“Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.” - Pablo Picasso
Reading this quote changed my view of songwriting forever. We all know that copying songs and selling them as your own is illegal. We also know that copying a certain artist’s style leads to an unoriginal sound that audiences hate. That’s not what Picasso is saying to do and neither am I.
What this quote means to me is that all great art forms have an underlying vocabulary of ideas, themes and images that great artists have learned to shamelessly steal from. Rock songs are no different. You may not believe it now, but after you start analyzing tunes in the way presented here, you will be stunned. For instance, think of the hundreds of hit rock song titles that use the word “Fire” or “Black”. The Doors, U2, the Stones, Pearl Jam, and many more ALL have songs with those words in the title. Do you?
If you don’t “steal” enough from the underlying vocabulary of rock words, themes and chord progressions, large audiences will not identify your music as the type of music they like. But if you “steal” too much from a particular artist, sound or song, then people will see you as bland or a sound-alike, and you may even infringe on a copyright.
You MUST find the balance between these extremes if you want to create a hit song every time you sit down to write. If you want any commercial success, sitting down with pen and paper to write a “truly original” song from scratch is your formula for failure. Using only your own mind, most of your songs will inevitably sound too different from the public’s familiarity with the genre to ever be hits.
When you look at a mega-hit rock writer, you’ll see how they borrow directly from their predecessors and use common rock themes. For instance Spingsteen’s “Born in the USA” talks about war, home, and America. He uses the words penitentiary, town and fire, which are straight out of many other rock tunes. These themes and words have been used over and over for instance by Dylan (Masters of War, Subterranean Homesick Blues), U2 (A Sort of Homecoming, Sunday, Bloody Sunday) and The Rolling Stones (200 Light Years from Home, Gimmie Shelter).
But you may ask, what about Beck? He’s completely different and he still has hits, right? Wrong, for instance he uses the super commonplace rock word “Black” in tons of his songs - Black Tambourine, Black Hole, Blackfire Choked Our Death, Super Golden Black. Underneath all that sampling, Beck’s songs have simple, standard chord progressions. Like Devil’s Haircut – D G C and Hotel City A E F#. By the way “Devil” and “City” are also highly reused rock words.
So do you have a song about the war, or about longing for home, that has the words “Devil” or “Fire” in the title? You should, and your target audience will eat it up!Before You Start: Understanding the Rock Genre
All genres have standard themes and structures. Blues are usually about troubled relationships and difficult lives and set to the 12 bar blues. Country is about pick up trucks and cheaters and rest on C and G. Rock is no exception. If you want to write a hit song, the public needs to identify with the topics you are talking about, the basic form of the song, a familiar chord progression and the words and small phrases that are used to be recognizable as the art form known as “Rock”.
One “weird” line, word or chord progression can turn off a listener who is used to a certain style of music. You need to stick to what audiences know as the “type of music they like”. Even an “out-there” band like Tool sticks the common rock themes of sex and drugs, and basically revolves around the pentatonic rock/blues scale. Originality only counts if you have a firm foundation in the genre and then you add your own slight twist.
Think about it. There are only three elements to a song - the words, melody and chord progression. So what determines whether or not a song is a hit, is the words, melody and chords that are chosen to make up that song. For your song to be a hit you must choose words, chords and a melody that your audience identifies with immediately as “that’s cool, that band sounds like so and so, but with a new original sound!”. Using words, phrases, songs structures and chord progressions that are common to your genre is not copyright infringement, its part of carrying on a tradition.
At first it feels really strange to outright borrow from other artists. In fact, it’s a humbling experience to put aside the need to make a song totally “mine”. However, you’ll come to understand that that’s just how things work when you are in the business of pleasing people who are fans of a certain genre. What if Snoop Dog starting rapping about his new pick-up truck or how much he loves his son?? That would be ridiculous of course, because those are popular country themes. Or what if BB King started singing about doing drive by shootings?
It’s easy to pinpoint the themes in country, rap and the blues. But do you know the common themes in rock? Sure, there’s sex and drugs, but you’re a rock songwriter so do you know at least 3 more of the top of your head? Would you be surprised when I tell you that the idea of freedom, certain colors, and various elements of the earth permeate songs from every major rock band? Sounds odd, I know, but I can prove it if you keep reading.
When I discovered how blatantly all the major rock stars rip each other’s ideas off, it actually made me mad that I wasn’t in on it the whole time!! That’s until I understood that “Rock” is an art form just like “Impressionism” or “Cubism”. That means there is a school of thought, mentors, teachers, traditions, themes, philosophies and images that are a part of that art form. Great writers like Dylan, Maynard from Tool, Kurt Cobain, Sting and all the others all know this instinctively. That’s why not so great writers struggle for ideas, get writers block and throw out half the songs they write.
A few examples of commonly used words in rock
Keep on Rocking in the Free World Free Fallin
Free Bird
If You Love Somebody Set Them Free
Riders on the Storm
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl I Know You Rider
Ghost Rider
Midnight Rider
I’m On Fire
Ring of Fire
The Unforgettable Fire Play With Fire
Light My Fire
Invisible Sun
House of the Rising Sun
Waiting for the Sun
I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky
Original line example
I’m just using these few words in a new way…
And the rider feels free under the fire of the sun
Without knowing some of the specific underlying words in rock and without having a reference in front me, it could take me a week to come up with a line that decent. Using this method I came up with it in about 30 seconds. That could even be a chorus and the song would be called “Fire of the Sun”. Some examples of common themes & imagery in rock
Rebellion (against society, education & religion) – Like a Rolling Stone, Jeremy, All Along the Watchtower, My Generation, The Wall, Ants Marching, Losing My ReligionFreedom – Born to Be Wild, Born to Run, Free Bird, Freedom (Rage Against The Machine, Jimi Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac and many more)
The elements and the universe (the sky, fire, water, sun, moon, sky, rain and snow) - Light My Fire, Fields of Gold, Harvest Moon, Fire (U2, Jimi Hendrix, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Springsteen)
Home – Rocketman, Hometown, A Sort of Homecoming, Home (Staind, Sheryl Crow, Smashing Pumpkins, Collective Soul and many more)
Sex – Brown Sugar, Crash Into Me, Suffragette City, Your Body Is a Wonderland
Mom/Dad – Alive, Let It Be, The Wall, Fix You, Mother (The Police, Blind Melon, John Lennon, Danzig, etc.)
Drugs – Under the Bridge, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Captain Jack
Death – American Pie, Man in the Box, Ordinary World
The Devil - Sympathy for the Devil, Devils Haircut, Devil (Stained, Tears for Fears)
Spiritual Searching & God - Stairway to Heaven, Imagine, Dream On, Purple Haze, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
Love & Relationships – Layla, Every Breath You Take, Heart Shaped Box, Glycerine, The Scientist, Just Like Heaven
Prostitutes – Honky Tonk Woman, Roxanne, House of the Rising Sun
Anti-materialism - Hotel California, I Can't Get No Satisfaction, Money, Californication
War – Won’t Get Fooled Again, Gimme Shelter, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Rooster
America - Born in the USA, America (Jewel, Moterhead, Santana, Yes, Gary Numan)
An original theme example
Here is an original storyline using the lyric above and a common rock theme…
A guy just got out of prison and he’s living life again as a free man
What You Will Need
You will need an open mind. First you will need to get over the fact that to be a commercial success, you can be original, but you also need to have a sound that the public is familiar with. You will need to accept the fact that you do not have total free creative reign over your own songs if you want to please a certain audience.
Some discipline. Just grabbing your guitar and strumming/singing what comes to mind is easy. That’s why songwriting that way does not get great results. Learning a craft and art form takes some work and commitment to the principals in this book. It will take time and effort to master the vocabulary, imagery, themes and progressions in rock, but it’s worth it.
To get the kind of amazing results that this book claims to deliver, you need to patiently read about these techniques thoroughly and follow the instructions in order and completely at first. Only once you have mastered the outlined methods, should you adjust the process to your own liking.
A solid idea of what Rock genre you want to fit into. For instance, “Hard” like Stained, “Classic” like The Rolling Stones, “Alternative” like Pearl Jam, “Jam Band” like Dave Matthews, or any other of the dozens of rock sub-genres. You will need to know this in order to create a Proven Rock Vocabulary in the style that you have decided to fit into. You can do this by making a list of bands you have been told you sound like, or that you love and want to sound like.
You should be flexible. This book presents a philosophy on becoming a great songwriter. It also presents a precise method as to how to write a song in an hour. You may come up with your own method that implements the overall philosophy of becoming an effortless master of the rock art form. For instance, I used to just use cut up engine software (more on this later) to generate words and phrases for inspiration. But sometimes I didn’t have access to a computer and I adjusted my technique to looking through CD sleeve lyrics and picking out themes and phrases I thought were cool and writing them down in a list on paper.
Some basic music and writing skills: You don’t need to be great or even very good, but you do need some ability to imagine stories and themes and to write basic lines that describe your ideas. You also need to be able to sing a basic melody and an instrument like guitar or piano. If you don’t then find a songwriting partner that has the skills you don’t.
A computer with Internet access to get to all the resources you’ll need or get a large notepad with pencil, maybe a copy of billboard, some CDs and a rhyming dictionary. Preferably use a professional word processor like MS Word to avoid spelling and bad grammar mistakes.
If you want to market your songs commercially you will need the ability to perform live or you will need to find people who can play them live. For commercial success, the performance of your songs, either by you or someone else, must be excellent in some way. Even if you just want to market your songs to record labels and producers for other established artists to cover on their CDs, the song demo you send must be a very good, if not great performance.