Stick With Song Ideas That Stick in Your Head

If a riff or tune pesters your inner psyche, pay attention pronto

Sometimes, songwriting feels like being a lousy magician. You only know part of the trick. You’re not sure how it ends. No rabbits appear. Only words disappear.

It’s a constant battle to find inspiration to match an idea with a musical progression. Either one can come first. Melodies tend to arise when noodling on the guitar. But a phrase or title usually titillates my brain and settles inside my head for a short stay.

That’s when you need to pay the most attention. The stickiness factor is a sign to follow a mental track to its end destination.

My muse rides a lot of trains of thought. I follow it every time. The better songs embed in your existence and bother you for a few days. Do not let go of this good fortune. Stop any other song projects and chase the muse down.

Here’s an example of how a song sticks in your head and forces you towards reaching an end product.

The Country Where I’m From

I play tennis. I watch tennis. I follow the sport.

Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, tennis players from both Russia and Belarus have been subjected to absurd restrictions. They cannot fly their home country flags. They cannot mention their native lands. The ATP and WTA, professional tennis organizations, treat them like war conspirators. Even the All England Club at Wimbledon, last year, banned their participation. What a virtue signaling joke!

To add to the embarrassment, Russian and Belarussian competitors occupy Top 10 spots in both the men’s and women’s game. In after match interviews, a Russian player responded with the phrase “in the country where I’m from” to highlight his early tennis experiences.

This sounded so surreal that the phrase stuck like mud in my mind. Nobody on the Tennis Channel would dare call out the hypocrisy of this awkward reference. Even tennis-oriented YouTubers cowered to the political game of whiting out Russian and Belarussian flags.

Imagine if all the USA players were targeted to hide the Stars and Stripes due to the invasion of Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan.

This is a disgrace, no matter what flag you fly. These are tennis professionals, sportsmen and sportswomen. They are not political pawns for cheap narrative points.

Pulling Out the Song Process

Some songs not only stick in your head, they stick in your craw.

The Country Where I’m From was born in the breathe of one odd moment. It soon became a fixture in my mind. For the song, I wanted to illustrate the clumsiness of the phrase and the dishonesty of the regulation.

A title phrase is a powerful elixir. It consumes your thoughts.

I use index cards to scribble out song ideas that both stick and linger. It’s an informal technique to capture the flood of words and chords sloshing around in my head. Here is an example from the song the Quiet Fear Inside:

Song titles are hard to forget. Song melodies fade into the ether in an instant. As soon as you paint a few lyric lines, a chorus or a verse structure, hit the record button on your smartphone. I’ve lost a few good song melodies by waiting till the next day to record.

Here is the original mutterings of The Country Where I’m From, recorded with just a few right sounding chords and a chorus idea:

Though this song is still in progress, its stickiness got it out of my head, on paper and recorded within a few days. Sometimes the final lyrics and song structure take a bit longer to reach satisfaction.

However long it takes, all the elements are preserved. That’s the beauty of paying prompt attention to song ideas that stick in your head.

The final version of The Country Where I’m From is scheduled to be ready in May.

As a preview, here’s the first verse and chorus:

There's no flag to fly
Only an empty space
There's no good reason why
To erase my birthplace

I can't say
You can't say
It's a shame to say
The country where I'm from

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