In Pop Songwriting Lesson 1, we talked about how to come up with a title for a song you want to write about. Once you have went through that process and have your title, what's next?

Well, in my opinion, the next thing that comes should be the lyrics. This should be done in a step by step fashion just like the way in which you came up with your title. So, what are those steps?

The lyrics should answer questions that you want the title to ask. For instance, I wrote a wedding unity candle song called "He Answered With You."

The questions I wanted answered was:

1. What is it about you that makes you right for me?

2. How has my life gotten better and changed since I met you?

3. Why will my life be better going forward because of spending it with you?

Of course, the title could lend itself to a lot of different questions. These are just the ones that I wanted answered given the occasion for the song was being written.

By putting these questions down on paper, we have now put ourselves in a position to proceed with coming up with lyrics for our song.

The next step in the lyric writing process is to start coming up with words that flow from the title and questions. He Answered With You conjures up with the following words for me:

1. Love

2. Questions

3. Kindness

4. Soul Mates

5. Commitment

6. Good Life

You can come up with a million, but these are some of the ones I came up with when I was writing these lyrics. By the way, I wrote most of these lyrics while I was watching a football game…inspiration can strike at any time!

After this, in order to build tension into the song, you must have a contrasting set of words to the positive ones that you just wrote. Some of these might be:

1. Loneliness

2. Answers

3. Loneliness

4. Falling

5. Alone

6. Drifting (Lost)

7. Darkness

Once you are done with this part of the process, look at everything you have done so far. Go from the title to the questions to the words you have written down. Start writing 5-10 short phrases that can conjure up images that you will want in the song later. A couple of these little phrases in this song are "lost in darkness," "kindness and honesty," "I will give my life," etc. Notice I said later…we are not ready to come up with lyrics just yet.

In the next installment, we will start outlining the shape (structure) of the song itself. Work on these lyrics for the next few days and have them ready in time for our next lesson. If you have any comments or suggestions on this article, feel free to leave them in the form below.