Where do ideas come from?

Who knows. I've had some of my best while I've been doing something mindless, like ironing, showering, or washing dishes (yes I do those things, despite rumors to the contrary).

In Nashville songwriting circles, "ideas" are those unique phrase turns, exploded clichés, and "wish I'd thought of that" moments. There are a million of them, and they go from the ridiculous to the sublime.

An old lost friend of mine, Nashville songwriter Rick Giles, teamed up with Eddie Rabbitt to write "I Love A Rainy Night." What made that an idea worth using? The answer is that it gave the songwriters something that they felt they could expand upon--and other ideas that supported it. It's simple, but if you listen to the song, you can almost see them sitting in a room with a couple of guitars or a piano, thinking of all the reasons they loved a rainy night. It spoke to them, and they were able to make it speak to us.

An idea for a songwriter has to either be unique, or has to be something that inspires them to explain it in a unique or new way. "Beer for my Horses"? Now that's unique. How about "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than have frontal lobotomy?" It's Five O'clock Somewhere, if I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?, she's got to be somebody's baby, Magaritaville, Lord have mercy on the frozen man, I've got friends in low places--and all the lyrics buried deeper in well-written songs. One of my favorite ideas was from Paul Simon (despite its musician-oriented focus), "I was underneath the stars, playing my guitar, just thankin' the Lord for my fingers."

I have a few tricks for coming up with ideas, but it is going to depend on you as to how you use them. Different phrases will speak to me than will speak to you. It's what gets your creative juices flowing.

When I'm dry of ideas, I do a lot of reading. Sting used to read the classics--even the Bible, though he's not very religious. I used to read a lot of self-help stories (and not just about sex) in women's magazines, because I thought it helped me develop a more sensitive approach to my writing. It worked pretty well, too.

One day I was walking by a bookshelf at a savings and loan where I worked. There were a bunch of old, out of print books on the shelf just for effect. I read "Give Sorrow Words" on the spine of one of them. I had to write the song, and I never read the book. Another was an article about women fighting abuse and rape. It was called "Take Back the Night." I used it in a totally different way, but what a great phrase.

Another source of ideas can be your own vision. What sort of title would look good on a CD cover? When you come up with the title, do you see a video or pictures in your mind? It helps you come up with ideas that have gravitas, bold and weighty.

I've been talking about mostly titles, but there are ideas deeper inside the lyrics, too. My song, Man on the Moon--written years before REM's--has some okay examples:

"I'm makin' love to you and you're here, but you're gone
It seems like we're both in tune, but we're singing different songs"

That's a real oldie for me, but in context of the time and the song, it was pretty good.

I've discovered a really interesting source of ideas recently. Horse names. Go to the paper right now and look at the section on local horse races. A lot of effort went into naming these horses, and I'll bet you'll get some ideas just reading them.

Every once in a while, I'll tune in Delilah's syndicated romantic request show on the radio, just to hear people's stories. A few months ago I was driving home late, and a guy came on the line. She asked him to tell her about his girlfriend. He said "If God could sleep, he'd dream of this woman" because she was so beautiful. I had the chorus written before I pulled into the driveway (see www.RyanRocks.com/videos.htm).