Ten titles before one song

Most people name a song last. You write it, you generate it, you like it, and then you scroll back through the lyric for a phrase that could pass as a title.

That is naming a song after whatever line happened to survive, which is a strange way to decide what it was about.

The title is the line the listener has to be able to type

Berklee's piece on hooks puts the title where it belongs: it is "usually the title of the song, repeating throughout the chorus and sitting in the most prominent positions of the first or last line".

That is not only a craft observation. Somebody who hears your song once and wants it again has to search for something, and what they search for is the phrase that repeated. If the most memorable line in your chorus is not the title, you have made them work for it.

Mastering.com's chorus guide recommends the same slot from the other direction: "It helps to make the main lyric the last line. You hear this especially in pop music."

Write ten before you write one

Here is the method, and it is ours rather than anything the sources prescribe. Before the lyric exists, write ten titles for the song you think you are about to write. Twenty minutes, no editing, no judging.

Clock Out
Badge on the Desk
Somebody Else's Chair
I Left the Good Pen
Thirty Years of Tuesdays
The Lights Go Off Behind Me
Nobody Learns My Name Now
Last One Out
They Kept the Mug
I Was Good at This

Nine of those are throwaway and that is the point. Titles are the cheapest thing you can make, and the tenth one is usually better than the first because the obvious ones had to be written down before they got out of the way.

Then pick one and write to it. "I Left the Good Pen" is five syllables, sayable, and specific to a person who has cleared a desk. It also decides things: the song is about the small object rather than the thirty years, and the chorus now has a job.

The chorus knows what to do when the title exists

Without a title, a chorus tends to describe the situation:

[Chorus]
I am walking out the door for the last time
and nothing here will notice I have gone

Eleven syllables and 10, no repetition, nothing to search for. With the title chosen first:

[Chorus]
I left the good pen
I left the good pen
in the drawer for whoever comes next
I left the good pen

Five, five, nine, five. The title lands three times, first and last, and the one line that is not the title explains it. That shape is the one described in a chorus is repetition plus contrast, and a chosen title is what makes it easy to write. Nothing in that chorus needed inspiration. It needed a decision made twenty minutes earlier.

What makes a title survive the chorus

Short enough to sing, which in practice means about four to six syllables. Sayable without explanation, so no proper nouns nobody knows and no phrase that needs the verse to make sense. And specific enough that it could not be the title of a hundred other songs, which rules out most of the abstract nouns.

The test is whether you can say it out loud to somebody and have them not ask a follow-up question. "I Left the Good Pen" passes. "Thirty Years of Tuesdays" passes and promises a different song. "Last One Out" is fine and a thousand songs are already called it.

Tip

Keep the nine you did not use. Titles do not expire, and the one that was wrong for this song is often the whole idea for the next one.

What a title cannot do for you

It will not write the song. A strong title with nothing behind it produces a chorus that repeats a good phrase four times and two verses that are still deciding what happened.

It also matters less than this article implies if nobody is meant to find the song. If you are making music for yourself, searchability is not a constraint, and the argument shrinks back to the craft one, which is that a title gives the chorus something to be about.

And it can trap you. A title you like more than the song will bend the lyric toward it, and you end up defending a phrase instead of finishing a verse. When that happens, the title is the thing to cut, which is easier when there are nine more on the page.

Before your next song, spend twenty minutes writing ten titles and pick the one that decides the most.