This essay on song writing is also available as a video podcast on YouTube or can be listened to as an audio podcast or download an MP3 file. I have no plans to podcast regularly, though I do have one other podcast idea. I just need a little time to put it together.

Over many years, I have written songs. None of these songs have been hits or even attained minor celebrity.   And yet I have accumulated a collection of pieces which  have been received well enough within a variety of informal settings. Mostly I have sung them as a floor singer at folk clubs.  In his 1988 album, I’m Your Man Leonard Cohen, reflected on his own place in the hierarchy of contemporary song:

I said to Hank Williams, ”How lonely does it get?”

Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet

But I hear him coughing all night long

Oh, a hundred floors above me

In the Tower of Song

Though there can be art in songwriting, a great deal can also be accomplished by the exercise of more prosaic skills and if your object is to entertain first yourself and then, just maybe, a few friends, my advice would be, have a go. You too may be able  to find your place in the Tower of song.

In primary school I remember being invited, when I was about nine or ten, to write a poem. A poem in my mind was something that rhymed, and for whatever reason this task was something I felt confident I might be able to accomplish. My memory is that whatever I wrote on that occasion met with the teacher’s approval, but perhaps more importantly, also impressed my class mates. I am not quite sure where my confidence came from, but I think I knew instinctively not to always go for the most obvious rhyme and then there was also the question of phrasing and an awareness that a modification of phrasing might work better.  I continued to write poems from time to time, mostly directed at the school magazine.  

This writing of verse was never to mature into anything that might properly be called  “poetry” but as I became mildly obsessed with the popular song of the era in which I was coming of age and started to learn – after a fashion – to play the guitar, the idea of writing songs was never far from my mind. Yet I knew, somehow, that this was a greater challenge than getting a poem in the school magazine. The standard set by my heroes was high. Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison: the fact that there was something going on in the work of these artists that was  beyond my grasp did not stop me from having a go, but fortunately, of that early work, nothing remains. 

The world of popular song in the 1960s was dominated by young men, yet one of the first songs I learnt was Universal Soldier, written by Buffy St Marie. In 1971 Carol King emerged into a solo career from the obscurity of 1960s Tin Pan Alley where she had been turning out hits with her then husband, Gerry Goffin. And then of course there was the peerless Joni Mitchell who properly came to my attention with the release of Blue in 1971. So women could be  songwriters too, as has become increasingly apparent.

Looking back, I think my initial stumbling block was a desire to write  songs without first having any ideas which might form the backbone of a lyric.  Unlike Paul McCartney, I couldn’t rely on a great melody to carry me forward. McCartney woke up one morning with a tune in his head to which he initially sang “Scrambled  Eggs.”   This was to become Yesterday with a melody which somewhere or other I heard compared to “anything Schubert ever wrote.” 

My songs were always lyric led and my guess is that that is the case for many of the songwriters I admired, in particular Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan. Certainly in his early songwriting Dylan sat at a typewriter to compose. The accompaniment was a secondary consideration. With Joni Mitchell I just couldn’t say what her method might have been, perhaps some coevolution of music and words. Van Morrison I imagine evolving a song as if out of a chrysalis composed of  sounds and words. But who knows. The point really is that song writing methods rely very much on the strengths, weaknesses and particular abilities of the individual. 

Elton John  worked with Bernie Taupin from whom he  received lyrics in the post which he turned into Tumbleweed Connection, an album which I reverenced in the years before Elton veered off in a direction with which I felt a lesser connection.  

But there is more to it even than that. I recall listening to a Youtube interview with Bob Dylan. He was asked about the origins of the  songs he was writing in the 1960s, I am assuming in particular the period of Bringing it All Back Home,  Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.  One does not necessarily expect Dylan to offer straightforward answers to such questions  but his response was, I think, revealing. I paraphrase: “I don’t know where those songs came from.”  

Dylan doesn’t say it but he hints at something mystical going on in his compositional style. Perhaps, given the times, a few drugs may have been involved, though I don’t really believe drugs or alcohol are a wise accompaniment to creativity even if F. Scott Fitzgerald did succeed in writing his masterpiece The Great Gatsby in a state of inebriation. 

I think it may have been in the first volume of his autobiography Chronicles (published 2004 – the world is still waiting for the second volume) that Dylan recalls going to see Buddy Holly on January 31st 1959.  In one telling of the story Dylan was in the front row of the concert. He recalled: “I was 3 feet away from him  and he looked at me.”   Dylan seems to hint that something like the spirit of popular song was passed in this encounter directly into his stewardship. Adding  to the potency of this myth is that, less than a week later, 3rd February 1959, Holly was killed in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and “The Big Bopper” JP Richardson – “the day the music died” as Don McLean was to put it in his song American Pie.  

Well you can believe that Dylan myth if you want to but I am more persuaded by the fact that Dylan’s  love for  American popular song, in all of its forms, is deep and his knowledge of it, encyclopaedic. Anyone who listened to Dylan on his Theme Time Radio show which aired from 2006 to 2009 will be aware of this. Much of his creativity comes from an ability to synthesise and blend all of this raw material with his own distinct, indeed mercurial view of the world. 

We can’t all be Bob Dylan but there is a lesson of  openness to musical genres that we can all learn something  from. 

There can be no doubt however that Dylan relies on a level of instinctiveness in his writing, and may even be wary of overworking his material. In May 2008 Mark Lawson interviewed Leonard Cohen for the BBC Radio 4 Arts programme, Front Row. I believe it was during the course of this interview (not currently available on BBC iplayer) that Cohen told a story of meeting up  for   lunch with Dylan when they both happened  to be playing in Paris. Over their meal Dylan spoke of his admiration for Cohen’s song Hallelujah, which at that time was not particularly well known or fully formed.  In return Cohen said how much he liked the Dylan song I and I. Dylan expressed an interest in how long  it had taken Cohen to write Hallelujah. It is a song which in fact Cohen had worked on over an extended period  and for  which he had written many  verses, unable to decide on a finished version. It was only with the help of editing from John Cale – formerly of the Velvet Underground – who had presumably heard Cohen perform an earlier iteration of the song – that the version which was to become so well known was laid down.  

Having provided his answer to Dylan’s question, Cohen then asked in return  how long it had taken Dylan to write I and I.  “Five minutes” was the reply. 

Was this an entirely honest answer?  Who knows, but the point really is that instinct, inspiration and impulse all have their place in writing a song, but in general, and for most of us who aspire to the craft, work is also required. And then there can also be the problem of knowing when the deed is done.

In my own case I don’t generally set out to write a song, rather I am struck by an idea which I can see could be turned into a song. For me narrative is important and this is expressed in two distinct ways, the first being a matter of considering a range of perspectives on the chosen theme. 

In the late 1970s I spent an evening with some friends and a story was told about  a social occasion where the host had introduced the novelty, at that time, of a games consul. I thought that that story could make a song.

I was visiting with some friends

The atmosphere was kind of lame

Until the host jumped up and said

Lets get out the electronic games.

I began to think of other contexts in which electronic games might be introduced:

Out at a party

People shuffling round

Just then somebody cried out

And I knew what they had found

The atmosphere was suddenly electric 

As we fought for control

And everyone was queuing up 

For some of that electronic soul. 

You get the idea I am sure. The song wrote itself on the basis of the original idea. Six four line verses tumbled out. I played it for a few people and though no one said anything as encouraging as “That’s  a hit” it was a source of amusement and once or twice people have even requested that I play it. I couldn’t really ask for more. 

At the time I wrote electronic games I believed, for a very brief period, that I had cracked this song writing business and might be able more or less to write songs to order but that was about as close as I ever got to Dylan in the 60s and soon enough I had to accept that for me, patience was necessary; I had to wait for the lightning to strike. 

This said my brief period of creative fertility had its roots in something that was for me a songwriting breakthrough, namely punk rock. Not that I ever wrote anything with the recognisable rawness of a Sex Pistols or a Clash song, but I saw the importance of a simple and direct approach. Punk rock opened a space in my mind for a song writing method which allowed humour and irony to find their place alongside the song’s central idea. 

But what was my song writing method?  Before I digress on that topic I should mention the second type of narrative which can structure a song, put simply, a story. When I moved to Dumfries in the 1980’s I started getting up to play as a floor singer at the local folk club in the warm up for the main act. Whilst the songs I brought with me, mostly in what I now think of as an Indiefolk style, I began to realise that a longer form song which told a story might go down well in this context. That was the origin of a song called Dog Man which I wrote after giving a young hitch-hiker a lift from Cumnock in Ayrshire down to Dumfries. My passenger told me his life story in that journey; how he had left school at 16, gone through a training scheme, ended up unemployed and then found his way into the dodgy but fascinating world of greyhound racing. When I dropped him off I could hardly get home fast enough to write out what he had told me. It felt as if I was transcribing his words which without a great deal of reworking were to form the text of the song. 

When my father died I was only fourteen

A bricklayer’s all he’d ever been

And I always said I would play the same part

But when the time came I could not get a start.

The original version of that  song had eleven four line verses, including much detail of how races could be fixed and how the Dog Man could manipulate the betting odds in his favour. With the passing of time, a little like John Cale and Hallelujah I slimmed the song down to a more audience friendly eight verses, but in the context of Dumfries folk club  my sense was that the full version  was warmly received as a bold attempt at a song in the style of  a traditional ballad.

For me a critical device in the writing of a song is the use of rhyme, and the greatest pitfall is to reach for the most obvious rhyme on the assumption that inspiration has offered you it as a gift. Most of us know that if our opening line ends in the word “moon” we should probably not be coming up with a following line which ends in the word “June.”  I am not going to say that it couldn’t be made to work, for all the words in the two lines have their part to play, but the important thing is to consider other possible rhymes and ways in which they might be woven into the idea behind the song you are writing. This prompts consideration of a range of possibilities and the use of ingenuity to find ways of making a rhyme fit which did not initially seem to have a place. From this process something fresh can arise, perhaps humorous or ironic but above all, original. 

For most of my song writing experience I would just work through the alphabet to consider the possibilities of rhyme and half rhyme which might serve.  More recently I have discovered Rhymzone, a web site in which you enter a word and are immediately presented with a list of rhymes and near rhymes. If you can’t make one of these work there is always the possibility of reframing line A to offer a different rhyming opportunity in line B and this too can open up ideas in the song which were not part of its original inspiration. 

When the lyric is complete, the challenge of creating a tune to which it may be sung remains. My approach to this is pretty basic and generally involves starting with a simple chord sequence in a major or a minor key depending on the mood of the song. If I am pleased with the lyrics, singing it at even this vestigial stage can be  pleasing and this probably helps with the evolution  of a melody, the introduction of additional chords or experimentation with 7ths or major 7ths can be done by trial and error. In my experience there is likely to be some evolution of the accompaniment in the coming week or so which may continue beyond an initial performance of the song to whatever audience may be willing and available. 

 Lily Allen tells an amusing story of how, when she went into the studio to record her debut single Smile, the producer at one point said: “That song needs a middle eight.” Lily responded: “What’s a middle eight?” The matter was explained to her, she withdrew from the studio and in a few minutes returned with a break based on a series of “la las.” The song was duly recorded and went on to be a  huge hit. 

I mention the story as it makes the point that what may be considered a finished song can still go through many stages of development, in particular if accomplished musicians become involved and add layers of arrangement to the  original which can, on occasion,  transform it from something relatively bland to a spectacular hit. Would we remember Gerry Raferty’s Baker Street or Hazel O’Conner’s Will You, were it not for the magic of the saxophone solos which were inserted into the arrangement of each?

The acid test  is when your song is first shared with others. Here   caution is advisable. Friends are often polite in their response but may also be  dismissive or even caustic. They cannot see what you think is so good about the song. They can see what you cannot – it’s flaws. You have put them on the spot. They’re just being honest. 

In these circumstances you must be your own critic, neither swayed by bland encouragement or harsh judgement. Sit on the song for a while and give yourself the chance to stand apart from your very personal engagement with its genesis. Maybe at that point you will see the changes that need to be made, or perhaps that the song is not quite the masterpiece you felt it to be at the outset. However, if you continue to like the song yourself, that alone is  important and should not be dismissed as a measure of its quality. 

Song writing partnerships offer evidence that the contribution of friends can be in alignment or complimentary in ways that are mutually supportive of the end results with that needed balance of criticism and mutual support.  Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, or a somewhat undercelebrated favourite partnership of my own, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan have all produced remarkable bodies of work. If you are part of a band there must be a fair chance that a creative rapport can be established, probably one which shares out song writing  responsibilities between the complimentary talents of the ensemble.  

If you are working on your own, however, you must strike a balance between believing in your ability and critical self reflection. It’s an easy one to get wrong and it is unlikely that every song you write will be a good one. I notice that Alan McClure  who has been appointed Scotland’s Scriever for 2025, is an advocate of song writing  workshops.  That may indeed be a way into the craft for many though I feel sure that even in such a context that it is the writer  who  can both believe in and critique their own work who will produce the best work.

If song writing  workshops become more common I feel sure that the quality [I meant quantity, really!] of what is produced will improve[increase!], but so, in a world of already short attention spans will the competition to be heard and appreciated. lt is worth reflecting on artists who have contributed perhaps only a single song which has spread beyond the tight circle of their acolytes. I think of Dave Goulder’s The January Man, recorded by many artists including Christy Moore and Martin Carthy.  I was privileged to hear Dave Goulder sing the  song when he was the guest artist at Dumfries Folk Club. He did a set of well crafted songs but the January Man is the onlMick West, who recorded it in 1997 has called it: “A beautiful piece of poetry married to a wonderful tune.”  It is the dream of every journeyman songwriter, that a piece of their work should be taken up and more widely appreciated in this way. But in the end, if all you achieve is to please yourself and a few friends at an informal sing song, that  too can be a reward. 

This video was written, presented and produced by me, Stephen Shellard. Just learning the trade really. All of the songs I have written, including the two referenced in the talk are availableon my Youtube channel, Singing from the Floor, available at www.youtube.com/@Carruchan  If you do like any of the songs please give them a thumbs up as it may help others find their way there. 

Youtube channel, Singing from the Floor 

www.youtube.com/@Carruchan

Songs referenced

Songs referenced in this video

• Electronic Games – written and performed by Stephen Shellard  https://youtu.be/oLHIC_Bnovo 
• Dog Man – written and performed by Stephen Shellard https://youtu.be/avkUWwh4hxs   

• Tower of Song – Leonard Cohen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxI3wnjb4wY