5 Ways To Come Up With New Song Ideas

If you’ve written a song before, you know it can be difficult to find new ideas all the time. Here is a list of five ways you can go about finding your next big song idea. Remember, there is no limit to what you can write about (i.e. the most viewed video ever on YouTube is the Baby Shark song)!

1. Listen to Your Favorite Music and Try to Emulate it

When is the last time you took some time to kick back and really listen to your favorite music? It can be difficult to make time to mindfully listen (we know, sometimes it just makes you want to get up and dance instead). Take some time to explore your favorite tracks and identify what you like about them. Is it the sonic quality or timbre? Is it the pre-chorus lyrics? Picking apart what you like about your favorite songs will give you a chance to replicate and emulate that in your own tunes. Of course, we are not suggesting you plagiarize songs. Instead, we are suggesting that looking at songs on a molecular and structural level, will enable you to incorporate what you like about those songs into your own tracks in the future.

2. Use a Songwriting Prompt

We’re big fans of songwriting prompts (after all, we created an entire songwriting competition series around it called Songathon). Songwriting prompts are designed to help you jumpstart your writing sessions, push yourself outside of your creative comfort zone, and inspire you to write songs you normally wouldn’t. Prompts can come in all different shapes and sizes. For example, you could pick your favorite season and write a song about it. If you’re looking for songwriting prompts, check out our newly released Songwriting Prompts Card Deck!

3. Explore a New Musical Scale/Mode/Instrument/Genre

It may be very easy for you to become fixed in your ways, especially if you’ve been songwriting for a while. How about trying a new approach? For example, is there a genre you’ve never explored before but have always wanted to give a try? Do you usually write on guitar? Why not try starting your next writing session on piano instead? Changing the context of your writing will yield unexpected results that can lead to songs you might not otherwise have written. Put yourself in a new context and see what happens!

4. Pick a Trending Popular Cultural Word or Topic

If you’re hearing a new word or phrase over and over, it’s probably trending (FOMO was one of those words). Writing a song that is about a popular word or phrase is not only fun, but can result in very culturally relevant songs. It might sound cheesy, but the world is constantly looking to songwriters to express its culture. Always keep your eyes and ears open for words and phrases that are trending and try writing a song about them.

5. Write a Song in Response to Another Song

Is there a song you’ve always wanted to write a response to? Well why not do just that? Picking a song that you like and writing a response to it, can force you to become very creative. For example, pick a song with a one-sided love story and write a response from the perspective of the other lover in that story. You might just end up liking your response song even more!

These are just a few ways you can come up with new song ideas. There are no rules to coming up with interesting concepts, so we encourage you to try as many different ways as you’d like. Happy writing!