Unfortunately for you and I, the days of the captive audience are over. Today everybody has cell phones with games, internet access, and a thousand other distractions that are never far away. If your lyric, melody, and performance don’t totally blow everyone’s faces off, expect to look out in the audience and see everyone bathed in the blue glow of their smart phones.
How do we avoid this? How do we get people to forget about Facebook and pay attention to our lyrics and performance?
Dig Deeper.
The surest way to be ignored is to write the kinds of songs that everybody else is writing. If you write songs that sound just like other artists, and if there’s nothing remarkable about your approach, you’re expendable.
Avoid clichés at all costs.
You’ve probably heard this bit of advice before. Are you sick of hearing it? Good. Because as a listener, I’m sick of hearing clichés.
If your audience can accurately guess your next rhyme before you’ve even sung the line, why bother singing it? If we know what you’re going to say, and we know what’s going to happen next, we don’t have a reason to listen to you.
The only way to develop a sense of what’s been done to death is to listen to as much music as possible and pay attention to what other songwriters have written. Attend open mics and listen. Buy albums and listen. Listen, listen, listen. That way, when a song idea occurs to you, you’ll be able to remember a few songs on similar themes and take a different angle to make sure that your song doesn’t fit into a too-familiar pattern.
List of Clichés
Let’s use the comment space below to list out clichés. Sick of hearing a certain phrase, theme, or rhyme pair in songs? Let ‘er rip!
Anything along the lines of “When I’m with you, I’m home”.
I heard a singer-songwriter on Letterman perform a song with that cliche in it just last night. To make things worse, the line was obviously the hook, but the verses seemed to have very, very little relation to it. So not only was it a cliche, but it had no reason to be there.
@#$#%!
Went to hear a roots-rock band tonight. First song? An original called “Feels Like Home.”
One that pops up in a lot of Christian songs is “All I am” as in “all I give to you” (doubly bad as it’s a Yodaism) or “I worship you with all I am” – really gets on my nerves.
The Springsteenian rhyming of fire/higher/desire is a tired one.
hahaha Yodaisms. Thanks to technology, we can now Skype Dagobah for co-writing sessions, and apparently some folks are taking full advantage of that.
Not sure if it qualifies as a Yodaism, but I sometimes see songwriters write things like “curtains of linen” or the like instead of just “linen curtains”.
“Something deep inside”
“Shooting Stars”
i have a buddy who uses the words “Shooting Star” or some reference to an astronomical event as metaphor for a magical experience in EVERY SINGLE SONG.
That’s true! I don’t know how I didn’t notice that; now that you mention it, I’ve seen that done at least a hundred times.
haha nice post…feeling the article to the extreme
Yeah, I’ve been feeling this one lately. It’s really tough catching and holding an audience’s attention, especially now when everyone’s got their mobile devices…
Ever notice how many songs or verses start with the words “I don’t know?” It’s because song writers sit around wondering what to say next. They don’t know what to say next, and that ends up being the next line. Stop it.
I moved this comment from another “Songwriting Pitfalls” post because I think Russ is right on.
An especially annoying one: any “clever” reference to not having any lyrics, rhymes, etc. for a particular line. Gag me with a rhyming dictionary, people.
hey Nicholas- came over here from Matt’s BSA. Great blogs both!
I wonder if the song itself can lean on the cliché enough to perhaps justify it? Looking at choruses just for economy’s sake: “Just the Way You Are”– a rather innocuous even bland phrase– whether or not one likes it, seems that Billy Joel was able to wrap it into a classic, memorable melody. Intent and humor– or having an angle on something– helps too. And the angle need not be jarringly unique. When John Lennon sang “”ah girl” and added a plaintive sigh to his phrasing, it likely spoke more to that time than if he’d tried to put in all sorts of suggestive lyrical cues, but of course it was supported by the wry commentary of the narrator;) Lastly, one of my favorite offbeat songwriters descended from the Syd Barrett line– Robyn Hitchcock– in terms of ouevre, it’s hard to find a cliché title (or line) in there, but then that becomes the default for him. You expect weird. After listening to “Sometimes I Wish I was Pretty Girl” and “Furry Green Atom Bowl,” it’s a nice change-up to hear the simplicity behind “I Often Dream of Trains”– which is hardly cliché, but feels like a dreamy ride into a long-lost country.
Hi, alt! Thanks for coming over!
Let’s be clear that a cliche isn’t a phrase that’s just bland; it’s a phrase that’s been overused to the point of losing its effect. There are several ways I can think of to get away with cliches:
1. Set one to an irresistible melody
2. Come up with something fresh that incorporates the cliche from an angle that hasn’t been done before.
3. Present a cliched song to an audience that doesn’t know or care.
4. Deliver the cliche with heartfelt conviction.
Of course it’s all dependent on the songwriter’s personal taste and good judgment. There are no rules here (aside from avoiding copyright infringement).
Personally, I think it’s always worth digging deeper to find phrases that are uniquely yours–or at least seldom used.
Great breakdown. Don’t know why but reminded me of Donald Rumsfeld’s well-trod “known knowns” but with theorist Slavoj Zizek’s surprise added category:
following your list–
1. Set one to an irresistible melody : known knowns
2. Come up with something fresh that incorporates the cliche from an angle that hasn’t been done before. : known unknowns
3. Present a cliched song to an audience that doesn’t know or care. : unknown unknowns
4. Deliver the cliche with heartfelt conviction. : unknown knowns (Zizek – from Mute mag: “Donald Rumsfeld omitted the category of most significance from the psychoanalytic point of view: that is, ‘the “unknown knowns”, the things we don’t know that we know – which is precisely the Freudian unconscious, “the knowledge which does not know itself”’. For Zizek it is these unknown knowns – the ‘disavowed beliefs and suppositions we are not even aware of adhering to ourselves’ – and not the ‘unknown unknowns’ that are most dangerous.- mark fisher”
I know that’s stretching it… now the audience is bored to tears;)
I agree it’s always worth digging deeper, or if you swim deeper you’ll find bigger weirder things that seldom come up to the surface.
I look forward to reading on!
Thank you for that! It’s a really interesting way of thinking about this, actually. Hmm.
you need to read this
http://writebadlywell.blogspot.com/2011/08/commit-to-cliches.html
“Never felt this way before”