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Good Songwriting Resources, Tips, Books in 2026?
Hi everyone! So, I must admit something - I'm a bit rubbish when it comes to writing deep, meaningful lyrics. My lyrics aren't necessarily subpar as I've written serviceable lyrics and songs in the past. Rather, my songwriting abilities just aren't quite at the level of big names like Bob Dylan, Roger Waters, Jim Peterik, Jimmy Webb, Diane Warren, and so many other top songwriters that I could spend all day listing (and listening to).
Today I tried to write a "protest" sort of song, but the lyrics basically sucked. 🫣 I've done better writing in the past, but I tried to be "deep" and "meaningful", and fell flat on my face. 😆
I recently purchased three books on the topic of songwriting...
"Writing Better Lyrics" by Pat Pattison
"How to Write One Song" by Jeff Tweedy
"Songwriting for Dummies" by Jim Peterik and Cathy Lynn
And I plan to purchase two more books on the subject...
"Songwriting Without Boundaries" by Pat Pattison (a companion book to "Writing Better Lyrics" full of songwriting exercises and such)
"Tunesmith" by Jimmy Webb
I'm also aware that sites like thesaurus.com and rhymezone.com are extremely useful.
Anyways, what I want to ask is...knowing the above, what other online resources are there for songwriting I haven't considered yet? What other books are floating out there on Amazon (hard copies, not Kindle copies) that you find useful? (Note - the books don't always have to be instructional books. Biographies that deal with songwriting are legit too for instance.)
Any tips and tricks you can share here so I and others can benefit and learn? ☺️ Any Udemy courses, Youtube videos you consider beneficial?
Any and all help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Comments
I've been writing lyrics for over 40 years. I still really dislike 99% of my lyrics. Most with good reason. I read Tunesmith when it came out. I don't think it did anything for me but it's a good read. I find a thesaurus very handy. It's also good for me to really visualise what the overall concept of the story is. I do tend to go back through a song and change to more interesting words and remove words that are not providing anything of value. I find that by doing that I get more interesting writing, and flow/rhythm of words, than the very rigid phrasing my brain spews on first attempts.
I'm not a songwriter, so for no particular reason other than I might write a song someday, I downloaded this free app, SongSmith - looks very useful.
I don’t know why, but Kurt Kobain’s biography Heavier than Heaven is one of my favorites. That has a big influence on my songwriting, but I read it when I was 12 so take that with a grain of salt. Haven’t read it in ages.
This is a really deep subject so I will just offer a couple of quick thoughts:
Firstly I think the vocal melody is the most important thing in the majority of songs. Without a solid melody it doesn't really matter how good the lyrics are, because no-one will be interested in them. Many songs have great melodies and poor lyrics, anything by Oasis for example 😆 but songs with great lyrics and bad or boring melodies are not going to stick.
So most songwriters will write the melody first, and then fit the lyrics within that framework. The only well-known exception to this rule AFAIK is Elton John, who creates melodies from Bernie Taupin's lyrics, and honestly I don't know how he does it (there is footage of him doing this in real time and it's quite impressive). It's possible that old-school Tin Pan Alley writers may have worked this way too, but it's very much the exception.
The reason this is important is that the melody creates constraints in terms of meter, so the number of syllables you can use is predetermined. Add the additional constraint of rhyme on top and you are very limited in your phrasing.
You have to get very creative to fit the words within the number of syllables that are dictated by the melody, which means lots of time spent re-arranging words, looking for synonyms, etc.. And that's before you do additional revisions to improve the imagery etc...
Rhyme is of course the other big challenge, and again it's about how much creativity and imagination you can bring to the table.
The very best lyricists will bend the rules to say what they need to say:
I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do ya?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and cut your hair
And from your lips, she drew the Hallelujah
First of all, who else but Leonard Cohen would think to rhyme "Hallelujah" with "Do Ya"? That in itself is absolute genius IMO. But aside from that, he is also happy to use half-rhymes, such as "fifth" and "lift", and (again) "ya" with "Hallelujah".
Or consider the opening verse from Dylan's "Hurricane":
Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees the bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out, "My God, they've killed them all"
Notice that he doesn't bother to rhyme the first and third lines in this verse? Yet he does in the rest of the song. I guess here he wanted the emphasis on the story rather than the structure, so just ignored the constraint of rhyme for those lines. Later on he comes up with some extraordinary lines:
Alfred Bello had a partner, and he had a rap for the cops
Him and Arthur Dexter Bradley were just out prowlin' around
He said, "I saw two men runnin' out, they looked like middleweights
Jumped into a white car with out-of-state plates"
Rhyming "Middleweights" and "Out of State plates" in the context of that story is really clever, and takes a huge amount of imagination IMO. Not many people would come up with that rhyme.
Rick Rubin's esoteric (satanic) book is a wild look into the Kabbalah practice of emptying yourself out and attuning to the ethereal frequency and allowing it to possess you.
It's worked for a lot of people. I don't believe any of that shit- but it obviously works. a lot of artists suffering from blocks do this to "tune their frequency" and allow them to "receive the art"
Some artists say that after one time of doing it, it's forever available to tap into. Again, I think it's bullshit but it's cited as working fantastically.
You have to go deep though tho, and I believe the short of it is that "attachments hinder you(ego) and you have to detach from your attachments in order to find what really lives in your heart" brilliant stuff
Worth a shot.
Blues, 90's hiphop, and the orb are my conduits for inspiration.
Also, there's a movie called " under the silver lake" that is absolute nonsense at surface level but is a fun ride that promotes creativity. The amount of effort put into that thing is absurd.
I think a handful of mushrooms and a dose of ketamine might get the same results.
LOL, ketamine! Good times.
Apparently in the sitcom Dave (lil dicky) has an episode where they parody the esoteric approach of Rick Rubin- ironically specifically for overcoming writers block.
Great advice! Also subtle little variation and changes here and there. It's all about confounding expectations, but not too much!
Check out the Andrea Stolpe channel on YT, as well as the “How To Write Songs” one. Both go beyond lyric writing, but their instructions about it are precious and directly based on Pat Pattison’s work (I think the songwriters on both channels were his students, if I recall correctly). It may seem redundant now that you own his book, but it could be helpful whenever time is short, since they’re all such dynamic, didactic teachers.
But I think you can’t go wrong with Jeff Tweedy’s book. I bought the audiobook version and listened to it twice, then wrote the exercises in a notebook - the one called “word ladder” is really original and has helped me write more unusual, poetic stuff. If you feel like reading more of his work, his actual autobiography, “Let’s Go (So We Can Go Back)” is not only a warm reading but also has some good stuff about songwriting, including a chapter where he writes about his lyrics in Wilco’s “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” in parallel to Daniel Johnston’s ones in “True Love Will Find You In The End” - it came from an article he wrote for The Atlantic back in 2014, but I just checked and it’s behind a paywall now.
beatles complete songbook
https://www.amazon.com/BEATLES-COMPLETE-PIANO-VOCAL-ORGAN/dp/0860019128
@Ailerom I'm definitely gonna check out Tunesmith. Even if it ends up not entirely helping, Jimmy Webb is one of my inspirations, and so I think his words will help me. Also, I like your advice, especially "visualize the overall concept of the story". I have dabbled in short story writing in the past (just dumb private fanfics), so I'm pretty adept at writing out an overarching concept of a story with a beginning, middle, and end. How that'll translate into songwriting, I'm not sure just yet.
@pbelgium SongSmith does look incredibly useful. How is it free?! That's amazing. Thanks for the find.
@FizzyLizzy27 I'm definitely checking that biography out. Kurt Kobain is also one of my songwriting inspos! I didn't even know that book existed, but it's on my list for once I get some money.
@richardyot The man, myth, and legend himself. For me, more often than not, I'm able to work more like Elton John in a sense. The way I work depends on the mood. Making the instrumental, then melody, then words works sometimes. Sometimes I start with the words, then the melody, then the instrumental. Sometimes it's words, instrumental, then melody.
With "Lucky Seven", I came up with a sick Disco track that is currently in the top 3 of my "popular tracks" on SoundCloud, and the piano plays the "singing melody". But, no words came to me that day. (In fact, that piece of music came to me in a dream.)
Leonard Cohen is yet another songwriting inspo. I swear, if I listed every last of my songwriting inspos, it would require a lot of scrolling to get to the bottom of the list. Those are some clever rhymes from Cohen and Dylan both. Really great examples. ❤️ If you've any further advice, I'm all ears.
@egobeats I believe I do have Rick Rubin's book laying around here somewhere. Went to Amazon to add it to my wish list, and it says I purchased it September 2025. Wherever the hell it's laying about, I'll find it. 😂 Sounds like some strange esoteric stuff as you said though. Then again, what musician doesn't mess with the "esoteric" once in a while?
@Rodrigo1709 Thank you for the Youtube suggestions!
I'll check both of those channels out, and who knows? Perhaps they'll help me read Pat Pattison's book and vice versa. (I have ADHD, and sometimes reading books makes me pass out if I don't drink coffee while reading, lol.)
I'm glad you like Jeff Tweedy's book too. As I said, it's an extremely engaging book. I haven't made it to his songwriting exercises section yet, but it's all a fascinating read for certain. I'll also add "True Love Will Find You in the End" to my book list.
@rototom I'll consider getting myself a copy of that. Although that's pretty pricey for a used copy. 🫣 But as I said, I prefer my books to be hard copies (whether hard cover or soft cover) than on Kindle.
Keep the advice, tips, tricks, and recommendations coming, friends.
Holy shit. This has to be Andrea Stolpe's "holy grail" video right here! Thanks again @Rodrigo1709 !
One of the biggest pieces from the Cobain biography that always stuck with me was his notebook. If I remember correctly, he’d keep a standard college rule notebook and write random lyrics and phrases that came to mind through it. Sort of a mind map, and intentionally messy. Then he would piece songs together using those phrases. I agree with this method, and most of the best songs I’ve written have started out as two different song ideas converging together.
I read Taylor Swift does similar, where she just uses the notes app on her phone to jot down bits of lyrics that come to mind throughout the day. I think the physicality of a notebook and where words are placed spatially can be more inspiring than a digital list and inspires a different type of thinking. It’s kind of like how if I’m opening a Bible to the book of Job, I may not know the page number but I know it’s smack dab in the middle. That kind of spatial logic is what I mean.
Steve Jobs apparently used to enjoy rewriting Beatles lyrics. Not a musician, but goes to show creative can hone their skills in unconventional ways. (Makes sense since most of his ideas reworked existing tech).
That's quite interesting to say the least.
I have a shitload of ballpoint pens here at home I bought for sketching drawings on printer paper (I kinda suck at drawing, moreso than with writing lyrics, and I'd rather improve the latter than the former). I think buying a couple cheap spiral bound notebooks wouldn't hurt in the slightest. 
Although, I also have the app IAWriter for marking down ideas and shit (usually used for marking down monthly budget stuff and notes for my therapist lol). It's also where I write down song lyrics, even if my song lyrics are so-so (good enough for modern Pop at least lol).
You could always try the Burroughs/Bowie cut up technique to get some unexpected results from your initial notes of possible lyrics.
David Bowie, another songwriting inspo for me. I'm going to check this video during lunchtime.
Cheers mate.
No problem. Thoroughly recommend the complete documentary if you’ve not seen it; it’s called Cracked Actor.
Thanks again.
Will have to check the full docu soon.
That video was a short one, but it got straight to the point concisely.
Great inspiration.
Do you know what it's called?
I'm assuming it's "The Creative Act - A Way of Being"
I saw that one but it doesn't really look like it's about writing. From the description.
I think he's talking about The Creative Act. First I've heard that it's satanic tho lol
I guess it's about perspective. Good news is I have it in my Audible account, so I'll put it on next.
A technique i learnt but never really used in classical music is; find a tune you like eg bachs bouree in eMin and use it as a template. This technique is as old as the hills and underlines that, in western music at least , theres nothing new under the sun especially using form (eg 1 1V V) .., but music with no form might actually have originality ? Dont quote me on that its just a theroy. Theres so many ways to write a song you could write a book about it..!!..??…hmmm…. Several maybe… but id like to think theres no real rules except rhythm and melody, repetition and random elements….. i thought good lyrics came with years of practise and i never got around to it .
Bob Dylans book, the philosophy of modern song, i found super fun to listen to; him and a bunch of other stars read it as an audio book
‘How to write one song’ is a good motivational book and I very much enjoyed it.
If I can make one suggestion it is to buy ‘the craft of lyric writing’ by Sheila Davis instead of the of other books. It is the book that most of these writers have used as a basis for their own works. There is also a companion workbook that’s called ;successful lyric writing’ that’s very nice to work through and a kind of sequel called ‘the songwriters idea book’. But trust me on the craft of lyric writing. It is mandatory.
Furthermore I would suggest watching/listening to the songtown podcast on YouTube.
I watched one today about "10 signs you're an amateur songwriter". Very eye opening and good.
Marked down the Sheila Davis books on my book list.
Lol. 😂
Just wanna stress that if you are going to be reading others books you are basically going to read her former student (she was a very well regarded songwriting teacher) giving their own spin on her work with a lot of fluff based on their own personal success. Better get from the source
Thanks for letting me know, mate. I'll make the Sheila Davis books my priority then.
No problem! Had the realization i started producing, mixing and recording when I was younger because I wanted to do things with my lyrics. After years of detours rying to be a producer, engineer, etc I finally got back where I started and went full in on songwriting last year and it has been a great journey. I hope you Enjoy yours