Use Your Words - Themes & Topics
Sometimes song ideas come to you fully formed. It feels like you're taking dictation from some other-worldly muse. But sometimes, the words don't flow like that. That's when it's helpful to have tools and techniques to fall back on.
Themes and Topics are a good way to explore songwriting when you don't know what to write about.
A Theme is a single word that expresses a defined subject area, such as:
Heartbreak
Victory
Empowerment
Dissent
Etc.
You get the idea. A one-word area of thought or feeling.
Topics are the specific ways you want to explore a Theme. What about the theme do you want to address? They're how you drill down on a Theme. The Topic should be a single phrase or, at most, a sentence that explores an aspect of the Theme. I like to choose a Theme and then explore different Topics based on that Theme. Here's some examples:
Theme: Heartbreak
Topics:
You never should have left me
I can't believe what you did
Can't we work this out?
Theme: Empowerment
Topics:
I never quit
Don't underestimate me
I'm enough just as I am
Look out, world. I'm coming through!
Etc.
You can come up with a ton of these. Pick one Theme, generate a list of Topics and now you're ready to pick a Topic and explore a song based on it.
BTW, Topics are not Titles. Topics are the specific area of a Theme you want to explore. By separating Titles from Topics you give yourself room to explore and come up with lots of potentially great Titles (more on that later).
Think of a favorite song. Theme and Topic is a great way to analyze a song that you love, especially if you'd like to write your own song in a similar vein. It's kind of like reverse-engineering a hit.
So let's do the breakdown on a famous song:
"Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend"
Theme: Money
Topic: Love may come and go but financial security has lasting power
It's a popular subject and you can see how exploring this Theme and Topic could have led to such songs as Material Girl by Madonna and Dinero by Jennifer Lopez.
I'm betting that if you thought about this Theme and Topic, you could come up with some titles or lines, if you wanted to develop a song like this.
This is just one example. Feel free to explore Themes and Topics as a great way to explore your urge to write a song or to think about how a favorite song was developed.
As you can see, there are an unlimited amount of Themes and Topics, which you means you have unlimited potential to write new songs, even if you think the "best" song in the world has been written on the subject. By exploring Themes and Topics, you can come up with your own slant on a timeless Theme and Topic.
Once you have a Theme and Topic you want to explore, then you'll need to explore Titles But that's a subject for another article.