I was hoping that you would pick me up like Elijah was

Untouched and preferred — Unspotted from the world

I was hoping that you would pick me up like Elijah

I was waiting with one thumb out and one in the Bible

where I was reading about all the doubtful disciples

Touched and ill-prepared — Young and unaware

I could wind down the road sideways just like a viper

On Hell’s adopted mile

where the chrome and ash pile high

from abandoned cars on fire on the side of the road

Moon is hanging low

 — selection from “Hell’s Adopted Mile” by Jamie Barnes

So here was a case where the title certainly helped organize the flow of ideas.  Jamie said, “If something enters your head as a title, right it down. You’ll forget it later. If you’re working on a riff, chord structure or whatever, try coming up with a title as early as possible.”

CLICHÉS

Having dealt with titles, Jamie turned to the dreaded “c” word.  “Cliché is the weed among the garden of songwriting and must be destroyed. Cliches are worn-out phrases that suffer from over-usage. People say them all the time, often without knowing what they mean:  fit as a fiddle — what does that mean?”

Jamie exlained that, while songs should express universal ideas and emotions, it’s dangerous to mistake universal for generic.  When you stimulate your listeners senses, they will pick “pictures” from their personal “sense files,” but if you use generic language, they’ll fall asleep.

“Train yourself to eliminate cliché from every day language and you will be less likely to use it in song,” Jamie said.  Then we diagrammed various examples:

Cliché rhymes

burn/learn

dance/chance/romance

walk/ talk

kiss/miss

hand/understand/command

(Side note for worship songwriters: when tempted to rhyme “streets of gold” with “never grow old” or “the half has not been told,” or “God” with “trod,” or “love” with “above,” “dove” and “enough,” don’t.  Just put the pen down, softly.  Walk away)

Jamie explained that most cliché rhyme schemes are perfect rhymes (words in which the final vowels and consonants rhyme, such as tall and small).  “Don’t be afraid to sacrifice perfect rhymes to say what you really want to say. Writing a song is way more than rhyming words together.”

Cliche Phrases

deep inside

touch my soul

eye to eye

heart to heart

more than friends

drive me crazy

cuts like a knife

break my heart

Cliche Images

stars

key (usually “to my heart”)

rose

lips

lying in bed

Jamie encouraged us to purge ourselves of cliched images by getting specific, and quoted Pattison, “What did your lover say?  Where were you?  What kind of car?  What was the texture of the upholstery in the back seat?”

The seminar then turned from the discussion of what not to do, to something positive for writers to use: metaphor. Metaphors are tough but essential and useful for all creative writing.  They are a “collision of ideas that don’t belong together:  ‘an army is a rabid wolf.’ ” (example from Pattison)

Stay tuned to sojournmusic.com for part two, a discussion of metaphor.  If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to our RSS Feed to receive updates as soon as we add new content.