The title is very often an integral part of the lyric as well. Just how integral is dependent on the songwriter’s style, and to some extent the genre he or she is writing in. In pop music, for example, the title might basically be the entire lyric, and may be repeated fifteen or twenty times in the duration of the song. Many 60's pop hits, like those of the Beatles, consisted of a title and just a few extra lines which were really just a superficial expansion of the title.
Listen to these songs below (punch them into Songerize for a free listen) and see how essential the title is to the accompanying lyric:
- Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison
- I Want To Hold Your Hand - The Beatles
- Waterloo - Abba
- Paranoid Android - Radiohead
- Lithium - Nirvana
- Hyperballad - Bjork
Regardless of the genre, titles should be intriguing and enticing. Like the headline of a great ad, titles should make the listener want to know more. A very bland and nondescript title will not arouse interest in the listener, and will provide little inspiration for writing the remainer of the lyric. Take these fictitious titles:
- I Love You
- Tell Me You Care
- Missing You
- Love – John Lennon
- Kiss – Prince
- One – U2
How To Write Titles
There are two distinct methods of title writing. You needn't restrict yourself to just one, but it's handy to understand how the process will be different in each method. The first method is beginning with the title, then developing an idea for the whole song from it, the second is the reverse - beginning with an idea, then developing a title from that.
Beginning With The Title
1. Passive Approach
Allot of great titles, probably the majority of great titles in fact, have come from a passive approach to title writing. This is where the songwriter intentionally switches on in their minds an 'awareness' for finding titles in the regular happenings of their own lives, and waits until one comes about. The writer might be having a conversations with someone, watching a television program or looking out the window of a bus and then SNAP! A light bulb illuminates, and the writers knows they've found an interesting title.
If approach this appeals to you, I strongly recommend you carry a notepad and pen everywhere you go (or a blackberry or other device if you're more sophisticated), as you'll need to record these random title ideas, quite often in the most inconvenient times.
2. Active Approach
You needn't wait for a title idea, you can also actively searching for one with a more formal approach. Here's a good method to try:
- Begin by searching through newspapers and magazines, watching TV and movies, and even listening to other songs.
- Write down any lines that you feel could be interesting. These will be your 'beginning' lines.
- Once you have a few beginning lines, 'play' with them and see what interesting derivatives you can come up with. Eventually you'll land on something that'll take your fancy.
Change positives to negatives:
- That's The Way I Like It
- That Ain't The Way I Like It
- That's Ain't The Way I Like It
- That's Ain't The Way You Like It
- That Ain't The Way You Like It Anymore
- The Way You Like It
- The Way You Like It
- The Way You Liked It
- The Way You'll Like It
- The Way You'll Like It
- You Won't Like It
- Could You Like It?
At any point one of the derivatives may strike you as being something you'd be interested in selecting as a title.
We'll take a more extensive look at title writing next week, and in particular look at how to write a title if you've already generated an idea for your song.
This Week's Challenge
- Find a 'beginning' line to work with, as detailed above, from something you read in the paper, see on TV, hear in another song, or from any other source you like.
- Sit down with pen and paper, and set a timer for ten minutes. Without judgment, try and write as many derivative title from this beginning line as possible in the time allotted. You can go on any kind of tangent you like, and even start on a completely new line during that time if it takes your fancy.
- Do this once every day, each time trying to write more derivatives than before. If you've got a quick hand, you may be able to write as many as one hundred derivatives in ten minutes.
- Once the ten minutes is up, scan over the list and choose a handful that seem interesting to you, and transfer them to another 'Potential Titles' page. Over a week of doing this, you'll definitely come up with some titles worth writing about.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCE
Learn To Play Piano With 'Rocket Piano'
Being a successful songwriter, people often ask me how they can achieve a similar level of success. How can I write beautiful melodies? How can I arrange rich sounding chords?
From my observations about myself and other great songwriters around me, it's clear that one of the most important skills an aspiring songwriter can learn is playing the piano. Not only does it allow you to perform your own songs, but it's an invaluable aid to writing, and it allows you to "get inside" the songs written by great artists of the past to learn how they did it.
If you've never played piano before, or you have and you'd like to improve on your skills, I recommend you check out 'Rocket Piano'. In a nutshell, it's a course that teaches you how to play step-by-step with video and audio files. It also gives you three books to take you from beginner to advanced.
Here's the link to the 'Rocket Piano' website.
