Estimated reading time 3 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
Do you want to write heartfelt songs about friendship? Do you need tips on how to write your lyrics? Songs about friendship can be deeply moving, nostalgic, or even lighthearted and fun, giving you free reign to explore the full emotional songwriting pallet. Keep reading to learn how to write songs about friendship.
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How to Write Songs About Friendship: Brainstorming
Think about past relationships – details you remember from your own friendships.
- What things made you laugh, cry, or be angry with your friends.
- One thing to look for is a unique, memorable event. Such as the time I had some friends pretend to kill their brother as a prank. (Or more accurately ex-friends.)
- That will draw your listener in through sheer novelty.
Alternatively, you can focus on common situations that your audience can identify with.
For example:
- Write about the touching parts of your relationship with your best friend.
- Create a song about a falling out you had, and how it made you feel.
- Or you can write about the social dynamics within your friend groups. Think about what makes each friend unique within the group.
How to Write Songs About Friendship: Create Vivid Imagery
Be sure to paint pictures with your words.
- When you do this, it’s called imagery.
- There are two types of imagery: literal and figurative.
Literal imagery means just that, that you’re using descriptive language to show your audience what’s happening.
- For instance, you could say: “The chocolate flavor of Charlotte’s cookies burst upon my tongue with sugary sweetness.”
- By using descriptive language, you show what is literally happening when you eat your friend’s cookies.
When you use figurative language, the imagery you use doesn’t literally describe the situation but instead compares something to something else.
- A simile does this by comparing two dissimilar things using the words like or as.
- For example, you could say: “Amelia was as cute as a button.”
- Thus, you compare your friend with a button.
- On the other hand, a metaphor compares two things without using the words like or as.
- For example, you could say: “Kara’s grin was a ray of sunlight on an overcast day.”
- Thus, you show that your friend’s smile can lighten a lousy day by comparing dissimilar things. In other words, you pull the qualities of the sunshine into Kara’s grin.
These posts will give you more lyric writing tips.
- 12 Simile Examples That Aren’t Cliches (How to Write Them)
- Brainstorming Your Song Titles
- How to Create Songwriting Rhyme Schemes
- How to Use Archetypes
- Imagery – “Let Her Scream”
- Rhyme and Reason in Songwriting
- The Music of Words
- The Narrator’s Point of View
- The Plot Thickens: Focusing Your Story Ideas
- Understanding Prosody in Your Songwriting
How to Write Songs About Friendship: Emotional Authenticity in Your Lyrics
If you base your lyrics on your own life experiences, it’ll help make your stories emotionally genuine.
- This in turn makes your lyrics more believable.
- However, be sure to fictionalize them enough so that you don’t embarrass your friends.
- Regardless of whether you say something nice or nasty, your friends will probably be embarrassed if they recognize themselves in your songs.
This brings us to our next point.
- Keep a notebook and pencil handy so that you can scribble down ideas when you get them.
- This is a habit of productive songwriters. It allows you to capture your ideas when they’re fresh.
- Similarly, it’s a good idea to carry around a voice recorder so you can record melodic ideas by singing them into your digital recorder.
Click to see three quality digital recorders that you can choose from.
Final Thoughts
Takeaway points:
- When you write songs about friendship, you’re writing about connecting with other human beings.
- If you write honest lyrics with good imagery, it’ll intensify the emotional impact on your listeners.
- This in turn will increase the engagement of your target audience.
Have fun writing!
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