Page 33 - Song Maps - A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics - Simon Hawkins

The songwriter's secret weapon
While I've never been one to go around trying to make people's lives miserable, I discovered a fundamental truth several years ago about what moves people to tears. Or at least, be moved in their own personal way if they are not the tearful type.
This is very much linked to the flow of ideas and Song Maps. It's the songwriter's secret weapon, and I've not seen it written down anywhere else, so you've heard it here first!
I believe it explains why Country songs are all about dogs dying and lovers leaving or running away with best friends. It's the reason there are so many love songs. It's why the gospel story is such a rich source of songs that deeply move people.
People are deeply moved by:
LOVE IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY
If you think back to all the songs that slew you, that turned you from a happy, carefree person to a blubbering, shaking wreck it will probably be, on some level or another, because you have been confronted with love in the face of adversity.
Look at classic lyrics like the lyric to "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston/Dolly Parton or "Leaving On A Jet Plane" by John Denver.
Maybe the most powerful example I've discovered is a song written by songwriting icon, Phil Coulter, sung by Sinead O'Connor called "Scorn Not His Simplicity." It's not a love song. It's not even a Country song.
When I discovered it, I played it to some friends who'd come for a dinner party, and before Sinead had got to the second Verse the lady was weeping. When I finally got to talk to Phil, I congratulated him on writing such an incredible song, and even he (with his Irish modesty) admitted that he was very happy with the way it turned out. Without a doubt, it's a powerful song, and it demonstrates, almost flawlessly, the power of this principle to move people. I challenge you to listen to it and not be moved.
So where we place ideas in our lyrics counts. If we place them in a way that shows love in the face of adversity it counts big time. This is also why writing in 3D is so powerful. This is why we will only develop titles to their full potential if we organize ideas into their most powerful order (a writable idea) and then turn them into amazing lyrics that genuinely touch people when they hear the finished song. This is what we do with Song Maps.