Page 66 - Song Maps - A New System to Write Your Best Lyrics - Simon Hawkins

Chorus – Title
There's nothing worse than losing your dad
Verse 2 – Timezone 2
Funeral scene after losing him suddenly
Thought he was healthy
Same feelings of shock, world turned upside down, etc.
Chorus – Title
There's nothing worse than losing your dad
Bridge – Payoff (signaling)
Metaphor, how it doesn't seem right he's gone
Chorus – Title
There's nothing worse than losing your dad
Verse 3 – Timezone 3
Now, noticing something familiar
How I talk to my kids,
In many ways, because of your DNA, you never lose your dad
Example of a Timezones lyric
So, turning to the lyric: again, this was another personal song for me given that this speaks right into my experience of losing my father. I had a melody first, which I was keen to set the lyric to–a 6/8 mid-tempo Country-sounding song. I wrote the lyric over a number of months before showcasing it and tweaking slightly afterwards. When I performed this in a concert alongside a group of Nashville songwriters, one of my great friends came up to me and said to me,
"You had us hanging there until the very end!"
Anyone who's lost their father would understand that I needed to have that resolution just to keep myself together long enough to sing this live.
Lyric: "When You Lose Your Dad"
Verse 1
As a boy only four
At a Saturday mall
I'm hand in hand with my dad
In the store where we are
With toy soldiers and cars
I'm lost in my own wonderland
One minute he's here beside me
The next my world's turned upside down
Chorus