A song can be about anything. A car. A sandwich. A parking ticket. The way your neighbour waves without looking up or the end of a twenty-year marriage. No subject on earth is off limits, and the material never runs out.
Every day hands us more songwriting ideas than we could know what to do with and yet the phrase “I’ve got nothing to write about” is one of the most common things songwriters say.
We call it songwriter’s block, shrug, and wait for it to pass.
Now, I’ve been writing songs for more than forty years, and the longer I do it, the less I believe in “nothing to write about.”
I don’t think this issue is ever really about a shortage of subjects. I think it’s about something standing in the way between the writer and the material itself. Clear that away and the songwriting ideas are still there, same as they always were.
So with that said, I want to look at what that something is, and how we might be able to get it out of the way.
It’s not really a topic problem
When a songwriter says they’ve got nothing to write about, I’ve come to hear three different problems hiding inside the one sentence.
The first is having no topic at all. That’s rarer than we think. The second is having topics but no way into them, no angle. The third is having both, but not feeling allowed: the subject seems too small, too silly, too personal, or not the kind of thing “a real songwriter” writes about.
Most of the time it’s the second or the third.
Take something as plain as “my dog” for example. As a topic it goes nowhere but if we rephrased it as… “my dog is the only one who knows I talk to myself” then THAT is a song.
The subject hasn’t changed at all but what’s changed is that there’s now a moment, a feeling, and a point of view to write from.
What’s actually in the way
Here are the things I see getting in the way most often. I’ve definitely tripped over every one of them at some point.
1. The “worthy subject” trap
Somewhere along the line, many of us picked up the idea that songs should be about the Big Things: love, loss, heartbreak, injustice. So if nothing dramatic happened this week, there’s nothing to say.
But so many great songs start somewhere ordinary. Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” is a woman in a café watching the world go by. Paul Kelly’s “How to Make Gravy” hangs on a family Christmas and a recipe. Ray Davies built “Waterloo Sunset” around someone looking out a window at a river.
The everyday subject is often the door to the big feeling, not a step down from it.
2. Mistaking a topic for an angle
“Love” isn’t a song. Neither is “trust” or “home.” They’re categories, and you can circle them for weeks waiting for one to turn into a song. It won’t.
Songs live in specifics: one moment, one character, one question. Until you find that, even the richest subject feels empty.
3. The editor arrives too early
A line turns up, and before the ink’s dry a voice chimes in: “That’s been done.” “That’s a bit silly.” “Who’d care?”
Writing and judging are two different jobs. Try to do both at once and every idea has to pass inspection the moment it appears. Hardly anything survives that.
4. Comparing drafts to finished records
We hear a song we love and think, “I’ll never write anything like that.” But that song probably took months, a stack of rewrites, maybe a co-writer, a producer, and a great band.
A ten-minute idea can’t compete with that, and it was never meant to. Holding a first draft up against someone else’s finished record is a sure way to talk yourself out of writing.
5. Fear of exposure
Honest songs mean people might see themselves in what you write, or judge you for what you reveal. So we steer around things: an ex, a family member, our own failings, the stuff we’re embarrassed about.
Every no-go zone shrinks the pool. Build enough of them and it really does start to feel like there’s nothing left.
6. Identity rules
“I’m a folk writer, I don’t do funny songs.” “That’s not my style.” “I only write ballads.”
A sense of style is useful. But when it hardens into rules about what kind of writer you are, it fences off whole areas of material you might write brilliantly about.
7. Waiting for inspiration
If we only write when something moves us, our output is at the mercy of our mood and our circumstances. A quiet patch in life becomes a quiet patch on the page.
The writers I admire most turn up on a Tuesday whether they feel inspired or not. More often than not, the inspiration arrives once they’ve started.
Picasso once said that… “inspiration exists but it has to find you working.” He was right.
8. The attention deficit
This might be the biggest one of all now. The idle moments in a day, standing in a queue, sitting in a waiting room, riding in the passenger seat, used to be where songwriters overheard a great line or caught an odd little detail. These days almost every one of those gaps gets filled with a phone.
We can’t write about the world if we’re not looking at it.
How to free yourself up
The good news is that none of this is fixed. Every one of those blockers loosens with practice, and none of the remedies need talent or luck.
1. Separate making from judging
Give yourself time where the only job is to generate: lines, titles, images, half-ideas, odd phrases. No editing allowed. Judge later, in a different sitting, with a different hat on. If I could pass on only one habit, it would be this one.
Try this: Set a timer for 15 minutes and write down every line or title that comes. No crossing out. Don’t read it back until tomorrow.
2. Build a noticing habit
Carry a notebook, or use the voice memo app on your phone (one of its better uses). Collect overheard phrases, strange signs, small moments, the exact way someone said something. You’re not writing songs yet, just gathering.
Pat Pattison’s object writing is a great way to train this: ten minutes each morning describing something through all your senses, including how your body feels and moves. Keep it up for a few weeks and you stop hunting for subjects. You start tripping over them.
Those fragments need a home, too. Mine go into a kind of drawer, where scraps can wait until they meet the right song.
3. Turn topics into angles
When something catches your eye, ask it a few questions:
- Who’s telling this story?
- What’s the exact moment?
- What’s surprising or contradictory about it?
- What bigger thing does it point to?
Take “a parking ticket.” Flat as a tack. Now make it a ticket you got outside a wedding you never wanted to go to, and suddenly there’s a character, a situation, and a feeling. Any ordinary subject becomes writable once you’ve found your way in.
4. Lower the stakes
Write lots of songs and let most of them be practice. Song-a-week and song-a-day challenges work because sheer volume knocks the preciousness out of it. When no single song has to be great, you’re free to try anything.
Try this: Four songs in four weeks. No polishing until all four are finished.
5. Use constraints
It sounds backwards, but “write about anything” freezes people, while “write about the last thing you bought” gets them moving. A limit gives the brain something to push against.
A few to try: start with a title and write toward it, pick a random photo from your camera roll, borrow a chord progression from a song you love, or grab the first noun you see in the nearest book.
6. Write as someone else
Songs don’t have to be autobiography. Writing in character, from someone else’s point of view, or in a completely invented situation opens up all the subjects you’d never touch as yourself. Plenty of great songs are sung by people the writer never was.
The funny thing is, your real feelings tend to sneak in through the side door anyway. Sometimes a character is the only way to say the true thing.
7. Make room for boredom
Phone-free walks. Drives without a podcast. Ten minutes on the back step doing nothing at all. A wandering mind is where a lot of songs begin, and it can’t wander if it’s constantly being fed. The space you write in matters here too: a spot that invites you to sit and drift will give you more than one that’s full of noise.
8. Co-write
Another writer brings different experiences, different instincts, and no attachment to your usual rules. They’ll happily chase an idea you’d have dismissed in a second. It’s one of the quickest ways I know out of a rut.
9. Read the block as a signal
Sometimes being stuck is trying to tell you something. Maybe you’re tired. Maybe you’re bored with your own habits. Or maybe there’s something you actually need to write about, and you’ve been quietly avoiding it.
Two questions worth sitting with: “What am I avoiding?” and “What am I tired of?” The answers often point straight at the next song.
A 20-minute quick-start
If you’d like to try all this right now, here’s a simple exercise that pulls it together.
- Notice (10 minutes). List everything you noticed in the last 24 hours. Conversations, objects, weather, a look on someone’s face, a sign by the side of the road. No filtering. Aim for at least 20 things.
- Pick the most ordinary one. Not the most interesting. The most ordinary.
- Find the angle (2 minutes). Run it through the four questions: who’s telling it, what’s the moment, what’s surprising, what bigger thing does it point to?
- Write (8 minutes). Draft a verse or a chorus with the editor switched off. Don’t stop, don’t fix.
- Keep it. Put it somewhere safe, whether you love it or not. It doesn’t have to be good today. It just has to exist.
Remember, it’s never been easier to make songs. Generic lyrics can be produced in seconds, and words that sound like anyone could have written them are quickly becoming cheap.
What isn’t cheap is the detail only you noticed, the angle only you would take, the moment only you lived. I think that’s where a songwriter’s real worth sits now, and it’s only going to matter more from here.
So paying attention isn’t just a cure for being stuck. It’s becoming the heart of what makes our work worth hearing at all.
The ideas were never gone
The world hasn’t run out of songs, and it never will. When it feels like there’s nothing to write about, the material is still there. The path to it has just been blocked by judgement, fear, rules, distraction, or the quiet belief that everyday life isn’t worth singing about.
So build a practice of noticing. Generate freely and judge later. Give yourself permission to write the silly song, the small song, the song in someone else’s voice. Do that for long enough and the problem flips. Instead of nothing to write about, you’ll have more ideas than you’ll ever have time to finish.
Here’s my challenge to you: write something small today, about the most ordinary thing you can find.
Turn the ordinary into the extraordinary… You might be surprised where it takes you.
