The Art of Writing Love Songs

240 Pages·2003·0.92 MB·English

by  Pamela Phillips Oland

AWL_Prelims 22/3/03 10:57 AM Page i
A r t of W
r
e i
t
h i
T n
g
LOVE SONGS
PAMELA PHILLIPS OLAND
AWL_Prelims 22/3/03 10:57 AM Page ii
© 2003 Pamela Phillips Oland
All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention,
Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part
of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without prior permission of the publisher.
07 06 05 04 03 5 4 3 2 1
Published by Allworth Press
An imprint of Allworth Communications, Inc.
10 East 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010
Cover and Interior page design by Annemarie Redmond, Stroudsburg, PA
Page composition/typography by Integra Software Services Pvt Ltd, Pondicherry,
India
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oland, Pamela Phillips,
The art of writing love songs/Pamela Phillips Oland.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-58115-271-X
1. Lyric writing (Popular music) 2. Love songs—History and criticism. I. Title.
MT67.O41 2003
782.42164'0268—dc21
2003002613
Printed in Canada
AWL_Prelims 22/3/03 10:57AM Pageiii
This book is dedicated to Karl R. Wolfe, who has
helped me in so many ways to understand the nature of
Happiness as a choice, Personal Empowerment as a decision,
and Love as a gift we give ourselves.
Many thanks to my editor Kate Lothman, for her
superb insights, and to my publisher Tad Crawford for
his irresistible suggestion that I develop a book about
writing Love Songs!
Thank you, Bobby, for putting up with the long hours of
writing and rewriting on this book—tiptoeing around so
that I could think clearly, and for giving me your endless
love and support. You’re my inspiration.
—P
AWL_Prelims 22/3/03 10:57 AM Page iv
We like someone because, we love someone although.
—HENRI DE MONTHERLANT
AWL_Prelims 22/3/03 10:57 AM Page v
Contents
Preface vii
CHAPTER1 GETTINGSTARTED 1
Learning to Write It in a Love Song ❤ Expressing “Self” ❤The Wonder of
Putting Your Pen to Paper ❤ Don’t Worry about What Others May Think
CHAPTER2 THEUNIVERSEOFIDEAS 15
Free Association of Ideas ❤ Trusting Intuition ❤Defining the Approach to an Idea
CHAPTER3 THINKINGASASONGWRITER 23
Becoming Aware ❤ Digging for Emotions
CHAPTER4 WHATAREYOUGOINGTOWRITEABOUT? 35
Calling upon Memories ❤ Finding the Thread Between Your Experiences
and Everyone Else’s ❤Songs Represent Emotions ❤ Lust versus Love ❤ Writing
Lusty and Effective Lyrics ❤ Romantic Love ❤ Irony as a Song Device
CHAPTER5 EXPRESSINGANIDEAINLYRICFORM 51
Putting Your Thoughts into Words ❤ Songs Are Mini-Movies Set to Music
❤ Understanding the Singer’s Needs ❤ Connecting with the Listener
CHAPTER6 THEFUNDAMENTALSOFSONGWRITING 63
Knowing Your Genre ❤ Writing What You Know ❤ Working with a Tempo
CHAPTER7 STRUCTURINGANDBUILDINGYOURSONG 73
Deciding on Your Song Structure ❤ Developing the Song
CHAPTER8 TELLINGALOVESTORY 87
Deciding on a Story to Tell ❤ Whose Love Story Is This? ❤ Why Is
ThisStory Important to Tell? ❤ Who Is Your Potential Audience? ❤
Making Your Story Interesting
CHAPTER9 DEVELOPINGTHEDYNAMICOFALOVERELATIONSHIP 111
Who Wants What from Whom? ❤ The Back-Story ❤ Getting inside
a Character’s Mind
AWL_Prelims 22/3/03 10:57 AM Page vi
CHAPTER10 MAKINGCHOICESANDFINE-TUNING 123
Using Words Brilliantly ❤ “Psycho-Babble” Doesn’t Belong in Songs! ❤ The Gist
of Every Song Is Contained in the First Line ❤ Having an Open Mind to Rewriting
CHAPTER11 TAPPINGINTOTHEPOWEROFTHESONGWRITER 137
Telling Poetry and Lyrics Apart ❤ How Pop Music Influences Vocabulary
CHAPTER12 LEARNINGTOLISTENANDOBSERVE 149
Listening as a Lyricist ❤ Becoming a People-Watcher ❤ Objectivity, or:
Why It Is Imperative Not to Write about Yourself!
CHAPTER13 WHAT LOVE? 159
Love Song Love ❤ Understanding the Concept of Love ❤ Twenty-Three
Types of Love Relationships You Can Write About
CHAPTER14 LOVESONGTHERAPY 175
Letting Go of Blocked Emotions ❤ Let’s Write an “It’s Over” Song ❤ The
Implications of What We Do in Relationships ❤ Using a Song to Manage Anger
Constructively
CHAPTER15 USINGPERSONALEXPERIENCESTOSTIMULATEFRESHIDEAS 189
Your Memory Is a Vault of Stored Resources ❤ Recognizing the Limitations
of Your Personal Story ❤ Your Singular Worldview ❤ “Improving” on the Truth
CHAPTER16 WHOSEPOINTOFVIEWISTHIS? 197
How Women Think ❤ How Men Think
CHAPTER17 ORIGINALITYOFLANGUAGE 205
Finding a Wonderful Title ❤ The Power of Words to Express Emotions
❤ Songs of Advice
CHAPTER18 MOVINGFORWARDASASONGWRITER 211
Finding a Collaborator ❤ How Collaborations Work ❤ Copyright ❤
Paying Attention to Critiques ❤ Making a Demo of Your Finished Songs
CHAPTER19 DEVELOPINGYOURART 217
Kudos to Some Great Love Songs ❤ Famous Songs as Reference Points ❤
Writing Other Kinds of Love Songs ❤ The Joys of Karaoke Tracks
Epilogue 223
AWL_Prelims 22/3/03 10:57 AM Page vii
Preface
Music is Love in search of a word.
—AUTHOR UNKNOWN
Have you ever felt frustrated at the thought that love is so difficult to
understand? If you’ve ever wanted to make better sense of that enigma we call
“love,” read on.
As a by-product of writing love songs for twenty-five years, the degree of
enlightenment I’ve achieved about love is stunning! You see, in order to write
great, inspired love songs, you first have to pump up by a hundredfold your
awareness of what love is. Well, doesn’t that make perfect sense? The more you
know about how love works, the better your love songs will become. The unique
discovery that I have made, however, is that by a sort of reverse emotional
symbiosis, the better your love songs get, the better you will be at “love”!
Who we love, how we love, why we love, are all subjects that contribute
mightily to the way we experience life, and yet, surprisingly, most of us under-
stand very little about what love is. So it is trying to understand the process
of falling in love, loving, falling out of love, finding new love, and repeating
the cycle that dominates our lives, right alongside work concerns, education,
friendships, and recreational activities.
By drawing you into The Art of Writing Love Songs, I will help you not only
to discover your inner muse, learn to write brilliantly, and expand your cre-
ative thinking abilities, but also—as this remarkable by-product of learning to
write songs about love—to become enlightened as to the dynamics of love in
general, and the way it shapes your own life in particular.
Writing love songs will bring out in you the observer, the voyeur, and the
lover, and in discovering how to express yourself in your songwriting, you’ll be
reintroduced to your passionate core. I am quite certain you will learn to
express yourself better in all of your love relationships once you have acquired
the skill of writing love songs.
Romantic love, the kind we usually choose to write songs about, is some-
thing we all have dreamed about having from the time we were kids. We’ve
read fairy tales recounting handsome princes and beautiful princesses falling
AWL_Prelims 22/3/03 10:57AM Pageviii
in love forever, and we want that for ourselves. The reality is not always as
easy for most of us!
Most of us are so “reactive” that we forget to be thoughtful. Our own
point of view—our longing to be heard and understood—dominates our ability
to be objective and sympathetic to our partner’s perspective. Thus, misunder-
standings are one of the greatest causes of strife in love. By learning to write
songs looking through the eyes of your partner, you will gain a much greater
insight on how to understand, think, and react from the other person’s point
of view in love relationships.
It’s actually pretty simple. Once we nurture communication by consider-
ing our partner’s perspectives on love issues, we’ll develop better tools with
which to plumb our inner depths of thought on love—tools usually within the
domain of students of psychology and psychotherapy. Unless we’re studying to
be psychologists or therapists, few of us have developed the skills for detailed
analysis of our thoughts on love. So is it any wonder that when we first
attempt to write love songs, they come out shallow and superficial, or dark
and depressed? We skirt the ideas furtively, not wanting to dig too deep for
fear of unearthing some home truths. Or we pour out our angst on paper—the
pain, the tragedy of love unreturned or love in shambles. But in either event,
our results are all questions and few answers. This book is designed to engage
you in the rewarding quest to make writing about love—whether love found or
love lost—a truly uplifting, gratifying, and releasing experience.
Love is not a matter of trends; it is timeless—an integral part of our con-
sciousness. Each of us in our own way experiences good and bad, happy and
sad feelings about love every single day. Our needs for loving and being loved
transcend many of our other basic life needs, so our love antenna is up at all
times, subliminally running in the background like a watchdog computer pro-
gram. We work and wonder about love; we eat and worry about love; we visit
with friends and ruminate on love. And those of us who write love songs don’t
let all those important thoughts and emotions go to waste!
Is there one among us who could not benefit from a clearer understanding of
how we act and react in love situations, and why? Come along on this jour-
ney with me, and as you learn to tap into your powers of intuition, creativity,
observation, and insight, along the way you’ll learn to write incredibly
thoughtful, illuminating songs about love. And don’t be surprised if, in the
process, that lightbulb of comprehension pops and pops and pops in your head,
as you get a grip on “love”—that sorely misunderstood subject that so domi-
nates and contributes to the success, or failure, of our lives.
viii THE ART OF WRITING LOVE SONGS
AWL_Prelims 22/3/03 10:57 AM Page ix
So, first, I’ll help you find your inspiration and enlighten you as to how a
songwriter opens up to new ideas. We’ll take a journey together, reflecting on
how to express your ideas in a song, then learning to trust your “Inner
Songwriter,” and discovering how to examine a love relationship in surprising
detail, enabling you to write about it. We’ll examine songwriting essentials—
how to identify with your genre, structure a lyric, and be equipped to revise
your thoughts once they’re drafted on paper. You’ll have great fun discovering
how to hone your skills both as a listener and an observer. And, of great
importance to each of you, you’ll learn how to turn your emotions and
experiences into amazingly good songs!
If you are interested in delving further into songwriting fundamentals, I
hope you’ll read my first book, The Art of Writing Great Lyrics, also published
by Allworth Press.
PAMELA PHILLIPS OLAND ix