HOW TO WRITE YOUR FIRST SONG

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

Week 1 Playlist
These are all songs that explore the theme of place

Our Town  Iris Dement

“Seemingly composed at the writer’s point of departure, this is a sort of personal
history of place: from a first kiss to motherhood, and on to the death of parents…
Iris certainly crams a lot in! Reflective and wistful it contains lots of imagery that
could be attributed to any town…and that interplay between personal and universal
is often a way of getting a song to speak to a wide audience.”

Chicago  Frank Sinatra

“A more upbeat homage to place in this song and the music perhaps works harder
to encapsulate the sense of place than the words - through the beat and rhythm
Chicago is revealed as exciting, bustling, and yes ‘toddlin’. The use of real street
names brings us closer to the actual place.”

My Hometown  Bruce Springsteen

“Another song that takes it starting point from a particular point in the writer’s
personal history, yet manages to attain a sense of universality. The song is also
written from the vantage point of adulthood, looking back in time…a relatively
common technique.”

Baltimore  Randy Newman

“In contrast to the earlier wistful, nostalgic portraits of place, this is a more gritty
tribute. The chorus is repetitive and has the character of a sing-along, despite the
bleak words, a sort of irony that Newman often works into his songs.”

The Suburbs  Arcade Fire

“There is more ambiguity with this lyric. The suburbs are revealed as a place of
decay and loss, but the words open up into a chorus which centres attention on
‘moving past the feeling’…but meaning here has to be constructed in the mind of the
listener since it is unclear what this refers to.”

© University of Sheffield 1
Welcome Home Son  Radical Face
“The sense of homecoming is the central theme of this song. Note the use of imagery
in the lyric writing, and the way that sentiments seem to be kept deliberately vague.
Is the sense of homecoming also one of redemption? We’ll never know for sure…”

Oh My Sweet Carolina  Ryan Adams

“This lyric is rich in detail about place but despite the sense of love for Carolina that
permeates the words, the central hook encapsulates a different feeling, ‘what
compels me to go…’ This introduces a quite fascinating dichotomy –if you love it so
much Ryan, why don’t you just stay there?”

Sweet Home Alabama  Lynyrd Skynyrd

“Surely one of the most infamous songs about place, a response to Neil Young’s
‘Southern man’ - a sort of musical debate about the virtues and values of America’s
deep south.”

California Dreamin’  The Mamas & the Papas

“‘Place’ can be big or small, a village, an estate, a town, a country or in this case, a
whole state. The construct is straightforward but not one that we have met so far on
the playlist - the writer is dreaming of the sights and sounds, and sun of California
on a winter’s day: summer viewed through the lens of winter.”

Grimsby  Elton John

“A song about Grimsby? Yes, although I’ve never been 100% sure of what he means
by the line ‘I’ve loved every sluice in your harbour…’ Perhaps a candidate for the
most unlikely song lyric on this week’s playlist?”

Going to a Town  Rufus Wainwright

“From the relatively small matters of Grimsby harbour to Wainwright’s reflection
on something bigger; a lot bigger both in terms of the place he describes and the
aspirations of the words. The most ambitious lyric on this week’s playlist, this song
explores the values of a whole society, and Wainwright cleverly decides to address
the song to the country as though it were a person, lending the song a deeply felt
and personal tone.”

Goodbye England  Laura Marling

“This lyric is like a postcard – conversational, personal and intimate. There’s not so
much in the way of direct reference to place, but the main conceit make the listener
picture England when it’s covered in a blanket of snow. So, note that a lyric doesn’t
have to be consistently focused on just one thing - it can roam like a camera from
the personal to the general, to internal feelings to external observations.”

© University of Sheffield 2
England  PJ Harvey
“It’s interesting that the mode of delivery makes such a dramatic effect on the way a
song is interpreted. In the hands of another singer, perhaps in another style, this
could feel like quite a nationalist song. In Harvey’s hands however, it feels desperate
and ever so slightly unhinged.”

Waterloo Sunset  The Kinks

“A song lyric that has a filmic quality, not simply owing to the fact that it references
two of the biggest movie stars f the 1960’s (can you name them?). This is otherwise
one of the best hymns to London ever set to music. References to the stations, rivers,
and yes sunsets-note how the imagery draws the listener in to the song and the
personal once again gets explored via postcard-style sentiments.”

New York State of Mind  Billy Joel

“A love letter to New York, that one can imagine listening to whilst on that iconic
Greyhound bus. The construct here is to compare the big apple with other great
places visited by the writer.”

Bleecker Street  Simon and Garfunkel

“Simon and Garfunkel’s most famous ‘place song’ is probably ‘America’, so perhaps
this song will be less familiar. The lyric makes use of some poetic imagery, but why
this street is so special to the writer is never fully expressed. What’s so special about
this street Paul?”

Fire Island  Village People

“Is this proof that you don’t need to be subtle or profound to evoke a sense of
attachment to a place in a song? For those that don’t know, Fire Island is in New
York, and aside from the menacing undergrowth it sounds like a fun place to be. A
song written to be played whilst en route to the actual place referenced in the song
perhaps…”

Down Under  Men at Work

“This song rhymes ‘Kombi’ with ‘Zombie’ so it’s ok by me. It’s also the only song I
know to feature the words ‘chunder’ and ‘vegemite’. Again, ambiguity is a feature of
the words…what we are running from or taking shelter from is never clear, but it
still manages to be an infectious hymn to the antipodes.”

© University of Sheffield 3
History of a Boring Town  Less Than Jake
“This song seems to take off where Squeeze ( a English band from the 1970’s and
80’) left off in that it gives us a flavour of what it’s like to not be so enamoured with
the place you’ve been brought up in. I wonder how popular this approach will be on
this course!”

This Town  The Go Go’s

“An invitation to litter your town...with what it’s not immediately clear, but it’s hard
not to sing along.”

Shine the Light  Reverend and the Makers

“And finally, this song is not about place but features here because it’s from one of
our guest contributors of the week, John McClure.”

© University of Sheffield 4