Blog post from my blog at ldubsmusic.blogspot.com about the importance of visual imagery. Check it out! I'd really appreciate it. Otherwise, Enjoy!
ONE OF THE worst things you could possibly do when writing a song is write in a selfish fashion, or a fashion that doesn't engage or provoke thought from your listeners at all. It's not enough to just write relatable content about your feelings during a specific relationship; you gotta provide vivid descriptions, speechless moments and eye-opening images to your audience, else your song's string of mortality will be cut by the fates of boredom, causing it to plunge into the depths of the ever-so-crowded underworld of genericness, and that's exactly what you want to avoid. Too many aspiring songwriters have fallen victim to image-less songs, pouring their hearts out into their verses but not even bothering to develop them into an outsider's standpoint because they're so taken back by how well they think they just expressed themselves. Nobody knows how you felt during that time except you, so it's imperative to make it interesting to those who, quite simply, aren't you.
Let's jump into a few examples to demonstrate how this works. Take a look at these orphaned lyrics:
I don't understand
What happened when
You turned to stone
And left me on my own
Not a lot of visual imagery there huh? Other than a possible image of a statue due to a decent metaphor, there's not that much else to it. Broad verses like this one have their places in songs, but when 90% of your lyrics are like this, your songs will generally suck. Sorry to be so frank, but it's the truth, especially if you're trying to draw in new fans or get the attention of labels. In other words, if you take your songwriting seriously and plan to get things out of it in return, you need to be unique. Seriousness and uniqueness make a killer combination when they're forced together in the same room because they both lead to dedicated, quality work that fosters ideas and concepts that are 100% your own, therefore saving you from genericness. Those are the kinds of songs you want to write. Let's take a look at how we can better these lyrics, but first we have to place the verse.
Let's say this verse is the opening verse of the song, the very first lines of lyrics that you hear. In that case, this verse is terrible. Why? Because the first verse of every song should always be one of the best, if not the best, verses in the song because it's job is to instantly grab the listener's attention and make them want more. This verse is too cliche, generic and boring to do that job even remotely well, and it presents a normally unstable concept of confused love loss in a stable way, so let's see how we can change that. Take a look at the revised edition:
These pictures don't hang the same
When their frames are gone
And I sit here alone
Watching you drive away
Definitely a trillion times better than the first one, giving you an infinite amount of different interpretations to draw from, but the most important reason why it's better is because it's how I chose to specifically visualize and express the idea of love loss. Regardless of how you interpret it, a unique concept is presented to you and therefore gives you unique mental imagery, keeping you attached and wondering how I may present other concepts to you throughout the song's future. See that? It's important to see the differences between the generic, sucky version and the revised, unique version I presented; one presents a unique concept and way of expressing the topic, while the other one has more-than-likely been used a billion times before in some similar manner. The importance of these differences? These words will give people an entire basis on how to judge your work, and if it's something they're used to hearing thousands of times over in all the popular love songs of today, they're not even gonna bother. Just think of it like this: each verse that you write holds your songwriting future in its hands, and it's up to you to decide whether or not you value that future enough to put the time and effort into putting the best possible content you can in them. What's a great way to ensure that you do this? Visual imagery.