Estimated reading time 3 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
Do you want to know how to write poignant sad songs? Sad song lyrics have an unrivalled ability to affect our emotions, stirring our hearts and offering comfort when times are tough. Keep reading to learn how to write beautiful sad songs.
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How to Write Beautiful Sad Songs: Write from the Heart
As songwriters, our job is to help people feel their emotions more strongly than they would in their regular everyday lives.
- In Western society, we tend to be objective.
- We look at things scientifically and quantify things mathematically.
- However, with art, music, and sports, you can love or hate something just because you do.
Your goal is to try to help your audience feel something, whether it’s love, anger, happiness, or whatever.
Linking into feelings of sadness can be a powerful way to help your audience experience catharsis, allowing them to deal with their strong negative emotions.
- Just like we talked about regarding love and worship songs, you need to be genuine and to pull from your own experiences if you want to write powerful sad song lyrics that touch your listeners emotions.
- If you don’t, people will know it when you try to fake it.
- Maybe not consciously, but at a subconscious level they’ll be able to tell whether the lyrics ring true or not.
This means that your own relationships, or the relationships of your friends and family, will be fodder for your songwriting.
- If your lyrics are based on real situations and true emotions, you’ll be able to make your song’s situations and characters more believable.
- However, this doesn’t mean that you have to make it autobiographical.
- You can fictionalize it, so that you don’t embarrass yourself or your loved ones, but you must base your writing on true emotions, or it will make your writing sound trite and uninspired.
How to Write Beautiful Sad Songs: Writing Minor Key Music
Mostly, you’ll use the minor mode when you’re writing sad songs.
- In Western music, major keys are thought to be happy while minor keys are sad.
- This explains why composers often feel that minor keys are best suited for serious subjects.
- The following arrangement shows what this might sound like.
Mobile users: for best results reading the music, rotate your screen 90o to the right.
Minor Chord Piano Arrangement:
For more information on how minor keys work:
However, you won’t always use minor keys.
- In songwriting, there is a term called prosody. Mostly, prosody means that you need to keep the rhythm of your lyrics and the rhythm of your melody the same so that you don’t mis-accent your lyrics’ syllables.
- However, prosody also means that your lyrics need to be in sync with your music’s emotional impact. Having said this, you can make them conflict on purpose.
- For example, Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville is in a major key and sounds up and happy, but the lyrics gradually reveal that the song’s protagonist is becoming emotionally unglued.
Using conflicting prosody allows you to write lyrics that say one thing while the music subtlety whispers, “No, that’s not what’s really going on here,” or vice versa.
Also, you can use dynamic shading to enhance the emotional impact.
For example, you could have the verses start softer and build in intensity, climaxing at the chorus.
How to Write Beautiful Sad Songs: Writing Sad Song Lyrics
You can use both literal and figurative images when writing sad song lyrics.
- Literal image: My tears fell as I saw you walk out the door for the last time.
- Figurative image: The ghosts of regret haunt the halls of my shattered soul.
Lyric Writing Information
Here are some books that will teach you how to write better songs.
Final Thoughts
Takeaway points:
- You need to be genuine and pull from your own experiences if you want to write powerful sad song lyrics that touch your listeners emotions.
- If your lyrics are based on real situations and true emotions, you’ll be able to make your song’s situations and characters more realistic.
- However, you can fictionalize it, so that you don’t embarrass yourself or your loved ones.
Have fun writing!
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