My lyric notebook: what I've learnt from writing songs

I keep a notebook where I jot down things I overhear in the street. Not all of them end up in a song. Most of them stay there, waiting, and some go off like yoghurt. But almost every lyric on PLANETA GAYFOLK has come out of that notebook, and since other people who write read this blog, I want to share what works for me and what doesn't. No magic formulas. A few quirks.

I often start with the title. I know some people add it at the end, once the song is finished, like naming a fully grown dog. For me it works the other way round: if the title doesn't amuse me, or doesn't itch, the song isn't going to itch for anyone else either.

A good title, for me, has to be something you could say out loud in a bar without it sounding like a poem. «No quiero otro novio cojín» (I don't want another cushion boyfriend) works because anyone gets the image without explanation: it suggests a boyfriend who's there, who's soft, who doesn't get in the way and doesn't hold anything up either. You don't need to hear the song to have an opinion about him. That's a hook. «La dieta del cucurucho» (The ice-cream-cone diet) does something else: it puts together two words that shouldn't go together and makes you wonder what kind of diet that could be. «Mi novio de Albacete» (My boyfriend from Albacete) reads almost like a line from an ID card, and that's exactly why it's concrete. A place with a proper name weighs more than "my boyfriend from a small town".

My test is a silly one: I write the title on a separate piece of paper and leave it on the table for a day. If the next day I still feel like reading it, fine. If it makes me cringe, in the bin it goes.

Everyday phrases

The best lines aren't the ones I invent. A waiter says them, or a friend in a four-minute WhatsApp voice note. What I do is recognise them. A stock phrase everybody uses has one huge advantage: the listener already has it in their mouth. You just have to give it a small twist so it sounds new without ever stopping sounding familiar.

The danger is the opposite. When I get grand and write things like "the wound of your absence", I realise straight away that nobody would ever say that. Not even me, and I've said some very dramatic things to myself in the mirror. My rule is to ask whether that line could turn up in a real conversation. If it couldn't, I rewrite it until it could.

Watch out for the phrase so worn it no longer means anything. The everyday works when it's precise. When it's vague, it's boring.

Rhyme, or talk normally

Here I have a contradiction I haven't resolved. I love rhyme. Copla, the old Spanish torch song that runs all through what I do, lives on rhyme, and a well-placed rhyme gives you a little thrill nothing else does. But I've also written dreadful lines just so they'd rhyme, and it shows. It shows enormously. The listener can tell when a word is there because it had to be, not because it had something to say.

What I do now is stay flexible in the verses and strict in the chorus. In the verses I allow myself assonant rhymes, half-rhymes or none at all, if the line sounds natural. In the chorus, on the other hand, I want everything to click together like a piece of Lego, because that's the part that repeats and that people will say without thinking. If I have to choose between a perfect rhyme and a line someone would really say, I choose the line. Almost always. Some days the rhyme wins and I don't regret it.

A practical trick: read the lyric out loud, straight through, without music. If you trip over a line, change the line. Your tongue knows more about metre than you do.

Choruses that won't leave

A catchy chorus, in my experience, has few words and one idea. Just one. When I try to squeeze two ideas into a chorus, people come away with neither. Repetition has a bad name, but it's what lets someone hum it in the shower the second time they hear it.

I also look at where the title lands. If the song is called something, that phrase has to be in the chorus, and in a strong spot, at the start or the end. Sounds obvious. Well, I've had lyrics where the title turned up halfway through the second verse, tucked away, and then nobody knew how to search for the song.

Something else I've learnt: the chorus has to answer something the verses raise, even if it's with a joke. If the verses describe a problem and the chorus talks about something else, the song splits in two and the listener doesn't know which half to listen to.

Cutting

This is what I find hardest and what improves my lyrics most. I overwrite. Always. The first draft of any song has lines I adore that don't belong there. My method, if you can call it that, is to cross out everything that explains something the listener has already understood. If the first verse makes it clear the boyfriend is a disaster, I don't need three more lines saying the same thing in other words.

Cutting hurts because sometimes the line you lose is the prettiest one. I keep it. I have a whole page of orphan lines that will find a home one day, or won't. That's fine.

I write a lot, and you'd think that means I never cut anything. It's the opposite: precisely because I write so much, I have to be quick with the scissors. If a lyric can't stand up once it's been trimmed, it doesn't leave the notebook.

If you write songs, my advice is the most boring kind: always carry something to write on. Your phone will do, although I prefer paper because it lets me cross things out furiously. Listen to how people talk and forget for a while how songs talk. And when a lyric seems finished, take out a line. Then another. If it's still standing, you're done.

I'm still learning with every song, and some of the ones already out there I'd write differently today. That makes me happy. It means the notebook is still open.

The full lyrics of my songs are at mikesaintlouis.com.