My Song Coach

Songs That Help Us Remember

Remembering the past is one of the things that binds us together. Several times a year we take a moment, an hour, or a day to recall significant events. They may be personal or part of the shared history of a nation. Some are joyous, some impossibly sad.

How much help could a song be?
After the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, as we watched scenes of devastation, loss of life, and the strength of these people faced with such immense challenges, I suggested that songwriters express their feelings about what they were seeing through their art. I wrote this on my Facebook page and was quickly criticized by someone who felt that this was self-indulgent, even useless. I wasn’t suggesting that writing a song should take the place of hard work or much needed donations. I was thinking of the long haul… I was thinking about remembrance, about never forgetting.

Today is a day of remembrance. We take time to think about the human cost and the courage of those who lost their lives in New York on September 11. Now, over a decade after those events, one of the things that brings those memories back for me with the most intensity is a song written by my friend Bridget St. John. The song is called “The Hole In Your Heart” and its expressive beauty never fails to recall the emotions of that day and the ones that followed. Bridget wrote it to express her own feelings but it speaks for many.

Need Lyric Ideas? Use TV Scenes

If you find yourself looking for new lyric ideas and inspiration, here’s a tip that works… Watch television! That’s not as crazy/stupid as it sounds. Many TV scenes are built around common emotional situations the audience can relate to. That’s just what you want for your song. Here’s how to do it.

CHOOSE A TV SHOW

Drama series with plenty of emotion work well. Hospital dramas, fire fighters, and even vampires deliver some great lines. Look for scenes with characters who are feeling a strong emotion and get ready to take notes. Much of what you’ll hear is conversational speech—but that often works well as a base-line to start a lyric from. A mix of direct statements and poetic imagery is ideal for lyrics. You can start with direct statements and add the imagery yourself later on.

Comedy series are not as easy to use as drama but they will work. If you choose a sitcom, check out the last 5 to 10 minutes of the show when any conflicts or problems are wrapped up and there’s often a heartfelt moment between characters.

Soaps operas, yes, good old-fashioned afternoon soaps, are a good source if you can find one to watch. (There aren’t many left.) They’re slow moving and nothing much happens, but that’s because everyone is busy emoting all over the place. There’s enough emotional confrontation, regret, tearful forgiveness, and joyful reunions to fill a couple hundred songs!

Write Songs for TV Commercials

What was that song on the Delta Faucet commercial, the cute one that goes “So many things your hands can do”? It sounds like a children’s song, something maybe you might write for kids. Well, it is a children’s song. It’s from a Sesame Street record featuring The Count, the vampire Muppet who simply adores numbers. Could you write a song like that? You probably could and possibly you already have.

Elmore Leonard’s Advice to Songwriters

When I hear great fiction writers talk about their craft, I’m often struck by how easily these insights can be applied to songwriting. We can learn a lot about our own craft by stepping outside and looking at it from another angle. For example, the late, great novelist Elmore Leonard said this in an interview with WritersDigest:

A writer has to read. Read all the time. Decide who you like then study that author’s style. Take the author’s book or story and break it down to see how he put it together.

If you apply this to songwriting you get:

A songwriter has to listen. Listen all the time. Decide who you like then study that songwriter’s style. Take the songwriter’s songs break them down to see how they’re put together.

Put Yourself in a Music Supervisor’s Shoes

Want to sharpen your pitching skills to Film & TV opportunities and get more forwards? Here’s the best exercise I’ve ever found for strengthening your Film & TV songwriting and pitches: Do what a music supervisor does. Find songs that underscore the emotion, energy, or atmosphere in a scene and test them against the picture!

At the end of this post, I’ll give you some resources for contacting music supervisors and pitching your songs. But before you do that, make sure you have what they’re looking for. Don’t burn a contact because you didn’t do your research. If you’ll spend a couple of afternoons following these instructions, I promise your pitches will be closer to the mark and your film and TV songwriting will be stronger.

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CHOOSE A TV SHOW

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