James Linderman, writing in the 2011/2012 issue of Songwriters Magazine, offers a helpful guideline for thinking about song structure:

• verse lyrics show
• chorus lyrics tell
• bridge lyrics philosophize

It’s a helpful insight that can focus and hone the writing process.  The idea of showing something can involve all of the senses, so it need not be limited to visual images.  For example, evoking a sense of touch is powerful (“your breath in my ear”) and has an emotional draw that strictly visual elements might not convey as well.  Scent and sound of course are other important dimensions of our experience.  I’ve been working on a song that uses imagery from an amusement park to establish a context and mood for a story about two young lovers.  Some of that imagery was inspired by images I found on Flickr and posted previously.

The chorus is where the hook is typically found in a song, so summing up the key idea of the song is part of the “telling”.  The chorus can also be a place where word play is engaged and double-entendres can be employed to good effect.  In the amusement park song I stumbled on the phrase “carry on” as the hook for the chorus.  Because the song is about young lovers, the phrase works nicely in a dual sense.  It can mean rambunctious behaviour on the one hand and/or the idea of keeping it going on the other hand.  The lovers in the story are both having a blast at the amusement park (“carrying on”) and they both want their love to carry on forever.

Bridge lyrics can act as a pivot point and provide a moment of reflection in the song.  In “Carry On”, the bridge isn’t yet written but I want it to touch on the idea that the main character knows deep down that this moment of joy will pass and so he wants to take full advantage of it while he can.  With that, the bridge will also require a shift in mood that can be linked back to the chorus, returning to the celebration after the pause for reflection.

If the amusement park is imagined as part of a travelling carnival, then I might be able to draw on the idea of the empty lot that remains after the tents and rides are taken down and on their way to another city.

While we are in the midway and the swept up in the lights and sounds it seems like it can last forever.  But the next day we wake up to find an empty parking lot.  The spirit of the moment has moved on.

Now I just need to find the right words to express that sentiment.

I’ve started to use Flickr to browse images that are related to an phrase or theme that I’m working with in a song sketch.  It’s an interesting exercise that helps to generate fresh ideas that also have a visual dimension to them.

For example, I’ve been working on a song with the phrase “she’s like a merry-go-round”.  That line came out spontaneously while I was noodling but it seems like an interesting element to build a theme around, so I went to Flickr and browsed the images that came up when I searched that term.

Images like the one below got me thinking about lovers sitting together, moving up and down as the merry-go-round turns. Sometimes they move in unison and sometimes in counterpoint.  This suggested to me the up and down cycles of relationships.  There is also an energy in this photograph with the horses, their mouths open, that evokes a sense of raw passion that might be seen in two young lovers.  Lots of fodder for lyrics here.

Or this one here, which for some reason reminded me of a music box and that sense of childhood often associated with amusement parks.  I later wrote a wraparound line “I want this to last forever” to tie two verses together.  It might very well have been a subconscious response to seeing this image:

This one is a long shot of a pier with an amusement park, and brings thoughts of the seaside and a stroll in the evening air.  I might never have considered either of those thoughts had I not seen this picture.

The various elements within the images provide a rich field of ideas that I might not otherwise have immediately associated with a “merry-go-round.”  But that richness, that unexpected diversity, leads to more intricately developed themes and more interesting possibilities for lyrics to take shape.

Another dimension to this approach is to see how other people choose to photograph a merry-go-round.  This helps me to understand the kinds of images that this phrase might evoke in listeners and provides some clues about what to emphasize or draw out in the lyrics.  For example, I saw many time-lapse images of merry-go-rounds, which suggests that it might be something that people will relate to in a song.  I’m not sure what that might look like in a lyric but the seed has been planted.

I don’t print the pictures, but I do set up links to the ones I find most interesting and refer to them while I’m working on the song.  I suppose one could print them and put them up in the studio for inspiration as well.

Whatever the case, Flickr and other photo sharing sites seem to me to be a great resource for opening up the imagination during the writing process.  Thank you Internet!