Title and Concept
Most songs that stall do not stall on the chords or the rhymes. They stall because on day three the writer no longer knows what the song is about. Then every choice becomes arbitrary, and that is exactly when nothing gets finished.
- 1 referee
- 4 qualities
- one line that holds the song
Where you run into this
- Songwriting
- Pop
- Country
- Musical theatre
In short
A title is not decoration added at the end, it is a compass. Writing one song means taking hundreds of small decisions: which image, which rhyme, which section, which word gets the high note. Without a reference point you make those on the taste of the moment, and the taste of the moment is inconsistent. With a title you have the same referee every time: does this serve the title or not.
Four qualities, in order of importance. Concreteness: a title containing a thing, a place or an action does half the work already. Tension: the strongest titles raise a question the song then answers. Singability: it has to sit comfortably on a melody. And ownership: it should sound like something only you would say.
How it works
Recoloration is the technique that rescues an average title and makes a good one large. You put the emphasis on a different word each time and write each verse toward a different reading of the same line. The title never changes and its meaning does, which is why the last chorus can feel like a different sentence from the first.
Where you run into this
- A title you can picture rather than only understand
- A chorus where the same line means something new the third time
- A song that got finished because every choice had a referee
Our own examples
A four-chord loop that keeps running so you can try a title line against it in different positions. Where a title lands in the bar changes how much weight it carries, and that is audible in about ten seconds.
Keep going
Everything in songwriting
- Title and Concept
- Hooks
- Hooks and Toplines