How to Not Write a Cheesy Love Song

A Story by parkcaleb362

Music is a big part of my life. I love composing, listening to, and analyzing music. One big part of that is analyzing. Analyzing music is interesting in that you get to guess what chords the song uses, the melody, etc. Then you hear the lyrics. Ah yes the lyrics. The lyrics are usually what make the song personal to a lot of people. Ever wondered why Billie Eilish blew up in the blink of an eye? Lyrics. So after composing some music myself, I started to think about lyrics. And by thinking, I mean that I attempted it immediately. If you're like me, you think, “Hey maybe I should start songwriting.” So me being me, on a random day on the weekend, trying to forget about all my previous attempts at songwriting, I get up from my bed, run over to the computer, get a fresh digital page ready, throw my hands onto the keyboard, and BOOM! ABSOLUTELY NO IDEAS WHATSOEVER! Now by this time, I go, “Hey, I haven't thought about anything yet so let me just think of a topic.” I go for the first topic any novice songwriter could think of: good ol’ love. And hey, why not step it up a little and go for a breakup song? That ought to really get them heart strings pulling. Oh, and even better, I could add rhyme because that’s the only thing that I know I should do when I write lyrics. So I start typing (in Korean because I find writing breakup lyrics easier in Korean) and it roughly sounds like this: “Oh my sweet fair love, why did you leave me like a dove? Don't leave my love please don't leave!” Yeah, I wrote that…

That was the last time I ever attempted to write lyrics (until I had to write one for minutes in freshman comp). Since then, I would listen to all my favorite songs (again, mostly Korean) and think, “How do these artists manage to write such resonating lyrics?” That was the first time I started thinking, ‘How can I write good and meaningful lyrics myself instead of writing cheesy ones all the time?’ I thought I'd never really have the dedication to explore that topic but now that I have the chance to research this topic, it’s time for me to face my somewhat-traumatizing experience and dive into the world of songwriting.

For this paper, I was given the great privilege of being able to use Google and YouTube sources. So, with that privilege in mind, the first source I visited (after attempting countless times to find a reliable source on the topic using databases) was (cue drumroll) Wikihow. I stumbled upon this during my late night computer adventures I usually have when I finish all my homework before 8:00PM. So on that late Friday night, around midnight, I wedged myself out of the Wikipedia black hole I somehow sucked myself into and searched up how to write meaningful lyrics. And alas, I reached Wikihow. So, in this article in Wikihow titled “How to Write Meaningful Lyrics,” co-authored by Halle Payne, Payne divides the topic into five different sections. The sections I was specifically looking for were titled “Choosing a Subject” and “Composing the Chorus.” The general gist is that I choose a topic I want to talk about and write about it for the subject. Ok, so far so good. The composing the chorus part was where I started to doubt my very first source. The third step in this section is titled “Build the chorus around emotion” (Payne). Like every Wikihow post, I was provided with an example picture of sample lyrics that express the step.

Now, my obviously very beautiful romance lyrics that I presented to you in the beginning of this paper was practically emotion embodied in words. The example presented in Wikihow had these lyrics presented:

If I was being honest, these example lyrics are not necessarily the best. I think it’s on that level where I can compare these lyrics to my horrible ones that I introduced before. To confirm my opinion, I asked my computer peers and sure enough:“Very cheesy,” one friend replied with a disgusted face, “Like a typical 1970s Korean song.”

“It’s BAD,” said another friend, in an obvious tone.

I think this proves my point that this is not necessarily the best source I can use. Now, I understand that there are many different opinions about what lyrics are good and what lyrics are not, but this one got dissed on unanimously. So I decided to rely on an interview.

I was personally really nervous about my interview, mainly because I’m one of those guys that are really funny and open around friends but really shy around people I don’t know. Since I had to get started somewhere, I decided to focus on teachers at the school. I was able to email Dr. Moore and get an interview reserved with her on Friday, March 6. Dr. Moore teaches freshman comp and poetry here at Stuy and I knew that her knowledge on poetry could help me a lot for this since poems and lyrics are related. Oh and she also apparently writes songs too. Now the day of, I decided to bring those bottled coffee frappuccinos from Starbucks as a gift to Dr. Moore as a thank-you-for-accepting-my-interview gift. I also asked my friend Tiffany, who has Dr. Moore as her teacher, about what she’s like.

“Oh yeah she’s SOOOOOOO nice. Like she's really chill and I'm sure she'll be nice to you,” replied Tiffany assuringly.

With that in mind, I was able to get through my school day just fine, and I kept thinking about how I’m going to present my questions to Dr. Moore. Then, ninth period came, the time for my interview. I rushed to 615C, the room where she told me to wait for her. As I got closer to the room, I took some time to just take deep breaths and assure myself that I wouldn’t mess up. I then knocked and asked for Dr. Moore and sure enough, she came out. She had a big smile on her face and sounded so happy in general, which somewhat helped to relieve my nervousness and give me a sense of assurance.

After she took care of some stuff, she started walking me over to 601, as I explained to her what my paper is on. She took me inside room 601, and looked around for a place to conduct the interview, until she opened a door at the side of the room.

“Let’s do our interview in the closet!”

Now I don't mind places that are small or anything because I'm not claustrophobic but the closet had me thinking like a small janitor's closet or something like that, with water dripping, dim lights, and weird supplies hanging around. She opened the door as I was envisioning this. I looked up and looked in and what I saw was like oh-my-god level. In front of me was a huge room with tons and tons of books stacked on shelves. She led me in and found two very conveniently placed chairs and faced them towards each other and we both sat down. I think the only part about the closet I guessed right was about how dim the lights were in that room. After giving her my little coffee gift, I was able to start asking her some questions. I asked the basics such as when she started and why she started. I then started going into more important questions.

“So, where do you get your inspirations from for your poems or lyrics?” This was something I was having trouble with a lot because I couldn’t seem to get any sort of inspiration from anywhere.

“Oh, especially with poems, I’ll often hear something that interests me, like I have a current little project that I just made up where I kind of write poems that start with little bits of dialogue”(Moore). Dr. Moore continued to talk about her project and presented me an example of it, where she listens to the random things her kids say and how she would write a poem based on it. When she said this, I was honestly amazed how Dr. Moore was able to just take random bits of dialogue and just put words to it. I continued asking her more questions.

“So, a lot of people who start songwriting or poetry, and I fall into this category, I guess they feel kind of trapped? I think for me I’m trapped in the concepts of essay writing and writing about a specific and strict topic that it’s hard for me to express my feelings through poetry or lyrics. Do you, by any chance, have some tips for that?”

“Ohhhhh, that’s a great question,” she replied. She started to ponder the question and then answered, “Well, first, you can write a poem about anything, a song about anything. Some people feel like it needs to be really profound or if I’m gonna write a poem it has to have the meaning of life, like it has to be in the poem, or that it needs to be relatable to every single person. Instead, I would encourage you to think about a poem, like it can be about anything” (Moore). She then went on to explain about a student who wrote about a chicken that they used to have. I started to think whether I could’ve written about how I love playing guitar and whether that would’ve turned out better than my don’t leave me my love poem. She ended the chicken story and said, “Sometimes the best songs and poems are just about these tiny little things, like your favorite pair of sneakers or a memory that you have from a random day in middle school, like you can start with these totally small things” (Moore).

After she said that, I was wowed if that’s even a word. I knew that I had focused so much on trying to make it seem like the norm (as in love songs) that I never considered this as another free writing exercise where I could just let my heart out. With this thought in mind I asked my next question which asked whether she had any specific tricks or habits she used to write songs or lyrics. She went on to say that she would get the hook of the song in her head and if she liked it, she would record it immediately to remember it. I thought back to Wikihow, where it also said to get your hook down first. So maybe Wikihow is somewhat helpful after all.

Eventually I finished the interview, with TONS of personal tips I could use in mind. But there was one specific tip that resonated with me even more than the others: deadlines. Dr. Moore mentioned deadlines at least like five times during the interview, about how she sets deadlines for her poetry and songwriting, and how it actually helps her to finish. I did have a few attempts at songwriting before my epic failure but the one common thing between all those previous attempts was that I never actually finished them. I didn’t have any pressure to finish them anyway, so I would either tell myself I would come back to the idea or just throw it away completely. With the deadline tip and the look-around-for-ideas tip, I started to pay more attention to my surroundings as I took the subway and train home.

So straying away from my little life story, I want to talk about tips I found in my other late night computer adventures. Along with Wikihow, a lot of videos regarding songwriting pop up when you search up how to write meaningful lyrics. The first suggested video was uploaded by The Songwriting Studio, called “3 Tips for Writing Meaningful Lyrics (in 90 Seconds!).” The channel seemed pretty trustworthy in the sense that it’s a channel specifically focused on songwriting so I decided to watch the short video. The three tips the guy in the video gave were actually pretty funny and yet insightful. The first was to avoid writing about the three ups and rather go beyond them. The three ups are apparently representative of the three subtopics of love in songwriting: hook up, break up, and make up. So my epic failure song was a break up song so I already broke that first tip. The second tip was to keep a single person in mind as you write the song. This means I had another mistake because I don’t have any experience with relationships anyway so that song was meant to fail I guess. And yes I’m a loner. The last tip was to focus on the most important thing in your life. This clicked with me because the most important thing in your life changes every once in a while, which may change the lyrics of the songs you write every once in a while, giving variety to your lyric repertoire. That also probably explained why good artists had so many hit songs that all had a different topic in their lyrics (ahem IU).

After browsing some more, I was able to find another source. The article was called “Writing Meaningful Songs: How to Make Your Lyrics Matter” and was written by Tracy Plunkett for MusicEntrepreneurHQ. There were five different tips that the author presented in the article. What struck me about the article was that it coincided a lot with what Dr. Moore and some other sources said. The article talked about making the lyrics real to you and the listeners and to write it when you feel those emotions (Plunkett). This relates to that tip about writing about the most important thing in your life since what's most important to you would probably bring out the most real emotions within you. The last tip that stuck out to me out of the five was to avoid rhyming too much (Plunkett).

When I was digging for sources, going in and out of some unreliable-looking websites and going into other very reliable websites, the one tip that all of them gave was to not rhyme a lot. Since I didn't look that much into them, I don't remember the exact sources but most of them emphasized that rhyme is associated with being catchy, causing lyricists to over rhyme and causing the words to lose its meaning in general. Something I discussed with Dr. Moore was the fact that rhyme had died down a lot recently, with newer artists and lyricists straying away from rhyme techniques in order to better represent their feelings. This was a common misconception that I fell for as well. Although the rhyme thing didn't apply to my cheesy love song, my previous attempts all involved some kind of rhyme, which honestly just made it sound cheesier. I think I can recall one that I wrote for fun which was something along the lines of “Starlight/makes my heart bright/lights up my night/making me alright.” I think I can somewhat proudly say the first three parts sound fine until ALRIGHT comes out. Proves the source’s point.

So back to my little life story again. After more days of searching, I realized that another important part of writing lyrics was connecting it to my music. Thankfully, I had emailed another wonderful teacher at Stuy, who’s a renowned musician. It was with Mr. Stephan, a music teacher here at Stuy. As well as teaching music, he’s also a professional producer with experience in songwriting and collaborated with many other artists and songwriters. Honestly, that’s pretty legendary because I like working alone with music unless I’m with people I’m close to, so this teacher going up to random producers and lyricists and asking them if they want to jam is a pretty big deal to my antisocial mind.

As you can probably imagine from my previous experience, I was obviously nervous again about this whole interview thing. I had asked all my friends who had music appreciation with Mr. Stephan about how he was.

“Oh, he’s great and really chill. And he definitely knows a heck ton about music,” said one of my friends.

“Bro why do you worry so much? He’s a great guy so just chill and interview him man you’ll be fine,” said another who knew how antisocial i was.

So with my little coffee gift in hand, wait no, in my school bag, I went to Mr. Stephan’s office during my lunch period. He had just finished his music appreciation class and I saw some of my friends exiting the classroom. Since I took band, I never got to see the music appreciation room so when I did, I was surprised at how much it seemed like a normal classroom. I also never got to see Mr. Stephan. So seeing him for the first time, I was practically jumping out of my skin because I was going to interview a PRODUCER. Like a PROPER MUSICIAN. So as I was geeking out over this realization, Mr. Stephan stepped out of the classroom and greeted me kindly. This whole time I was praying to myself that I didn’t look like a total idiot as I put on an awkward smile and said the most awkward hello. He excused himself to get some tea before the interview and invited me to wait in his office. When he left, I pondered whether my geekiness showed as I walked toward his office. His office was a small room in the back of the classroom. I took one look in the room and I immediately fell in love. AGAIN. Why? The room was like a mini music studio. He had an iMac with monitor speakers on either side of the screen, a keyboard to his right, and on the opposite side of the screen, a rack with a bass guitar, an electric guitar, and an acoustic guitar. It was like my dream room. At home, all I would do is have my iMac, a keyboard on my bed directly opposite the screen, me sitting in between the screen and the keyboard, and my guitars hanging on two racks on the wall in different places in the room. So I would be running around, tripping over wires that I set up as I went to fetch my guitar. Or I would jam on the piano like a complete idiot and realize I hadn’t connected my only USB cord from my iMac to my piano and would have to rerecord my obviously awesome jam again. So to see a properly set up and compact studio was like seeing my life goal right in front of me.

Mr. Stephan entered the room after a few minutes and I explained to him the topic of my paper and started the interview. One key thing that he explained was that there are two types of people: one who comes from a more musical background and makes songwriting secondary and one who comes from a more creative writing background and makes music secondary. Personally, I come from the more musical aspect, having started music since like before kindergarten, and since I’m Asian, starting with piano. Then I would get into guitar, saxophone… ok back on track. Mr. Stephan was also the musical side person. What really struck me about this was that Dr. Moore had mentioned the same thing, and she had explained that for her, the writing game first and the music came second since she learned guitar and ukulele to help support her lyrics, not the other way around, which is what I'm doing.

Mr. Stephan continued by talking about past lyricists that he worked with. He talked about his wife, a singer songwriter, and explained that she uses lyrics to vent and write about how she feels at the moment, much like what the source from MusicEntrepreneurHQ talked about (it’s also worth mentioning that Mr. Stephan said he was part of a band with his wife called Amelia’s Dream, so you can check them out). After explaining that, he said something to sum all that up: “At the end of the day, for the listener, the most important thing is that it has to sound credible” (Stephan). When he said that, I related it back to my failed love song. Credibility… My song was definitely not credible, obviously, since it practically sounds like I’m ripping off Shakespearean English to write a story that’s not even half true. So I wrote that tip down for later. After that, he was able to show me some samples of songs that he made, and honestly they were amazing. He also gave me a great tip considering that I came from a musical side, saying that I could try connecting a lyric to the music instead of working on them separately.

After the interview, I was able to give Mr. Stephan my little coffee gift and I went to think about everything I’ve researched on this topic so far. I had gotten so many tips from the interview that I hadn’t expected. While Dr. Moore focused specifically on the writing part, Mr. Stephan was able to give me tips on lyrics from a musical point of view. As I went home that day, I yet again thought about how I could apply those tips to my lyrics. Hey, maybe I could write about how dirty the subway is.

As well as thinking about the interview, I also reflected on that epic failure song and thought about how all the research I did pointed AGAINST my song. When I thought about it, my song wasn’t horrible; it was just that it followed a stereotypical songwriting that produced a song that didn’t have much meaning for the listener and the writer. I think that learning that was a pretty long process, but it was definitely worth it. I decided that it was finally time for me to try and write lyrics again. Since I now have a deadline in place, I would have to start thinking of ideas I can write about using all the tips I was able to obtain over the course of this paper.

So, how does one write meaningful lyrics? Lyrics are unique to each person that writes it. It expresses how one feels through words. Too much emotion might cause it to be cheesy, and I will call out my old lovey dovey lyrics again, but the right amount can give people a sense of how you feel about the topic you are talking about. Literary techniques are great, but excessive use could take away the essential message and theme of the song. For me, I think the big point is the lyrics are for me. They’re for me to express how I feel and for me to be real. If I’m feeling cheesy, it might turn out cheesy. If I’m feeling sentimental, it might turn out sentimental. But hey, it’s still for me. And as of the time I’m writing this, I’ve actually managed to take this into account and make some lyrics for some songs I’ve been making these past few days being stuck at home all the time. Somehow, I managed to write them in a not cheesy way.

So what’s the best thing to do when your paper is on tips for writing lyrics? It’s to show lyrics with these techniques applied. I decided to try and vent and as a result, wrote a more unconventional song by making it short and with the last two verses being my chorus. It’s kind of like Untitled by Rex Orange County. So with (not that) great pleasure, I present to you lyrics attempt 427.

Sometimes I don’t want to do anything

I don’t want to remember anything

Just be stuck in my own little world

To be stuck in my own little star

I want to set aside a chair and watch

The soothing sunset like the Little Prince

I want to lay a blanket down at night

And fall asleep under the soothing stars

Sometimes I just want to be by myself

I want to fly away to the great moon

Run and run for miles without limits

Then lay down and dream to my heart’s delight