The idea is simple. Rewrite song titles.

Song titles are great starting points. Song titles are often the hook. Once you’ve got a great hook, just about any competent or interesting verse will complete the song. So starting with a song title or hook gets you about 80 percent of the way there.

I have many sources that I go to, various iTunes top 10 lists, Billboard charts, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, and many others. Even if you come up empty, it’s great practice and gives you insight into the songwriting of whomever you choose to emulate.

Take the following example, “I Will Dare” by The Replacements. If I begin by keeping the same syllables but looking for opposite meaning I get something like “You Won’t Dare”—keeping close to the original—or “You Won’t Risk.” Both of those titles give me ideas to develop into complete songs.

“After Midnight” by Eric Clapton becomes “Before Noon.” Beginning with “I Love Rock ‘N Roll,” first charted by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, you could change it to the shocked and rhetorical question, “You Hate Rock and Roll?!” Or keep the content similar but change the style of music to “I Love Dance Punk.” “Long Tall Sally” by Little Richard could become “Big Bad Brady.” I found that name using a baby name finder.

There’s no rules to this game. But you can set up some guidelines or directions to get you started. With “Long Tall Sally,” I tried to keep the song’s original alliteration. With “After Midnight,” I looked for the opposite meaning—even though after midnight and before noon refer to the same 12 hours.

I often like to keep the same syllables since most great titles come with a built-in infectious rhythm. Internal rhymes, alliteration, content, any literary device can be kept, manipulated, or left behind.

I like to do little exercises like this whenever I’m running out of ideas or I’ve got a little down time. They grease your creative gears and give you plenty of material to work with. And they’re pretty easy to invent. Have fun and let me know what you come up with!

We could talk about motivation or anchoring overwhelming desire to the thought of writing songs, but one sure fire way to develop a consistent songwriting practice is to make it an unconscious habit.

Here are 5 tips to help you develop the habit of writing songs.

• Write nothing but song titles
  If the thought of writing a chorus, a bridge, and multiple verses is overwhelming to you, then just write some simple song titles. For song title inspiration, read my post on The Astonishing Hit-Making Magic of Song Titles.
• Write for the garbage can without feeling guilty
  The 80/20 rule will tell you that 20 percent of your writing will make the cut, 80 percent won’t. If you write 100 words a day, 20 of them might be useable. So if you need 100 words to complete your song, you need to write around 500 words. That’s why I write for the garbage can.
• Schedule songwriting appointments
  Think of something you do everyday that requires little effort or self-motivation, like eating when you’re hungry. You probably don’t need to schedule your meals in a calendar. You eat when your body tells you that you’re hungry. That’s the kind of habit you’re looking to develop with your songwriting. It’s automatic. But to get to that level, it might be useful to schedule your songwriting sessions and never break them. Keep it up for thirty days and see if you don’t get “hunger pangs” when you haven’t written anything for more than a few hours.
• Edit older songs
  Sometimes tinkering with an old song feels better than starting a song from scratch. If that feels like the case for you, then follow your desire to tinker. You’ll still be exercising your songwriting chops. Now, if you have an aversion to writing new songs you’ll need to look into your reluctance. But you can do that after you’ve developed a strong songwriting habit. Who knows, it might just disappear on its own.
• Transcribe your favorite songwriter’s songs
  Rewrite the lyrics to your favorite lyricist in long hand. Pretend you’re in their head and creating the song from scratch. Transcribe melodies, hooks, chord changes, anything to immerse yourself in the art and craft of songwriting.

As with all tips, they don’t work until you do them. Go schedule some time to write now!

(Inspired by Freelance Folder)

Subscribe to Samurai Songwriting to hear the rest of this interview.

Molly-Ann Leikin’s Books and CDs:
“How to Write a Hit Song: The Complete Guide to Writing and Marketing Chart-Topping Lyrics and Music” (Molly-Ann Leikin)


“How to Be a Hit Songwriter: Polishing and Marketing Your Lyrics and Music” (Molly-Ann Leikin)


“Master Class in Songwriting with Molly-Ann Leikin (audio book)” (Molly-Ann Leikin)

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• Why it’s called a “chorus” and what this means to you as a songwriter.
• The seven basic chorus forms — with dozens of hit song examples to show you how it all works in the real world.
• The little-known qualities of a successful chorus — written as a list to help you evaluate and improve your own songwriting.
• Tips to make your listeners remember your chorus long after the song is over.
• Great ways to emphasize your song’s title and make it more interesting.
• And so much more.

If you want to understand the fundamentals of writing hit choruses, then join Samurai Songwriting today.

Use these five rock solid songwriting techniques to make your next song title more memorable.

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Musiclens lets you search for music using vague criteria like how loud it is or its tempo and mood. Pretty spiffy flash interface as well.

Musiclens is different from Song Tapper and maybe not as good for finding the title of a song. But it shines if you use it to discover new music. I especially like the “purpose” filter.

Mind Hacks posted how choice is demotivating when there are too many options.

“Offer students a choice of 6 essays, rather than 30 essays, for extra-credit and more will take up the opportunity if there is less choice of essay titles – and, what is more, they write better essays.”

And if you have 45 song ideas in your notebook, chances are none of them will get finished.

Here’s a few tips for busy songwriters that have trouble finding the time to write and for songwriters who have too many ideas to finish.

1. Have just a few places to capture song ideas
If you have your song ideas in 5 audio recorders, 7 notebooks and 13 computer folders, then chances are all those unfinished “open loops” are unconsciously stressing you out. If you capture your song ideas in a central location, then your songwriting will be better organized and easier to manage.

Here’s the minimum of what you need to capture:

1. Lyrics
2. Song Titles
3. Written Music
4. Recorded Audio

My advice, capture each written idea on a single index card (a la Hipster PDA). If you have 20 separate ideas on a single sheet of paper, it may save physical space, but it will take up psychological space. Picture having a separate file folder for song titles, a separate folder for choruses, etc. How much easier would it be to collect your ideas when you need them? But if you have various song titles, melodies, and chord changes on a single sheet of paper, when it comes time to recover your ideas, they’re going to be much harder to find. If you do your songwriting on the computer, keep every idea in a separate .txt file in a single folder or with sub-folders like ‘choruses’, ‘verses’, etc.

Try to capture your audio recordings on just a couple of devices. I used to record everything first on my iPod–until it crashed and I bought the new video iPod that doesn’t have a mic available for it yet. Everything was synced in iTunes in a special playlist that I kept organized. If an idea became worthy of development, it went into GarageBand and finally into Logic Pro when it became worthy of finishing. I could probably skip the GarageBand step but I just really like the program. All songs are stored in a single ‘audio’ folder which has sub-folders: ‘archive’ for finished songs and ‘maybe’ for songs that I’ve set aside.

2. Have 1 song that you are finishing at the top of your list
Always be focused on finishing 1 song. If you successfully write more than one song at a time, good for you. But if you struggle getting songs finished, narrowing your choices will be more motivating. Plus, with the above system of capturing your song ideas, you will have a beautifully organized cornucopia of inspiration to draw from when you’re ready to write and finish song number 2

3. Tag all of your song ideas
I can’t personally speak for windows users, but with Spotlight for the Mac you can find any file quickly with just a couple of keywords. Adding metadata to your song ideas will help you organize them and find them quickly. If you called a .txt file ‘title-windowless-room.txt’ or ’song-windowless-room.txt’, then you’ll be able to find them by name. But if you tag them with other descriptive terms like ‘happy’ or ‘rock anthem’, you’ll be able to make unique connections between all of your captured song ideas using criteria like emotional content, subject matter, tempo, or key signature.

Before the ubiquity of recorded music, the way we would pass music from one person to another was through written music. And music notation has mood markings like Vivace (lively) and Maestoso (majestic or stately) which also have tempo connotations. These markings/tags can be very useful for tightening the message and tone of your song if you decide on them beforehand. They can also be useful when you’re interested in writing something different than what you’ve written in the past.

Here’s a technique I use to begin writing. Let’s say I have a title, Windowless Room. While working through the rhythm of the title I settle on a tempo marking of 90bpm (Andante). Going to my thesaurus, I see that andante also means slow motion. With a little deeper digging, I have a word list to flesh out my song idea and to tag my song with: crawl, walk, dragging, trudge, shamble, limp, hobble, slow march, linger, delay, take your time, etc.

Now I have a focused tone for my song, a word list to help me write, and keywords to search my other captured song ideas for inspiration.

4. Review your song ideas at least once a week
Your weekly review is the time when you archive finished songs, choose your next song to write, and celebrate all the great song ideas you came up with during the past week. I also add tags during this review to help my song writing during the upcoming week. The weekly songwriting review is good for reevaluating, reprocessing and feeding your intuition.

The mechanics of the weekly songwriting review are simple:

1. Organize and process your loose song ideas, i.e. put song titles in the ’song titles’ folder and so on.
2. Review current song(s) you are writing and review your ‘maybe’ song ideas.
3. Commit to finishing another new song.

5. Commit to write at least 10 minutes a day and for longer periods a couple of times a week
There’s a small number of things you need to complete to finish a song:

1. Song Title: Lyrics, Melody, Rhythm
2. Chorus: Lyrics, Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Form
3. Verse: Lyrics, Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Form
4. Prechorus/Bridge: Lyrics, Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Form

It’s good to know what song sections you have finished and what you have yet to finish. If you print out my ‘Hit Song Cheat Sheet‘, you’ll know exactly what you need to do next.

I hope these tips help you finish more songs and relieve any stress that you might have over the multitude of unfinished song ideas you have floating around your mind. If you have songwriting tips to share, please comment. Happy songwriting.

Why almost everyone is completely wrong about what makes a good song title… and why this is a tremendous advantage for anyone who knows the secrets.

Most people – and shamefully, most so-called experts in songwriting – wouldn’t know a good song title if it bit them on the ass. The fact is, there is more incompetence in songwriting than any other field except, perhaps, advertising.

Lesson number one: Great songwriting – the kind that will grab your listener by the throat and force them to give you every ounce of their attention – has more in common with…

P.T. Barnum And The National Enquirer
Than With Britney Spears and Ashley Simpson

Barnum was the circus man (Barnum & Bailey’s “The Greatest Show On Earth”) who made a fortune by never underestimating the allure of sensationalism. A genius at marketing impossible-to-ignore sideshows – the one-horned goat billed as a unicorn… the bearded lady… the human pretzel. He was a man of the people, and knew what punched their buttons. He created such an urgent sense of curiosity that crowds fought to get into his shows.

And did you know that more people read the National Enquirer every week than read Time, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal all put together? That raunchy little checkout-stand weekly sells out across the land… and yes, even people you know read it.

The hook is the headlines on the cover. The guys who come up with them are among the highest-paid writers in the world. When they hit a nerve, the publication flies off the shelves. (My favorite headlines are “Preacher Explodes On Pulpit“ and “Boy Eats Own Head“.)

Barnum and the writers at the National Enquirer understand human psychology. The unrelenting power of curiosity to pull us in. The sheer pleasure in being shocked and titillated. How to create…

An Itch
That Has To Be Scratched!

I’m assuming that you’re somewhat tech-savvy. You are reading a blog, aren’t you? You might even be reading this blog in your RSS reader. And if you’ve read this far, I can tell you why. It’s because of my title – the headline.

And if you’re one of the many songwriting underdogs (translated: you don’t have a major label deal) and you’re actively marketing your music on the internet, then what’s the first thing people see when they’re poking around iTunes looking for some new music?

Exactly. Your headline – Your Master Salesman-In-Print – Your Title.

A master salesman has a solution to the most pressing problems in your life. He possesses secrets that will make you richer, or happier, or better looking. He knows how to tease your “hot buttons” to just the right level of distress… and only then offer you sweet release through the wonders of what he is selling.

Then how, you ask, can you apply this to songwriting? Well, it’s simple, really.

What direct response song titles have in common… is that they grab the attention of their target audience (California Girls – actually, guys interested in girls)… make an irresistible offer (Please, Please, Please)… and then ask for action (I Want To Hold Your Hand). For a listen. A download. They invite you to click on the link, listen to a free sample, download a 99 cent song. And do it…

Right Now!

They ask for a response from the listener. That’s where the term “direct response” comes from.

This request for action is what sets effective, money-making songwriting apart from the glut of mediocre songwriting out there. If the appeal works, people download the song and the song is a measurable success.

One final thought: Rejoice in the fact that most people haven’t got a clue about what makes a good song title (let alone how to write a direct response song title). This puts you in rare company when you finally do understand the secrets to getting your song played in this blood-thirsty competitive market. Let the rest of the world go about their foolish ways. You’re about to be very busy keeping track of your increasing song downloads

More titles to get your creative juices flowing. Think of who the target audience is and the action involved:
Pump It Up
Gimme Some Lovin’
Baby I Need Your Loving
Let’s Stay Together
Beat It
Rock and Roll All Nite
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
Lively Up Yourself
Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)

There’s many time-tested techniques for writing song titles – and some of them are great – but I’m giving you a technique to put in your arsenal that will help at least some of your songs grab people’s attention (especially useful for the internet). Use it with taste.