You want to be heard. I get it. You write passionate songs that you just crave to “get out there” to reach millions for Jesus or to encourage worship. That’s a very good thing. God created you to want it because He created you to “co-create” with Him and to communicate the love He has for all humans and His creation through your songs.
But how do you really do it?
There are lots of people, including us, who are trying to point the way and offer resources to help you figure it out. But are they (we) just wanting money, making you “pay to play,” or are they (we) any legit sources for information and an entree into the real music business?
Levels of Success in Songwriting
There are “levels of success” in songwriting, just as in any sport, profession, or artistic endeavor. No one starts at the very top, but must work on all that goes into making them successful in whatever context they find themselves in.
God created you to be heard.
Every athlete learns discipline in their bodies.
Every opera singer learns disciplines of the body and vocal cords.
Attorneys learn the rigors of law and financiers the rules of finance.
Mastery is hard-won, in any case, and is never handed over like a lollypop.
Such it is with songwriting.
Anyone can put words with a melody and call it a “song.” But songs that have a lasting impact and that are useful to many people in many places share qualities that set them far above “average” song making.
Just as the master jeweler hones the raw jewels into heirlooms, the great songwriters learn the craft and then plie it, day after day and year after year, until they “get it” – – they’ve chipped away the rough edges, revealing the clearest, most precious thing – – a real song that just about anyone anywhere recognizes as a great song.
I remember being signed to a small publishing company just being started by Bill Gaither and Gary McSpadden in the mid-1980’s. They listened to a couple of my average sounding songs and heard some talent. I thought I’d “made it” and that I would soon be hanging gold records on the wall.
What is the key that unlocks my lyrics and makes them stand out above everyone else’s?
But that’s just when the learning began. That’s when the real rejection began. That’s when my eyes were opened to the fact that, yes, I had talent, but I really didn’t know how to write a truly great song.
But I was determined. I didn’t give up. I wanted to learn and grow and write truly great songs. So I wrote five nights a week while working odd jobs during the day, including a paper route at 3am every morning making $60 a week.
I would show song after song to my new mentors.
Sometimes they would have constructive criticism, but sometimes they would only say, “That’s a good song,” but I could tell it wasn’t anything they wanted to invest their time and attention into. I learned as much from that as anything.
I started wondering, “What are they looking for? What is the key that unlocks my lyrics and makes them stand out above everyone else’s? What can I do differently to make my songs great?” As it turns out, that was the most important question I could ask myself as I sought to step up into higher levels of success as a songwriter.
Great Songwriters Think Differently from Average Songwriters
I’ve been telling the story a lot lately of when I took almost two months to write one lyric and how it launched my entire writing career. As I was saying earlier, I had a publishing contract with some of the most influential people in the entire Christian music industry, but that still wasn’t getting me anywhere. Having a “deal” didn’t make me a great songwriter.
I was working as hard as I knew how to work, listening a lot to what others would say and watching how they crafted their songs, but it still seemed like I was two rungs down the ladder with no leg up. I wanted badly to understand what was missing in my writing that would make Gaither and others take notice.
Then it happened.
I had talent, but I really didn’t know how to write a truly great song.
Not overnight, as if the heavens opened up, I saw a flash of light, and then suddenly I “got a download from God” and automatically wrote hit songs. No, I worked long and hard for this one over a six – eight week period in which I worked every day on a lyric called Mighty Fortress that would go on to become a #1 hit song for CCM Inspirational legend, Larnelle Harris.
It happened like this.
One of the writers around the company at that time was a great guy named Bill George. Bill was an amazing pianist and had crafted a complete melody for a song he wanted to be called “Mighty Fortress.” He had picked the title and had written the entire melody note for note when he approached me about writing the lyric.
This may sound easy. A guy gives you a fully crafted melody and the title. Simple, right? Not at all. You see, the title was fantastic, obviously, but the lyric could’ve been crafted a hundred different ways. I knew what the hook and title were to be, but then it was up to me to create meaning with it. Plus, there was absolutely zero leeway to alter Bill’s melody. He made it clear he wanted the lyric to match his melody note for note, syllable for syllable.
So I went to work.
To say that I went through dozens of drafts is not an exaggeration. I worked every syllable over and over and over, then worked it over again. Changing one word would force me into changing entire lines. Changing lines would force me to change whole verses and so on. Crafting a lyric like this was like trying to work the most complex Rubik’s Cube ever… blindfolded!
I can honestly say that I’ve never worked on a lyric as long and as hard as I did “Mighty Fortress,” but the work paid off.
It was pitched and “on hold” for Sandi Patty, but not recorded. The Gaither Vocal Band actually recorded it, becoming one of my first important “cuts” in the business, but then they dropped it from the album before it released. Thankfully, it was then picked up by Larnelle and he sings it to this day, having become one of his first big hits, as well.
Lay a Thorough Foundation for Your Lyric Writing
Working so thoroughly over this lyric for weeks and weeks taught me a lot, of course. Pushing myself over and over to not settle and realizing that this was a golden opportunity laid a mental framework for my lyric writing that has carried me through thirty years and over 400 songs recorded. It also showed me that a lyric can be written dozens of ways until the perfect one is fashioned.
I often think of the great painters and how they would paint the same scenes over and over until they felt satisfied with their work. How many masterpieces by Cezanne, or Rembrandt, or Van Gogh were the result of painting and repainting? Golfers practice their swings thousands of times to perfect them, as do tennis players their strokes and basketball players their free throws. Yet, we as Christian songwriters seldom realize the importance of such meticulous work in order to get a higher result from our craft.
The point should be obvious that we all need to lay a thorough foundation for our songcraft.
You may not have thought of working on one lyric for eight weeks. I certainly would never have considered it prior to the experience, but it somehow was the key that unlocked the knowledge in me of not only what is demanded of songs that could outlive me, but actually of how to think about it in the first place.
You lay a great foundation by studying how lyrics are crafted to be lasting contributions to the Church such as the great hymns and modern songs such as “10,000 Reasons” (Myrin/Redman) and many more.
You lay a foundation by refusing to settle for trite phrases and the typical rehashing of Christian phrases, but do the hard work of piecing a stellar lyric together word for word, line for line, until it’s something undeniably powerful and cannot be ignored.
Better Ideas = Better Hooks = Better Songs = Better Response
Most writers I encounter are impatient. They want to sit down, write a song, spin out a demo, get it cut, and have a hit. But it rarely works that way.
First of all, so many writers I encounter haven’t spent any time prepping to write. They think they can write on empty and come up with great songs. They wind up frustrated because they’ve neglected a part of the process that is actually more important than writing the song: coming up with a phenomenal idea before trying to write the song.
Here’s the stark truth.
Better Ideas = Better Hooks = Better Songs = Better Response
The reason hit songwriters are hit songwriters is because they have the best ideas and know how to craft them into hit songs.
Pro songwriters self-edit and think like a professional songwriters, having done the hard work necessary to get them to that depth of word power and craftiness. There is a clever element to songwriting, just as in any art form, that is often overlooked by aspiring writers.
Think about the breakthrough hit a couple of years ago by pop artist Meghan Trainor, “All About That Bass,” for instance. I know, I know. It’s not a “Christian” song and it’s about a body part, but it is a great study for us on a lot of levels from a purely technical standpoint.
First, the alliteration of all the a’s, b’s, and t’s makes it so catchy that it’s immediately compelling and memorable. Second, the universal issue of female body image makes it highly evocative and emotional while maintaining a light-hearted rebuttal to the skinny girls of the world.
Trainor and her co-writer, producer Kevin Kadish, were just knocking around a title he already had that was “All Bass, No Treble” and they combined it with a phrase Trainor said constantly at the time “I’m all about that” and that’s how the hook “All About That Bass” happened.
The reason hit songwriters are hit songwriters is because they have the best ideas and know how to craft them into hit songs.
This was pre-record deal for her and she actually got her label deal as a singer when she performed an impromptu version of it at a party with nothing but her ukelele. This is what we mean when we refer to “the intersection of preparation with opportunity.” They had been pitching the song for other artists, but no one had a vision for it until Meghan performed it, landing her a record deal that caused her to become the breakout artist and songwriter of 2014 in the pop world.
If you want to write hit songs for radio or worship songs for the church, the principle is the same: better ideas make better songs. Settling for bad to mediocre, unoriginal, uninteresting ideas is death to your song.
How to Identify Better Ideas
Sometimes it must seem like there are no honest, or at least clear, answers about how to write better songs by finding better ideas.
Like the wife who answers, “I’ll know it when I see it” to the husband asking her what kind of new dress she’s looking for, it could seem like the logic employed for identifying great ideas and hooks is fuzzy, at best. But it’s really not. There are clearly identifiable marks of a great idea and hook, namely that they are memorable, compelling, emotional, and “sticky” in that they stick with the listener long after the song has ended.
I’ve demonstrated here that great ideas take time to find and develop. I hope you’re cataloguing your ideas somewhere to cull through over and over to keep developing them and to trot them out when a cowrite occurs, or when you’re looking for song fodder to get you going.
Perhaps what this all boils down to is becoming a better student of the craft of songwriting, starting with learning to identify and craft great songs from great ideas. That’s a very practical concept because you can study more, read more, think more, and be more aware of how others approach their art.
To begin to think like a professional songwriter will elevate the level of your songwriting.
The Christian cop out is always to “pray more,” but I wonder how much that really happens. It may seem selfish to you to pray for songwriting success and I can’t even count how many times a potential client has told me “it’s not about the money.” First of all, unless you’re the best of the best, there’s not a lot of money in it, anyway. Secondly, even the Bible says “a workman is worthy of their hire” (1 Timothy 5:18), so whatever you can make from your songwriting is money well-earned and certainly deserved.
But we certainly have the option to pray for better hooks, ideas, and songs as we seek to become the best songwriters we can become. I think that’s totally Biblical and Godly and sound to ask God for His guidance, wisdom, power, and success to be what He’s told me I’m supposed to be. But whether you think it’s right or wrong to pray for success, it’s certainly not wrong to ask God for the heart of a learner and then be open when the learning comes. Why not ask God for how to most effectively share His love and work in your life through better songs? Wouldn’t that automatically indicate the ideas would be better? Selah.
You can identify better ideas by asking yourself these three questions:
Is the idea original in any way?
Has this title/hook been used before or is it close to something else?
Am I writing what I think people want to hear, or am I writing what is true to my heart?
Doing just a little research can go a long way, too, when just a simple Google search is at your fingertips to see if anyone’s written a song similar to your idea, and, if so, who it was, when it was, and just close it is to what you’re thinking about writing. In our Christian world, there have been about a million “In Your Presence” kinds of songs. We still want to be in God’s presence, yes, but there must be some fresh ways to write about it.
To begin to think like a professional songwriter will elevate the level of your songwriting. You’ll probably experience a surge in the quality of your writing quickly as you incorporate some of these concepts in your writing habits and simply become more conscious of them.
But it’s important to remember that songwriting unfolds over a lifetime with many seasons, ups and downs, peaks and valleys. We bring all we are to our art, so be sure to work hard to bring your best by increasing your skills constantly and striving each day to think like a professional songwriter.
