5 Ways to Find Inspiration for Your Lyrics

1. Write about your life experiences.

Writing about your own life experiences is the easiest way of creating rich and honest lyrics. By bringing in your own perspective you will be able to make your song true to yourself and relatable to your listeners. The best way of going about bringing this into your music is by keeping a journal/diary of what happens in you life. By doing this you will have a wealth of material to pull from.

2. Write about your emotions.

One thing that can easily allow any artist to connect with their listeners is to create emotionally charged lyrics. There are many emotional events in life that are common amongst us all – death, birth, falling in love. In your lyrics, you can use this to create easily relatable songs that relate to many of your listeners’ own experiences. When writing emotionally charged lyrics make sure to describe your feelings in the greatest detail possible in order to best give the listener a full picture of what you’re trying to portray.

3. Read Lyrics, Books, and Poetry Constantly

When looking at the songs of great lyricists like Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, and others it becomes readily apparent that they have an immense literary background. In songs such as Frank Ocean’s Pyramids and Nights, he makes numerous different literary and musical allusions. By constantly reading, like Frank Ocean, not only will your lyrics become more complex, but they will also become much easier to write as you will be able to pull from an extensive literary library when having writer’s block.

4. Step outside your own perspective

Not every song you write has to be based on your own life. Almost every modern artist, bases their lyrics on themselves – a topic that can become overused if utilized too often. To complexify your lyrics try to examine and bring in other points of view. There’s a lot of different ways to employ this tactic, but you should probably try to experiment with it so that you can best learn how to integrate it into your natural writing style. Don’t worry if your initial material isn’t that good with this strategy, with more practice you’ll be able to effectively create more interesting and complex lyrics.

5. Try writing about an object.

Sometimes artist’s get an extreme writers block where they can’t write about anything (from their personal experiences to other’s point of views in a story). To combat this you can embark on employing the Berklee College’s songwriting exercise called “Choose an Object. In this exercise, a writer will choose an object at random and then spend around 10 minutes writing about how said object has affected you throughout your life. Don’t worry if your lyrics sound random or stupid this technique is often just used to clear your mind.