Songwriting Instruction – Music Or Lyrics?

Having been in the songwriting business for over 30 years, I have heard a lot of so called opinions by the “experts” in the field. Some will tell you one thing and some will tell you something else when it comes to what is most important when writing a song, at least for the purpose of writing that monster hit that’s going to have you retiring in a year. Well, if you’re wondering what the answer to that question is, this article is going to spill the “real” beans once and for all.

In the world of music, at least in the commercial world, there is no such thing as “most important.” The reason is simple…every A&R guy, every publisher, every record company, every nutcase in this business has a different idea of what makes a hit song. One guy, who I met at a songwriter’s convention about 10 years ago said that it was that killer hook that was most important, or more specifically, the melody of the chorus of the song. He said nothing about the lyrics.

Then there was this publisher that I met many years before that. He really took the time to critique my music. This was during the time when I really didn’t know what it took to write a hit song. He said to me that the music itself was fine, certainly good enough. But that didn’t matter. He said that it was the lyric that was most important. It was saying the same thing that every other songwriter had been saying throughout time but saying it in a different way. In other words, you had to write about topics that people were really interested in, like love, but write about them using words that were a little different. The way to do that, of course, is through the use of a lot of metaphors. We’ll go into that in a future article.

Point is, these two gentlemen were just a small sample of the many different answers I would get to what was most important to a hit song. The philosophy that I have since taken is simple. I try to make each part of the song, words and music, as good as I can possibly make it. I don’t slack off on any one part. This way, a publisher has nothing he can throw at me in regard to the song’s “weakness.” Naturally, this doesn’t guarantee that your song is going to top the charts, but it’s a start.

To YOUR Songwriting Success,

Steven Wagenheim