The indie songwriter may be deep in a tug of war deciding between branching out and going against the mainstream with complete creative freedom and experimentalism with song topics or trying to appeal to mass audiences with radio-ready songs and widely relatable song subject matter.

Deciding between the two paths has forever weighed heavily in the creative choices of songwriters throughout history. We’ll take a deep dive into how indie songwriters can pick song topics to write about in their music careers and different ways of thinking about each approach.

Be observant of the outside world

As a starting point when picking song topics to write about, songwriters can practice the simple act of just noticing.

It’s that simple.

Notice what draws your attention from the outside world and give yourself a time duration - say, three days.

You can notice sounds from the natural world around you when you’re out and about for your evening runs or the sounds of the bustling neighborhood. Or perhaps you’ll notice someone who catches your attention at the cafe you visit in the mornings.

Or maybe you’ll be drawn to concerns for certain situations out in your community, like the way a beggar approaches you on the street, or the way someone irksome catcalls you.

Make a note - on your phone, or a notebook. This is all about noticing what you’re interested in.

There’s a reason these small things are catching our attention. Let’s get deeper into these topics.

Be observant of your inner world

So, you’ve noticed a particular trend that catches your attention. Let’s try and figure out why now.

What are the characteristics of these experiences that capture your attention or the thoughts that play out in your mind afterward?

Explore those emotional nuances of your experiences - if need be, look up some vocabulary to describe the whole range of emotions to help you decide what emotions are sparked during your experiences.

Notice how the emotions develop or change as your think about these experiences that grab your attention and make you think.

Notice if any bodily sensations come over you during these experiences - maybe that catcaller gets you nauseous or seeing the sunrise makes you feel pretty light, energized, and hopeful of the day ahead.

Ask yourself why these experiences are so impressionable on you - perhaps they remind you of certain memories and there is an important experience from years ago that comes to mind when you have these experiences.

You’re beginning to define your values by seeing how they come up during these experiences or how some experiences might even cross certain boundaries for you.

That’s a signal that certain experiences and values are deeply significant for you and strike a chord for you.

We’ll get back to this sense of reminiscing soon.

For now, we’ve gotten specific about topics that resonate with us. Now we’ll have to decide on how specific and high-fidelity the topic should be.

Your songwriting is personal to you and it's important that you find topics that you care about. Be sincere and your audience will gravitate to you.

Fostering accessibility

You can very well get highly specific in your songwriting and get your lyrics to explicitly retell these very personal experiences.

You can even go ahead and include field recordings or samples to create explicit collages that sonically illustrate your experiences. This could be a fantastic exercise in experimenting with creative expression in your songwriting.

But it might not be the most accessible for the widest possible audience.

On the other hand, you might cook up an ultra-creative marketing campaign to acclimate your audiences to your experimental deep dives until your marketing hype creates space for your audiences to find something relatable to your songwriting topics.

The Songwriting Tip I Wish I Learned Sooner

The common denominator

To appeal to a wider audience, you’ll have to be in tune with cultural trends and what’s important for your target audience right now. That may very well mean extracting the common denominator of current events in the regional or international news right now, and empathizing with what social concerns are troubling most of the population to influence your lyric writing.

Spot and notice what type of songwriting gets traction and which musical structures grab attention - that may mean simple chord sequences, no funky key changes, modulations, or a maximum of just one, or even a very similar-sounding song to your previous repertoire.

Complicating your songwriting with overdone compositional flare can be distracting and less relatable for a wider audience.

If you’re looking to create songs that are most accessible to the widest audience, that might not mean making the most innovative songs.

Remember what we mentioned earlier about reminiscing? You want to understand the power of nostalgia.

If a song reminds people of a nostalgic feeling from the past or some of the world’s favorite artists from the past, then you want to tap into that nostalgic quality to strike a chord with the widest possible audience.

What’s different and new won’t easily be acceptable - what goes against the flow will stick out like a sore thumb.

While innovation and novelty may strike up a conversation, that’s a whole different policy. What’s easily recognizable will be more easily digested.

Focus on mainstream relatability while striking a balance for your innovative creations by weaving them through subtle touches so that they don’t steal the show. That can mean recording a couple of vocal layers into nostalgic arrangements but using autotune to modernize the production to sprinkle in some experimental touches. Or, using sound design to touch up your percussive and rhythmic beats.

Deciding on trajectories

Deciding on the next steps within topics for your songwriting has to first resonate with what you want for yourself. You have to have clearly defined goals and the steps will then reveal themselves, whether that be deciding on challenging yourself to be as innovative as possible and outside your comfort zone.

Or deciding to try to create something more mainstream, something with more resonating lyrics, or your take on what's been done before. No shame in referring to classics or even what has already been done!