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jar by the door" ('Eleanor Rigby'). Effective language is not always about an image. In the line "I hear him before I
go to sleep, and focus on the day that's been', ('Man With The Child In His Eyes') the word "focus" is crucial for
evoking the reality of what is described. With "I know I'll often stop and think about them' ('In My Life') the crucial
word is the verb "stop": it is not only that he will think about the past – he will stop and think.
The most common imagery in popular song is meteorological: the weather. Think of clichès like "winds of change",
"my tears fell down like rain", "swept away by a flood", "like a raging sea", "life is a desert without you'', etc. And a
great many songs have weather in their titles: 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore', 'Heatwave', 'Good Day
Sunshine', 'You Are The Sunshine Of My Life', 'Blues Skies Are Around The Corner', 'I Wish It Would Rain',
'Blame It On The Rain', 'I Love A Rainy Night', 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head', 'Here Comes The Rain
Again',, 'I Wish It Would Rain Down', 'Rain', 'Just Walking In The Rain', 'It Never Rains In Southern California',
'Only Happy When It Rains', 'Laughter In The Rain'. As a universal experience, the weather is something to which
everyone can relate. Amateur songs tend to be dominated by weather images. If this is true of your lyrics, try
banning them for a while. If you must use weather images, then find a new angle or twist.
The other common group of images is drawn from nature: sun, moon, stars, seas, rivers, oceans, lakes, deserts,
woods, forests, rocks, sand, stone, jewels, fields, fire, etc. 'Annie's Song' somehow gets just about all of them in. You
will find this kind of imagery in numbers such as 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For', 'Ain't No Mountain
High Enough', 'In A Big Country' and 'Fields Of Fire'. Such images tend to go with generalized and often
exaggerated emotions – we're talking MOR ballads and stadium rock. If the music and/or the performer is not
suitably larger-than-life, then it can be unconsciously funny. The skeptic's response to the dramatically titled 'Where
Were You When The Storm Broke?' is the facetious "phoning a plumber instead of hiding under the table'.
In terms of their overall style, lyrics such as 'Both Sides Now', 'MacArthur Park', 'If You Could Read My Mind',
'Windmills Of Your Mind' and 'Unchained Melody' either aspire to be poetry or use words and imagery in quite an
extravagant way. At the opposite extreme are songs whose imagery is drawn from the mucky detail and nitty-gritty
of everyday life. Lyricists like Jarvis Cocker (Pulp), Morrissey (The Smiths), and Paul Weller (with The Jam)
consciously seek out the everyday and find poetry in the unheroic. The image "looking like something that the cat
brought in" ('Invisible Sun') is effective because it is drawn from colloquial speech. In songs such as 'That's
Entertainment', 'Suzanne', 'Kayleigh' and Dylan's 'Sara', images can be specific yet somehow, paradoxically, attain
universality.
Try applying a set of images to a theme that would not normally be thought of in those terms – this can be especially
effective in a love song, where less obvious "cooler" imagery can imply a depth of passion beneath.
Mini-Dictionary of Pop Clichès
These words and phrases are threadbare and should be used with caution, humour or irony:
Little girl, little miss, blue jeans, forever, body, fantasy, reality, hearts that beat like a drum, sorrow that cuts like a knife, winds of change, love deep as the ocean, all night long, angel, baby, fire/desire, no matter what (they say), set me
free, swallow my pride, right from the start, out on the streets, standing in the rain, end of time, shines like the sun, walk the line, going