5 Places to Find Songwriting Inspiration.

Inspiration to write a song is largely all around us, but more often than not, we fail to see it. Songwriting is storytelling and we are surrounded by great stories that somehow we just don’t turn into songs.

Here are 5 places where you can actively start to look for inspiration to write your next song.

1. Conversations

Just start talking to people. Any people. In any capacity. People are full of stories and once we start to ask questions about their lives, these stories start to come out.

If we listen very carefully we can start to find a beginning, a middle and an end. We can pluck out the emotions that were expressed. We can get a sense of the people involved.

Don’t fall into the trap of “writing what you know.” That is utter nonsense; you have imagination and empathy and you can write about anything you want to.

The end result doesn’t necessarily need to be a song that you’re going to sing so don’t worry if the story isn’t yours. If it’s a great story, turn it into a great song.

2. Google Image Search

Let’s say you want to write a song for your mother; maybe you want to talk about how thankful you are and how much she means to you. You might be able to find your hook line by heading to Google and searching “Mother quotes” and clicking on the images tab. You’ll be greeted by lots of lovely quotes all about mothers and you can start to sing them and see if something jumps out at you.

For example, when searching we found this quote: “Mother’s don’t sleep. They just worry with their eyes closed.” This is great, this reflects the 24/7 commitment that being a mother requires.

So perhaps we can turn that into a song called “No Sleep” and we can start to describe all of the sacrifices that mother make for their children.

3. INSTAGRAM

Love it or hate it, there’s some great inspiration to be found on ‘the gram’. In particular look for photographers and artists who write great captions for their posts.

When these kind of posts are made, someone is trying to tell a story. See if you can put that story into a song.

4. FILM, TV, BOOKS & NEWSPAPERS

The true home of ‘the story’. You can quite simply take the entire plot of a film and collapse it down into a 3 minutes song if you so wish. All the story has been written for you.

You can see how easily you might be able to write a song about a struggling relationship if you tell the story of Ross and Rachel.

Newspapers have an extra useful element… headlines!

Somewhere, someone, has been paid a lot of money to come up with a few words that grab attention and tells a story. If you’re looking for a hook line, this may well be where you find it.

5. SHEER BOReDoM

Never underestimate the power of being bored or doing mundane tasks.

The majority of song ideas come from being in the shower or a long drive. If you want some really good insight into this idea, then read Austin Kleon’s ‘Steal Like An Artist’. Here’s a great snippet from the book:

This really hit hard when we read it for the first time and so we wanted to share it with you.

We’ve fallen into the trap of sitting down at a piano with a blank sheet of paper and decided that we weren’t going to move until we had written a song only to find that in a couple of hours we had nothing more than a sore bum.

So there you have it, a few places where you can actively start looking for inspiration to write more songs. It’s best to not force it, and just let this awareness of story become a part of who you are.

But that’s far easier said than done; this is a long journey and it takes a lot of time & practice.

Let us know if you think we’ve missed any key places where you find inspiration or if these ideas help you create your next song!

Big Love,

J&T