“The challenge of creativity is to take an old formula and deploy it in a way your audience has never seen before.”

When I was a teenager, most of my favorite lyrics were evocative nonsense. If I didn’t understand it, I assumed it was profound.

I also thought my favorite artists were all on drugs, writing lyrics while high, and that was cool and mysterious to me because I wanted to be on drugs.

And so, for years, under the influence of cough syrup and cat tranquilizers, I wrote songs that were evocative nonsense. My poetry, too, was evocative nonsense. If it sounded cool, I wrote it down. Now that I’m ancient, sober, and square, I think this is an unreliable way to touch the heart of your listener.

If you want to write better, more satisfying lyrics, this post will provide some ideas for you. Let’s talk about songs that are not just evocative nonsense.

Some tell stories. “Rocky Racoon,” by the Beatles, or “Sk8ter Boi,” by Avril Lavigne are examples that come to mind.

Some are built around a governing metaphor. In “Fly Me to the Moon,” Frank Sinatra suggests that “being with” his romantic partner feels like space travel. Many songs compare love to drugs, such as “Your Love Is My Drug,” by Ke$ha.

If you come up with a good metaphor, (usually about love), then you’ve given yourself a theme: space travel, cat tranquilizers. Then all you have to do is make sure that your lyrics are connected to that theme.

But the easiest way to write a song is by creating a catalogue.

Let’s look at the lyrics to “What a Wonderful World,” by Sam Cooke:

                “Don’t know much about history

                Don’t know much biology

                Don’t know much about a science book

                Don’t know much about the French I took”

The speaker, a poor student, is building a catalogue of things he doesn’t know. The excitement in the song comes when he introduces the thing he does know: “But I do know that I love you.”

This is a turn. We’ve seen a catalogue of items, and now we see the item that doesn’t fit. The speaker knows he loves you, and that knowledge has special emphasis because we’ve just seen a handful of basic things the speaker doesn’t know.

That’s emphasis through contrast. I don’t know this, but I do know this.

Let’s look at Patsy Cline’s “She’s Got You:”

                “I’ve got your picture

                That you gave to me

                And it’s signed with love

                Just like it used to be

                The only thing different

                The only thing new

                I’ve got your picture

                She’s got you.”

In this case, we get one item per verse. The first verse is a picture, the second is records, the third verse is his class ring (and the bridge is about his memory). Even though she has all these relics of You, the Other Woman has You. It’s another case of emphasis through contrast. I have this, but she has that.

The most broad, basic way I can tell you to write a catalogue song is to make your verses the catalogue and make your chorus (or refrain) the one thing that doesn’t fit in the catalogue. For maximum salability, the item that doesn’t fit should probably be related to love or heartbreak.

But that’s only one model. You can also create a structure like Nancy Sinatra’s “I Move Around:”

                “I’ve seen the Golden Gate in San Francisco Bay

                I’ve seen the Empire State and walked down old Broadway

                I’ve seen those northern lights in some Alaskan town

                Since I saw you with her, I move, I move around.”

All the verses work like the above: a catalogue of places the speaker has been, followed by the last line, which becomes a refrain through the song.

The last line explains the significance of the catalogue. Why is the speaker going to all these places? Because her boyfriend left her, and now she is traveling as a form of avoidant behavior.

There’s also “the Seeker” by the Who:

                “I looked under chairs

                I looked under tables

                I’ve tried to find the key

                To fifty million fables

                They call me the seeker

                I’ve been searching low and high

                I won’t get to get what I’m after

                Until the day I die.”

The italicized lines, again, are choruses or refrains. Each verse is a catalogue of places our seeker has searched for some answer. Maybe the meaning of life, although I don’t know why that would be under a table. He could be looking for gum.

Either way, he’s looking for something, and the chorus informs us that he won’t get what he’s looking for in this lifetime.

If you’re not sold on the catalogue, or you feel this is a stale formula, I don’t blame you. While I do believe the catalogue method is a great way to add punch to your choruses, you certainly can’t write every song this way. The listener will get wise to you.

That said, all formulas are flexible. The challenge of creativity is to take an old formula and deploy it in a way your audience has never heard before. Easier said than done, and in truth, a strict design can sometimes smother a song, poem, or story.

If you develop a model for a song, and you end up writing a cool verse that doesn’t fit the design, then let your design break. Despite what I said earlier about “evocative nonsense,” you can’t always corral cool. When to corral your lyrics and when to let them roam, however, is not something I can teach you. It is something you must feel for yourself.