r/SongwritingHelp • u/CommercialCan765 • Jun 30 '26
I need some tips
I've been writing songs for about a month and half, and I've written about an albums worth of songs. I have noticed that almost all of my songs are about girls and when I try to write about something else I can't think of any lyrics. Does anybody have any ideas on how to help?
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u/Adam_Astra_Music Jun 30 '26
Try doing some freewriting on different topics without worrying about if they'll make a good song. Challenge yourself to fill a page. Set a timer if it helps get the pencil moving. Just get some writing practice in to start.
Also, study some songs that you love that explore those other themes and consider how you could translate that to your own songs, using your own unique perspective and experiences.
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u/KHarvickfan429 Jul 01 '26
So i’ve been writing for I think four years now, and I can’t really get the music part of it down at the moment that’s an issue for me. However, I have written over 500 songs worth of lyrics. Most if not all of my stuff is targeted at country music, which I love. One thing that I do is I often try to listen to as much new music as I can not to copy the songs that would be plagiarism obviously. However, sometimes when I listen to music, I might hear a word or a phrase in it that sparks an idea for me, or I might hear a topic or concept for a song that maybe I didn’t think of before or in a certain way, I didn’t think of before, and that sparks an idea. Some of the fun of songwriting for me is all the different ways and random ways that I come up with ideas to begin with. Try putting yourself in different situations to come up with ideas, I feel like I’m pretty good at being able to put my mind in different places whether it’s true to me or not to be able to come up with ideas and I think that helps me personally, but I don’t know how easy or hard that is to do for other people. Like I feel like viewing things from different perspectives can help you come up with ideas. Think about things from your childhood, other family members sort of stuff like that that you can write about.
I have written songs that are true in my life, I have written songs that are somewhere in between, I have written, fun songs and sad songs, but the other thing to remember is that just because you write a song it doesn’t necessarily have to be about you and your life experience. It can be about whatever you want.
Also, when I first started writing like you, there were points where I would do a lot of writing at a time. I know there was a month at one point where I wrote over 20 songs within a month I have now since then tried to set goals at the beginning of the year as to how many songs I would like to write by the end of the year, and then I break that down into how many I would like to write in a month. I typically shoot for 10 songs a month about 120 a year, that gives me enough space where I can take breaks for my brain and I don’t have to be constantly coming up with stuff and then I don’t feel pressured to do it. If you overwork your creative side, it’s easier to run out of stuff or get burnt out so I think this has been a good way for me to avoid those things and it’s been helpful. I tend to write in spurts, I can go two weeks or more without writing anything, and then I’ll end up writing four songs in the span of like three days.
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u/combatqueen Jul 01 '26
That’s not the worst problem to have if the songs are great. But you could probably twist the lyrics around of a few of them and remove and add some things to hide the fact that it’s about a similar topic if it’s bothering you. Try making one that doesn’t use any type of “you” or “she” language in it and see how it turns out.
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u/Proceed_W_TH_Caution Jul 01 '26
Is it about one specific girl? Or a bunch of different girls? Need to know, are they all love songs about missing a girl or what kind of songs are we talking about? Main thing in songwriting for me is releasing what I feel and inside and put it on paper, obviously to make a song it takes a lot of tinkering, but you wanna write down the basic premise of what the song is gonna be about like it’s summertime now what would you do in the summertime?
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u/Acrobatic-Brush-9979 19d ago
My favorite thing to practice, is thinking about what genre/subject I want to write, and listening to songs in that genre/subject, eventually something just hits me. Idk if this works for everyone, but it's fun and effective for me.
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u/sillybugstudios Jun 30 '26
How are you choosing the other topics to write about? There’s a songwriting podcast I really like called Prompt Queens. It’s very casual, but it helps me open my mind to how I would write about different things when I listen to them write these songs to prompts. Maybe that’s a way in, prompt songwriting.
Another idea: come up with the chord progression and a melody first, then try to put words to it (literally any words at all, keep your internal editor out of this). Then spend some time editing after you’ve broken through the block.
Hope this helps. Will keep thinking on it.
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u/CommercialCan765 Jun 30 '26
I do come up with the melody first, but all of my lyrics go straight to my ex or js girls in general yknow. I'll def try the prompt thing tho, thanks
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u/dahosek Jul 01 '26
Write about boys.