This article will teach you how to write an outstanding song title. While hit songs sometimes have bland titles or one-word titles, unique titles have been common to some of the most successful songs in music history.
Having an attention-grabbing title will help you cut through the noise made by thousands of songwriters vying for the attention of music industry professionals and, ultimately, listeners.
Concept comes first. What is this song going to be about? Often your own life will provide you with plenty of fuel for ideas. If not, go to things you’ve read on the internet, news, books you’ve read, conversations you’ve had, movies you’ve seen. Even history provides song ideas, with “The Wreck of The Edmond Fitzgerald” being a prime example. Pick an interesting aspect of any of those things and write about it.
If you pick a movie, for example, you probably don’t want to write about the movie itself, this is a song, not a movie review. Pick a small slice of it, maybe the weird relationship between the rock star hero and his ex-girlfriend, and write just about that. No one needs to know that your idea came from a movie.
Note that movie titles are sometimes mentioned in songs. “Just like they did in Key Largo” is a line in a hit song, Key Largo being a movie.
Idea in mind, start brainstorming every word you can think of that relates to it. If the rock star was a control freak, you’ll generate words like “dominant” and “stalker.” write them down Now it’s time to play with the best. Add a word or two to your listed words and employ various techniques.
Try the alliteration: yessecret yesspeak. Silent stalker? Soul Stalker? Hey random thought, Soul Stealer? That could work…
Try the rhythm: RockAhem stalkAhem
Try antonyms: Normally nice guys and stalking are mutually exclusive terms, but in the movie the guy was nice when he wasn’t stalking. The Nicest Stalker… or How about Nice Stalker? That catches the eye, plus, it’s a twist on the common phrase “Nightstalker.”
Adding a time, date, phone number, or location is sure to make your headline stand out. The nine o’clock stalker. Nice stalker from Atlanta. 1-800 Stalker are all memorable.
There are other techniques you can use, but the above alone should give you enough fuel to write song titles to burn off the next few years of songwriting madness.