I don’t know how long this method has been around, but I remember hearing Tom T. Hall talk about it on “Nashville Now” hosted by Ralph Emery back in the late 1980s.
Select a song to use as a model. It’s best to choose one you like and one that was popular and sold well.
Then write a new set of lyrics for the song. They don’t have to be about the same thing as the original. For example, Paul McCartney wrote the tune for “Yesterday” first, using dummy lyrics — “Scrambled eggs, how I love to eat my scrambled eggs.”
As soon as you get a set of lyrics you like, write a new tune for them.
As with the lyrics, the tune doesn’t have to be in the same style as the original model. It can be any style you want — just make sure the lyrics fit into the tune.
My wife once presented me with some lyrics she wrote. She told me she had modeled them on a famous song, but didn’t tell me what it was. I didn’t want to be influenced by the original.
This was some years back when Santana came out with “Smooth” and the song was playing everwhere you went. So I wrote a latin groove and the lyrics fit very well — I only had to add one word.
When I played her the finished song, she was really surprised — she was obviously still thinking of the original song.
She had based it on “Ob La Di, Ob La Da” and I turned it into Santana,
If you want to hear the result — click here.
There are a million ways to write a song, but this is one that can give you a good place to start and a structure to work with … maybe making it easier.
WADE
