[How Do Pull Off Depressing Songs Without Pretentiousness?]

When you're feeling down or depressed about something and you want to put those feelings into a song, how can you do it without venturing into "whiny" or "emo" territory? Two bands that I think do this very well are Radiohead and The Smiths. How can you recreate that sort of downbeat but not over-dramatic sound, rather than the full-blown immature whining that seems to come from most emo bands?

[What Step-By-Step Process Can Be Used To Write Interesting Lyrics?]

Can anyone offer any advice on the actual process lyricists use to turn an idea of a theme into actual lyrics? For example, would you make a list of imagery to use and then sort the images into interesting phrases, then put them in the right order and link them together? Or would you just right a song line-by-line until it is finished?

[Hello From Worcestershire!]

Worcestershire! I used go through that county a lot on the M5 on my way to Bristol. Can't remember what junction it was but from the motorway you can see a hill with a solitary tree at its brow. I don't know why but I loved that hill and tree.

Anyway welcome!

Yeah when returning from school trips on the coach we would wait for the hill and tree and everyone would cheer when they saw it!

Age ain't nothing but a number Tom, like ........... 16, lol

Worcestershire, I had a mate from there when I was your age, the land that must now be called for PC reasons, "the opposite of white country" - lol.

Well your being here is a good decision and a good choice too - so welcome.

Whichever part of songwriting you feel weak in (maybe it's everything as you don't say), there's an abundance of articles to help you through the blogs, community articles and the specific forums, so spend the time to search and read up so you can join in.

Are you in a band? Are you a soloist? What have you done to promote yourself up to now? - just a few questions that maybe you can answer in your "About Me" part of your profile.

Enjoy

I don't understand what you mean.

[Hello From Worcestershire!]

I'm new to this forum. I'be been trying fairly unsuccessfully to write decent songs since the age of about 12 (I'm 16 now). I want to write in the style of musicians such as Alex Turner, Morrissey, Thom Yorke and other alternative/indie/rock/pop music. I hope I will find useful information on this site and maybe give useful advice to others. Any questions don't hesitate to send me a message!