I’m guessing you’ve seen lists like this before with all the usual songwriting tips. So I gave it some thought and wrote down 5 fresh but ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL elements of a hit-sounding song. These are core principles of what helped me to be voted christiansongwriting.com’s “Songwriter Of The Year” for 2020.

1. Don’t Wait For Inspiration

   Ed Sheeran talks about “The 10,000 Hour Rule” mentioned in the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell and then uses the analogy of dirty tap-water. “You gotta turn it on and let the [dirty] water run until it turns into clean water.” Ed explains. His basic premise is you gotta write A LOT in order to get the bad ideas out and before you’ll have the experience to know what’s good or not. So I encourage you to carve out time to PLAN your writes. No better time than today.

2. One Topic At A Time

   Looking at 16-20 lines of lyric it’s too easy to let your emotions lead you off on a poetic tangent. The next thing you know s song about “love” turns into a song about “grace",” “mercy,” “faithfulness,” or whatever. I do it all the time. Be a stickler about this one: The best songs are about ONE THING and ONE THING ONLY! A trick that helps me is to write it like you’re talking to a 10 year old. It might help you hear your theme more objectively. One of the most valuable skills is learning to take a step back from a song and listen to it like it’s someone else’s song.

3. Don’t waste anything

   Have you ever noticed that in the timeless hit songs EVERY SINGLE LYRIC AND EVERY SINGLE NOTE matters? It’s SO easy to settle just to pump another song out. But are we writing a song so that it can connect to people in a meaningful way or to feel the rush of a finished song? (You are the one that connects to THAT feeling!) From what I’ve learned from top hit-makers, and my own experience, is that it takes practice to get a feel for when to call the song quits versus when to take another shot at it.

4. Make sure it fits “The Formula”

   As Friedemann Findeisen writes, in his book “The Addiction Formula,” that every hit song written in the last 50 years has at least two of the three hit-songwriting pillars. And when it comes to writing “commercial songs,” especially pop or songs written for radio, these pillars are what Findeisen calls:

   • Hook

   • Groove

   • Lyrical storytelling

   (He adds that for some genres, “Lyric” would be a fourth pillar…which is especially true for the majority of what I work with, namely the Worship and CCM space) Hook and groove are pretty self-explanatory (although I may have to write a post about those two things) but Friedemann explains that “Lyrical Storytelling” has more to do with hype, tension, and implied tension. I think his book has some great tips about this…I’d recommend you pick it up. BUT if I were to summarize in my own words I’d say he’s talking about the power of DYNAMICS. What drops out, and when, and the ratio between “minimal” and “big.” This is HUGELY overlooked but combined with vocal and lyric is probably more than 50% of the difference between “cool song” and “Holy…what is that?!?!”

5. Production is PART of songwriting

   Even though technically a “song” is the sum of a lyric and melody, these days the song isn’t REALLY written until it’s in a state that people can experience it. I’d suggest you learn everything you can about what makes a song SOUND like a hit. Like I wrote in a previous post, try writing WHILE recording…even if it’s just a demo and you’ll have someone else produce it later.