I'm super-annoyed at how tough it is to actually NOT write a love song... Or on the flip-side, it's insanely easy to write a generic pop or rock love song with little-to-no depth.  Basically, I want to do everything BUT love songs- at the same, though, I want to avoid making all of my music have tons of comedic value; fact being that nearly all of my non-love songs are either humorous or a random jumble of words and phrases that means little together.


What do you guys do to ensure that you write good lyrics that aren't always in the same subject, but have good depth, character, etc?

Just another silly love song?

I get my wife to write the lyrics.

I don't think we've written a "love song" yet.

You could always take up the Blues. 

anti-love? Post-love?

Just write a love song but put in hints about it all being a metaphor for something else.

I wrote a song once which sounded like a break up song "I can't stand to breathe your breath, touch your hair there's nothing left, the shine that glowed as faded away". Those are the first lyrics. But it was about a type of life, and not about a girl at all. The girl was just a metaphor for a life and way of living.

I re-wrote that song since and it isn't a metaphor any more and is actually a love song now hahaha! In the chorus he turns around and changes his mind and decides he loves her. In the first version, the chorus revealed it was all about money and life choices. But I didn't like it, so it became a love song :P I like it better now!

Use Wikipedia's "random" button to come up with a topic that you would have never dreamed of writing about. Warning: you might end up writing a song about some obscure species of deep water fish. 

sharke


Use Wikipedia's "random" button to come up with a topic that you would have never dreamed of writing about. Warning: you might end up writing a song about some obscure species of deep water fish. 

I wrote a song called Coelacanth in 1981, that I still play to this day.


:-)


Guess how I got the idea?


I think it was Cyclo Brittania. :-)

I recall reading that Genesis, when they were starting out were too "shy" to write love songs. Hence, songs about Greek mythology, people having their head knocked off with a coquet mallet, and unscruproulous landlords evicting tenants.
 
Expand your horizions, looking at other genres may help, even if they are far from your own musical taste. I would recommend looking at the songs of my favorite songwriter, Richard Thompson.
 
Here are a five Thompson songs that can give an idea on how diverse you can be. All the lyrics are here http://www.richardthompson-music.com/Song.asp
Guns Are The Tongues
Read About Love
1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Cooksferry Queen
Al Bowlly's In Heaven

Song writing is funny. I have never listened to country music, yeah... I have heard plenty of it but I have never been much of a fan. When I was young I was into guitar rock, later more bluesy stuff. I have liked a lot of progressive music and my training was in classical choral music.
HOWEVER... almost every song I write comes out country or old style C&W with an emphasis on Western.
I remember as a small child hearing songs by Tennessee Earnie Ford, Roger Miller, etc.. and learning Down In The Valley (or Birmingham Jail) from my mom. I guess music that you hear very early on does some programming that the things you like as you grow older, never quite overcome.

Could it be that you were exposed to mostly love songs when you were very young?

J