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  "slug": "lyric-writing-techniques-to-reach-peak-levity",
  "title": "Lyric Writing Techniques To Reach Peak Levity",
  "kind": "solo",
  "listenUrl": "https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovemusicmore/episodes/Lyric-Writing-Techniques-To-Reach-Peak-Levity-e3g4les",
  "contentStartSec": 38.95,
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-14",
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    "normalizedSchema": "v1",
    "transcribedAt": "2026-06-09T09:35:37.318Z"
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  "paragraphs": [
    {
      "startSec": 38.95,
      "endSec": 84.05,
      "text": "What's good, everybody welcome back to love music more, I am Scoobert Doobert. I want to talk a bit about lyric writing techniques, kind of what goes into lyric writingand some of the things that have really helped me stay prolific, stay writing things,stay collecting interesting things to say and some of the techniques.There's a real kind of workflow art and science to this process and I want to share some"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 84.05,
      "endSec": 110.95,
      "text": "of the things that I learned from one of my mentors, Andrea Stolpe, who is kind of popularon TikTok now too, out of the Berklee College of Music and I studied with her at USC andthen Pat Pattison, who kind of trained Andrea, so it's a multi lineage sort of thing.One of the key aspects is alternating in between internal and external language.So what do I mean by internal language?"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 110.95,
      "endSec": 136.11,
      "text": "That's talking about like what's your thoughts or your feelings, that's the, I just can'ttake it anymore kind of energy or like I'm going to, I'm going to find another way, whatever,that kind of yearning moment or the more explicit sense of you finding out what the narratoris trying to say, what the singer is going for."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 136.11,
      "endSec": 152.99,
      "text": "But I also like to think about the singer as it doesn't necessarily have to be you.The traditional sense is like yeah, the singer believes everything or is singing somethingvery heartfelt, but you can also be singing something from someone else's point of view,like a Eleanor Rigby or when I'm 64 or She's Leaving Home, I think the Beatles are a great"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 152.99,
      "endSec": 173.63,
      "text": "example for kind of singing outside of yourself and singing from the perspective of a characterbut then pointing towards something universal and something that you do believe in as well.Or don't believe it, maybe you're just capturing a little vignette and that's the beautyof being a writer is while you might be the one singing it, you might be the mouth.You don't have to necessarily be the character."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 173.63,
      "endSec": 203.23,
      "text": "So that internal monologue versus the external situation.So what is happening in the environment while that internal conversation or narrationis happening and the combination and switching in and out of those can create kind of whatwe know and love as great lyrics.It's like a bad example.I'm sad and lonely.I miss you so much.It's like, okay.That's cool."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 203.23,
      "endSec": 227.71,
      "text": "But what about a lyric about like I made too much coffee because that's what I was usedto.Okay, what does that mean?And then you hit the like I wish you stayed or something essentially though you're tryingto take the external environment and a vocative bit of language and then pair that with themeaning of the song in order to create interest, tension and contrast."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 227.71,
      "endSec": 245.31,
      "text": "This can be very useful as well when you're talking about song form.So you first chorus, first chorus, bridge chorus.When you listen to songs, really try and pay attention to where is that verse coming from?Is it coming from the external environment?Is it metaphorical or is it internal in telling you what the narrator's thoughts are?"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 245.31,
      "endSec": 263.99,
      "text": "But oftentimes there will be contrast in between the verse which might be more like detailoriented and then the chorus which might be more like here's how I'm feeling.Here's what emotion I'm grounded in and country does this a lot in a really cool waywhere they will have different vignettes in each of the verses where they will talk about"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 263.99,
      "endSec": 290.79,
      "text": "somebody's day at work, somebody's losing a loved one to cancer and then somebody havinga child.These little vignettes of their life and then they have a chorus that talks about likeis in that life or whatever.Something that draws the through line across very different but very human kind of eventsand emotions and then you can have a bridge and the bridge is a great moment for you tostep outside of it."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 290.79,
      "endSec": 313.43,
      "text": "Maybe have a dialogue with yourself or another like how stop this train does by John Mayer where it's like turning from you know I don't want my parents to die to talkingto the parent help me understand and he said turn 68 you renegotiate don't stop thistrain don't for a minute change the place you're in and so it's like it's that moment of"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 313.43,
      "endSec": 335.87,
      "text": "levity that a bridge can provide and that song actually kind of has two bridges flipsaround from that first bridge to a second bridge where he's talking about how everythingis great but then you actually realize this is fleeting and then you want to stopit very Buddhist or anti Buddhist and I like this this kind of push and pull that you"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 335.87,
      "endSec": 357.35,
      "text": "can have and inject like that tension just like I talk about tension release in termsof harmony chords or melody like what are you on the leading tone that's leading youback home or is there a moment of silence you're waiting for someone to fill in the blanks.You can do the same thing with song arcs having different sections pushing and pulling from"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 357.35,
      "endSec": 381.59,
      "text": "each other with internal external language with dialogue and moments of levity and withtwists that can take a sad song make it happy for a moment and then make it sadder afterwards.But a lot of that comes from a workflow that Andrea talks a lot about and I've talkedabout a bit in previous pods and I think this is a really great way to go about it where"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 381.59,
      "endSec": 405.59,
      "text": "you kind of free right but it's a structured free right in the same way that people journaland you do the same thing almost like you're journaling from the perspective of who you'rewriting the song from the narrator yourself or somebody else and you say okay and you sayokay what am I feeling okay where am I feeling it or what places or things would represent"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 405.59,
      "endSec": 426.63,
      "text": "what I'm feeling and you can do this in a way that is decidedly not country is decidedlylike not grounded the further you go and so this is what I like to challenge myself sometimeswith this where I will write the obvious version and then I will almost like a game of telephonewrite the next less obvious version based on the obvious version and then go one more and if"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 426.63,
      "endSec": 447.27,
      "text": "you do that enough times that's how you can get into that like Radiohead a very poeticvery indie kind of territory while still being grounded in the meaning that you're looking forjust in a kind of more bizarre several steps removed kind of way and so this can this can helpyou find that gradient of I have the meaning of the song that's fairly simple I have the emotion"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 447.27,
      "endSec": 466.31,
      "text": "of the song that can be fairly simple or very complex I'm trying to tie those two into interestinglyrics into interesting settings and scenes and then I dial that fader based on kind of the genrethat you're playing with but one of the keys to doing this well is to time yourself to leave"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 467.27,
      "endSec": 492.76,
      "text": "a box that you're going to fill and not keep writing forever and trying to create raw materialthat you can pull from and one way that Andrea had us do it often was we would do all this writingthat we take a highlighter and then highlight the things that we found interesting little lyricfragments and then you start to weave them together and you can find this with a place or a person"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 492.76,
      "endSec": 514.44,
      "text": "or a moment and you try to find the sensory environments like what does it smell like what does ittaste like what is how do you immerse somebody into it what are the little vignettes that make youreally feel like this person's being honest and that is part of what allows you to write songs fromother people's perspective is that you learn almost the tricks or the the ways that an author would"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 514.44,
      "endSec": 539.45,
      "text": "as well the ways to make a moment not feel like a mask and we also remember sensory detail andspecific moments a lot more than an abstract statement it's like one of my classes they hadus write love songs where you never said the word love that's a really fun exercise and it'sfunny to think about songwriting as an exercise but it is like there's beauty in writing really"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 539.45,
      "endSec": 552.65,
      "text": "short songs too because that can exercise the songwriting muscle while not making you feel soprecious because it's going to turn into your next hit song because expectations can be paralyzing"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 553.61,
      "endSec": 557.69,
      "text": "another way to put it is what is the camera see versus what is the narrator think"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 558.89,
      "endSec": 584.17,
      "text": "and it's a great way to find a title or metaphor where you can say x is y because you're just mappingout the the feeling and free associations that you have with that feeling or experience and youcan decide how much detail to put in sometimes it's really helpful to even do this for something thathas very few words because you want to pick the ones that have the right amount of heaviness"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 584.17,
      "endSec": 602.49,
      "text": "this can also help you move quickly because it's so easy to get trapped in the perfect word forthis perfect melody and that it just doesn't really exist and sometimes you can stop your own momentumby focusing too much on that you can always go back and edit there's a beauty too about"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 603.21,
      "endSec": 629.29,
      "text": "getting to the vocal tracking process early because you get to feel the weight of the words andthe compression of the syllables in an actual recording environment because that is you're veryexposed and that's the time that often I find that my lyrics were dumb or need to change becauseyou're singing it and it just feels like you're singing poetry rather than singing lyrics and yes"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 629.29,
      "endSec": 639.37,
      "text": "lyrics are poetry but they have to fit they have to be musical first I'm not everyone agrees withthat I think that there's prosody there needs to be the sense of like this is meant to be sung"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 640.57,
      "endSec": 660.73,
      "text": "and if it doesn't feel like it's meant to be sung you then you just shift the melody or thetempo or something like that but ideally you just tweak the lyrics and that's where a lot of myediting comes from is not necessarily tweaking and tweaking forever on the page getting it closegetting into the vocal booth or in my case my little arm of microphone that sticks in my face and"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 662.25,
      "endSec": 687.38,
      "text": "see if it fits be honest does it feel good singing it and then when you get stuck especiallyin your vocal booth that's where having these techniques and workflows can be really good especiallyif the clock is running because you want to come up with a new lyric if it's not hitting you don'twant to have to be like the only way for me to write lyrics is if I'm in this specific place and"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 687.38,
      "endSec": 706.42,
      "text": "I have six hours it's like sometimes that's not the way that music works you want to be able to writeright lyrics quickly and make decisions quickly because sometimes you'll be butt up against themin an uncomfortable place or working on a song and it'll suddenly hit you that this line is wrongyou want to be able to reach into the bag and find another one and this is a great way to do it"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 706.42,
      "endSec": 730.18,
      "text": "just grab a piece of paper go to town give yourself you know five ten minutes and then start highlightingwhat works and then see if it sings if you enjoy this podcast I invite you to check out the otherepisodes some great guests all across for now like years and years so there's a bunch of contentfor you to check out great conversations kind of hate that word content but you know it is the"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 730.18,
      "endSec": 741.06,
      "text": "parlance of our times and I'd invite you to check out my music at scoobertdoobert.pizza and ratethis five star share it with your friends and I will see you again next week"
    }
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