For me writing lyrics has always been one of the hardest parts of putting a song together. When I played in a band we could bring in a chord progression or a riff we’d came up with or else jam something up in practice and work the music up to a full song from there but I’d happily pass the buck for lyric writing over to the singer (or to JJH when he was in the band) and let them do the business on that front.

My problem wasn’t in actually writing. I now write for a good part of my living, be it copywriting for my websites, promotional blurb for my advertising or the occasional piece of fiction so I’m not completely clueless when it comes to getting words out of my head and onto the screen or paper.

My real problem was making the things I was writing about sound
believable and not just a cliched mess of stolen ideas from other songs.

I listen to “Welcome To The Jungle” and know that Axl Rose has every
right to write about those experiences because he actually lived them, the small town boy moving to the big city and finding out that it’s streets weren’t actually lined with gold.

As a small town fella myself I’d just feel fake writing about those kind of things and basing it all on someone else’s second hand experience.

Bruce Springsteen on the other hand tells a lot of fictional stories and invents fictional characters in his songs and I look to him as a modern day master story teller, nothing fancy, just the everyday tales of ordinary people in America that can resonate all around the developed world in some way.

Do the stories have to be real though to really hit the spot lyric-wise or can fiction be as powerful in the musical world encapsulated in a song as it can in a novel or film?

What do you think? Let us know at SongwritingForums.com.

This article was contributed by Alan of SongwritingForums.com.