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The next thing we're going to talk about,
we're going to dive into lyric territory.
So I have this existential crisis as I'm cataloging my songs
because some songs were four star songs, some are five-star songs,
and I got to thinking, I'm making a gut reaction decision on,
what is a four star song?
What's a five star song?
And I realized that in my song writing, that's what I wanted.
I wanted not to make academic decisions regarding my songs,
I wanted to make emotional decisions.
And I was trying to find, what is the difference between a four star
song and a five star song?
Because when I write a song I want it to be a five star song.
And it drove me crazy.
So I started going through all of my favorite songs
and all times different songs.
There's rock songs, there's pop songs, there's folk songs, there's R&B songs,
there's rap songs, there's heavy metal songs, there's polk songs,
like all these things.
And I started to see a commonality between all the songs
that I had that were five star and the ones that were demoted to four stars.
And again, don't get me wrong.
I loved the four star songs, but there was again,
that special secret sauce that made the five star songs just something better.
And I realized that they fell into two categories.
The first category of a five star song is one,
is what I call a soundtrack of your life kind of songs,
where a song just kind of pops in at the right moment, you maybe had a break up,
maybe you met someone new, you had a life moment or something,
and so like that song just has a meaning.
So I kind of don't count those because that's just kind of random and karma
given those five star.
So get rid of those.
And what's left is I discovered that in the lyrics of these five star
songs, the character of the song, and I'm not necessarily
talking about a story song, maybe it's first person perspective
or third person, whatever, that the character changes emotions.
They go from one emotion to something else that they change somehow.
And I can't believe I didn't see this before now, but it makes so much sense.
All of a sudden you have a three dimensional character
when they go through more than one emotion in the song.
So let's say you're writing a love song, how many songs have you heard like,
oh you're beautiful, I think you're the greatest, you're the cat's pajamas,
I love the color of your hair, your blue eyes?
And it will just be a list of things you like about the person.
Which is fine, but if the next verse is also a list of things
you like about them, and then it's just boring.
I realized that you don't necessarily have
to go from different degrees of the same emotion.
So let's say you go from--
or are going opposites, like you start with love
and then you end up hating something or you're sad and you go to happy,
you go online and you can Google the emotional wheel.
There's lots of resources.
But for example, you go from serenity to anticipation
to annoying to anger, boredom, disgust, trust, fear, surprise, sadness,
submission, admiration, amazement, rage, loathing, boredom, ecstasy, optimism,
love, remorse.
I mean, there's just there's just tons of emotions.
Just pick two and have your character go through the emotions.
People don't care about scenes for the character, like where they are.
I mean, their point for setting up a characters
and we want to know where our characters are, et cetera.
But where we connect with people is through their emotional journey,
what they're going through.
So keep that an element.
I like to choose two emotions like I said
and make sure they transition from one to other and at some point in the song.
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