Songwriting Hacks | Cliche’
“ace in the hole”, “all in good time”, “all’s fair in love and war”, “apple of my eye”, “asleep at the wheel”
These are just a few from page 1 of www.clichesite.com
Robin Frederick defines a cliche’ this way…
A cliche’ is a phrase that once expressed an important truth or feeling, but through overuse has lost its emotional impact.
In other words… a phrase that is so familiar people no longer hear what it really means, it’s just a silly saying. If we aren’t careful when we go to write our songs we can easily fall into the cliche’ trap. This is where you stop doing the hard work of songwriting and simply rely on a familiar lyric to finish a song more quickly. We don’t usually call them cliche’s in worship songwriting, but this can be a big trap when using familiar language and phrases over and over.
How many times and different ways can you use “made me whole” while remaining fresh and new in your songwriting without violating a scriptural truth. OR if you try to get too creative and different when trying to say something familiar it can sound “forced”.
I remember lyric that has stood out to me a badly used cliche was “ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies” I was actually pretty disappointed in a respected and well known songwriter who used this phrase in one of her songs. It was one of those “eye roll” moments. Where you have to stop and say, “Really? That’s all you could think to say?” And the phrase didn’t even really fit into the song… Oh well, we are all susceptible to cliche’s if we aren’t careful
So what do you do when falling victim to cliche’s?
- Recognize that it’s happening. Learn to ask yourself (or a trusted friend) if there are any cliche’s sneaking into your lyrics. Some of them may not be official cliche’s. Start to look for sayings and phrases that could be better. Now, don’t panic. Just because a phrase is familiar doesn’t mean it’s not the best one to use, just recognize when you are using them and make sure it’s the best choice for the song. Are you being lazy or creative? You can use cliche’s when they help build the story or develop a character in the song. Country music does this a lot. A songwriter might be wanting to reference some very common and “everyday” situations that a cliche’ best sums it all up.
- Create alternatives. The cliche’ came to mind as a lyrical choice because it was the quickest and easiest way to get an idea across. So take a little time and using that cliche’ as your first idea, come up with 10 more ideas for lyrical phrasing to communicate the idea in a much more vivid or creative and original way.
Try This:
As an example try this cliche’ “Spinning your wheels“.
You might use this lyric in a song to describe how you feel like you are “getting no where in life” – again another cliche’. Now dig deeper and ask yourself the questions:
- What does this phrase mean? Write out as much as you need to really get the idea clear in your mind
- What other word pictures could convey this same truth? Be careful not to just come up with more cliche’s. But if you do write them down as well, because they can help you gain even more clarity and come up with a great new phrase…. In fact, I think this is a perfect time to try a mind map. Below is my own mind map of developing this cliche’ into a new and unique phrase I can use to make my songwriting much stronger. If you want a closer look simply click on the image and it will open up in a new window.
The center of the mind map is my cliche’. Then you can see my train of thought as each phrase helped me come up with a new and better idea.
My first phrase starts at the top of the page with “Flying against the wind” then moves to the right “clockwise” until my final idea, “Why is everyone moving around me while I’m stuck standing so still?”
You can see, I was able to communicate the same idea in a fresh and creative new way AND create a great new word picture that would be perfect for adding dimension to my lyric writing.
In fact, another great idea is to simply start with common cliche’s when you need an idea for a new song.
Use some of these phrases or come up with your own.
- Sink or Swim
- Sing like a bird
- A slam dunk
- In a split second
- Walking on thin ice
- Watch your mouth
- If these walls could talk
- Open up Pandora’s box
- Plenty of fish in the sea
- Pushing up daisies
I would love to see your cliche’s turned into great new lyrics in the comments below. Let’s see how creative you can be!
To get hundreds of more songwriting tips we highly recommend Robin Fredericks’ book Shortcuts To Hit Songwriting
