mean? Well, it means you wrote a good song, but you probably didn't write a great song. Now, I'm not supposing that I have a the key to making every song 'great', but let's focus on focus.
Ok, then how do we dig deeper? It doesn't necessarily mean get all philosophical and profound and "change the world" in your lyric. It essentially means do something different with the idea to connect more strongly with the listener.
The first suggestion to getting deeper is look at your hook. Your hook or idea was probably solid enough, but maybe it was taken in a more typical direction. How many times have we all heard "Everything's already been written, but you have to write it different?" Plenty.
So did you take a literal translation of your hook or did you twist it in some way? Some hooks are best done directly and literally. "Redneck Yacht Club" pretty much needs to be written about rednecks on boats, huh? But a good example of going a little deeper with a hook is the LeeAnn Rimes single, "Something's Gotta Give". It's a common phrase we've probably all used. I even had a co-writer bring it into an appointment last year (he hadn't heard this song yet). But how many people, when given that hook would say "it's about a guy who is working hard and not getting anywhere....something's gotta give".....a lot. But the writers turned the phrase to "something's gotta give...me butterflies, something's gotta give me dreams at night"...nice angle and different.
A recent discussion I had involved a title for a soldier so I mentioned the song "Traveling Soldier" as an example. If you took a literal translation of that hook, one could expect mention of different locations or wars that this soldier had seen, but there is only one line in the song that mentions anything about actually traveling.
Look at your hooks from as many angles as possible. Is it something literal or can there be another meaning or angle behind it? Examine it from various characters and as many angles as you can.
Second, what about your idea makes an audience care? Do they care? Why should they care? How many songs have you heard, "she left me and I'm so hurt. I'm going to sit here at the bar and drink away my blues"? Yes, plenty. But listeners need to identify with the characters in your song and emphathize with them. Now, I would say "Whiskey Lullaby" is not something the average listener sees literally (she left him and he drank himself to death - very Leaving Las Vegas), but the song makes the listener empathize with the characters from the first line: "She put him out like a midnight cigarette." How bad did she hurt him? Like smashing a cigarette out cold...no fire, done. Nearly everyone has probably felt that crushed by a breakup at some point. And then in the end, when the woman does the same, the listener is then drawn in emotionally to that instead of hating the woman in the story. That's not easy to do when writing, but it's essential so you can make listeners feel for the characters.
It's important to connect with your listener and bring them into your song emotionally. They need to relate to your characters or sympathize or bond with them in some way. Jimbeau Hinson once told me, "songs are like mirrors that a listener looks in. If they see their reflection in your mirror, then you've done it. If they don't see their reflection in your mirror, they'll put it down and go to the next mirror"
Deeper doesn't just mean "cool" lines, but it does mean be real. Real is a huge word. As writers, we can't assume that every song we write comes from our real life experience, but it's our goal to make every song, especially the made up ones, sound as real as possible. Real action. Real emotion. When it's real, it's honest, and when it's honest, people know.
Write On!
Eddie
Article: © SongwriterPro.com Kelly Dunn - All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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