Life is a Song: The Main Idea

Songwriters know how important the “title line” or “hook line” of a song is. It’s the thing people remember. The thing a song is “about”.

What am I “about”? What do I believe?

If you don’t know what your song’s about, it’s not going to make sense, to you or anybody else. You keep jumping from one topic to the next in verse to verse, often changing point-of-view, telling several stories at once. Many sections will seem vague and unfocused. It’s not clear what the title is. The song is therefore not memorable. It meanders along for a period of time, somewhat purposelessly, until it comes to an unsatisfying stop.

Do I want my life to be like that?

Or do I want my life to have shape, structure, meaning? A prevailing belief system?

Beginning songwriters generally write songs that go in many directions at once or have no clear direction—just as young people often lack clear direction at an early point in life. Eventually, through trial and error and exploration, a direction emerges and many successful projects, such as a career or an education, can get underway.

Because I write songs all the time, and I know how important it is to have one clear idea to guide my song, I can look at my life and ask myself what the main idea might be at this time in my life. Is my main idea: “I put my family first”? Or is it “I follow my heart”? Or, “I can change the world?”

I know that great songs can be written based on each of those ideas. But, they have to be separate songs. Those major themes can’t all be mushed in together without some separation, which is easy to do when you’re writing new songs, each of which is just four minutes long.

Life often seems not quite so clear…and yet, if we view it in a multi-dimensional way, perhaps it’s possible to “hear” more than one song playing concurrently in a life, or discern several main themes that are distinct and come and go within the framework of a symphony.

For example, it’s not that I have to choose between my work and my family, but that I have to see them as distinct songs, and attend to them separately.

I often work on several songs at once. I’m sure many painters and writers work on their creative works concurrently too. I find that when I do, the songs sometimes inform each other, or are so different that they create a complementary pair, like a yin and yang. I need to attend to each one of them individually to make them each come to fruition. I don’t have to drop one or the other, and they don’t need to compete.