Don’t throw away old song ideas
Song ideas don’t always show up fully formed. Sometimes they sit around for a while before they become a song. One of the best songwriting tips I’ve heard is this: Don’t throw away old ideas.
I was watching a one-minute songwriting lesson from Shane McAnally, one of Nashville’s top songwriters….. which means, he’s probably forgotten more hit songs than I’ll ever write. (laugh) He was talking about revisiting ideas--- going back to something you wrote down months or even years ago. That got me thinking about where we keep our ideas. Because if we don’t capture them, they’re gone. (kinda like inmates that escape from prison).
For me, it’s my phone. Anytime a title, a line, or even half a thought hits me, I write it down in my notes. Sometimes it’s just a phrase, sometimes a lyric, sometimes it’s just a feeling I want to remember. Another tip I’ve started doing is writing down what sparked the idea in the first place. Just a quick note--- maybe where I heard it, what I was watching or what I was thinking at the time. Because months later when you revisit the title, you may not remember why it caught your attention.
Most of those ideas never become songs. But every once in a while, you go back through that list and something jumps out at you. Today, I’m using a title called. “Sally in the Alley” as an example. That phrase had been snoozing in my phone since July. I loved the rhythm of the words---- it almost sounds like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. Part of the reason it stuck with me is because it has an internal rhyme inside the phrase., so the title almost sings when you say it. Nashville writers love titles that almost sing when you say them. Think “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” “Achy Breaky Heart,” or “Chattahoochee.” “Sally in the Alley” had that same kind of bounce to me.
I heard the phrase in a cop show. Some teenagers found a body in the street and one of them said, “Looks like Sally in the Alley” That line struck me, so I typed it into my phone. Later on when I revisited it, I realized I didn’t even know what the phrase meant. Was it a dead person? A hooker? Just a bad girl? I actually had to ask ChatGPT….and honestly, it didn’t seem completely sure either. (laugh) But what mattered more than the definition was the feeling the words gave me. In my mind, Sally became a temptation--- a bad girl living in the back of a man’s mind.
And that is something Nashville songwriters do all the time. A lot of professional songwriters keep what they call a Title Bank. (not to be confused with Bank of America) Both of them do draw interest. (Dad joke) It is a running list of titles and ideas that might sit there for years before the right story shows up. And when they start a co-write, they’ll often just read through their title bank. Sometimes the song of the day starts with someone saying, “How about this title?” And if the title doesn’t click with your co-writers, that’s okay. Maybe they just don’t hear it the way you do. Bring it up again in another write. Eventually, you might find a co-writer who’s on the same page--- and is just as excited about the idea as you are.
For example, songwriter Tom Douglas had the title “The House that Built Me” sitting in his title bank for years. Along with pages of ideas, before it finally became the hit recorded by Miiranda Lambert. A great title will eventually find its song.
One more thing I learned along the way --- writing ideas down on your phone is great, but this is the thing I don’t do but I should do. Organizing my ideas. Some writers keep a notebook or computer file where they organize their titles. You might list the title, the feeling, the genre, or maybe the subject of the song. Some writers even so=rt them alphabetically so they’re easier to scan later.
So the lesson is simple: When a phrase catches your ear, write it down----- and if you can, write down what sparked it. You may not know what it means yet, but someday it might turn into a song.