How to Write a Love Song

And Why You Should

I’ve never been very good at writing love songs. In twenty years of writing and recording music, I’ve often tried, but I always end up singing about death and outer space. Maybe it’s cynicism or just cowardice, but I could never resist adding a little bitter with the sweet.

The more I listen to modern music, though, the more I realize it isn’t just me. Over the course of the 21st century, the love song has become, if not a lost art, then at least a fading art. Somewhere along the way, we started doing it all wrong.

This is a manifesto, then, on a few ways to do it right.

A little backstory: in 2023, I began a project that required a good, old fashioned, no gimmicks, no tricks love song. The idea came from these seventeen miniature, leather-bound volumes of Shakespeare I found in a used bookstore.

Each one came with an inscription inside, in beautiful calligraphy, from Ralph to Evelyn in the year 1914.

I decided to write their love story. I knew I’d need a big show stopper for the album that became 2023’s Juliet, something that would express not just Ralph’s depth of feeling for Evelyn, but the magic of love itself. I had this title kicking around, “Ain’t It a Beautiful World?” and I decided to use it. But how do you write a love song?

Luckily, by this point, I had been studying music deeply for two decades, picking songs apart to see how and why they work. And, I had some big feelings about the state of modern songwriting and what it was missing. I approached writing “Ain’t It a Beautiful World?” with these three tricks in mind.

One: Write from experience, but don’t write about only your experience.

A few years ago, two marketing professors conducted a fascinating study that found songs are more likely to be popular when they contain the word “you.” Not only that, the word must be the object of the sentence. So, for example, Billie Eilish’s “You really know how to make me cry when you give me those ocean eyes” doesn’t count. It’s a selfish lyric. She is the object of that sentence, not you.

Jonathan Berger, co-author of the study, explains: “When Whitney Houston is singing, ‘I Will Always Love You,’ we might be thinking about Whitney, and Whitney singing to Bobby, or Whitney singing to us. But what we actually find in our study is it causes us to think about, ‘This is really an amazing, romantic song. Who do I love?’ It helps us think of a close other in our own lives.”

In other words, it connects us not just to the singer, not just to the song, but to our own lives, to our own selves. It reminds us of the oneness of all beings, the ubiquity of love in a way that Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes” does not. (I don’t mean to pick on her. She’s a great artist. It’s just a useful example.)

Songwriters don’t connect in this way as well as they used to. There was a movement in the 1960s away from big, billboard songs to more personal meditations (over the course of five years, John Lennon went from “She Loves You” to “The Ballad of John and Yoko”), and over the next decades, songwriting only became more and more intensely personal. I think most artists, and maybe most listeners, viewed this as a positive change. I once did.

I don’t anymore.

We need connection. We need to speak to each other through song.

As I began to write “Ain’t It a Beautiful World?” I thought of my wife for inspiration, but I tried to make the lyrics about everyone. There’s a fine line between being specific and being relatable, and a love song must walk that line perfectly. I began:

It never felt like this before 
I never understood music or singing
I believed love songs were written for fools
'Til you came along and my heart started ringing

Yes, there’s a lot of “I,” in there, but the whole point of the line is you. At first, it felt too broad, maybe even corny. But, I told myself, that’s how love feels sometimes, and Ralph was a man in love. I let it stand.

Two: Lean into the feeling.

A love song should feel good. There has been a baffling rise in recent years of hit songs written in a minor key. Look at this chart from music-data guru Chris Dalla Riva. Apparently we all got really sad around 2005. There’s nothing inherently wrong with minor keys, and music should explore all emotions and textures, but damnit, sometimes you just want sunshine on a cloudy day.

For “Ain’t It a Beautiful World?” I picked the good old key of C major. I wanted lush strings and cinematic orchestration. I wanted the music to feel as overwhelming as love feels. More than that, I wanted to sing the song like a man in love. Here’s a voice memo I left myself with instructions:

Three: Write from a character’s point of view.

If you just can’t stop yourself from strumming in E minor or singing lyrics that only apply to you, try writing from someone else’s perspective. By writing from Ralph’s perspective, I was able to approach the love song in a whole different way, saying things I mean with all my heart but would have struggled to express on any other album. I think there’s a deeper meaning there: When we try to understand others, to reach others, we become more ourselves. Maybe that’s the reason reading fiction has been shown to increase empathy. It’s the beauty of being human.

If you’re a songwriter, I challenge you to be broad, be corny, be a fool in love. But please, write about me too.