Story-First Songwriting

✅ Stop guessing if your lyrics work. Learn story-first songwriting and turn every idea into music-ready lyrics with a proven, repeatable system. Join our community: Story-First Songwriting on Skool.👉 ⁠skool.com/songwriting/about⁠
You can stack beautiful lines on top of one another, ... and still walk away with no song.Today we're breaking down "In Like a Lion" from Greg Amici's Tragicomic, and it's a a godd example to show the gap between writing well and telling a story. This song is full of genuinely strong lines.And yet it doesn't work as a story.Here's what you will discover:writing good lines and writing a story are two different skills. You can be great at one and still be missing the other.We'll walk through what "In Like a Lion" gets right, what's actually missing, and the four checks you can run on your own drafts right now to catch this trap before you're stuck with a beautiful travel diary instead of a song.If you've ever polished a line to perfection only to realize your song still feels hollow, this one's for you.

✅ Stop guessing if your lyrics work. Learn story-first songwriting and turn every idea into music-ready lyrics with a proven, repeatable system. Join our community: Story-First Songwriting on Skool.👉 ⁠skool.com/songwriting/about⁠
What happens when your listener can't follow what you mean?Because you're writing is too clever for them?In "Greenwood," there's a killer opening that hooks you instantly. But then the song spends the rest of its time being clever instead of clear.And that's when listeners skip a song.We break down what happens when cleverness wins over clarity, how it kills your story, and the two-question test you can run on your own songs right now to make sure your clever lines actually work for your song instead of against it.

✅ Stop guessing if your lyrics work. Learn story-first songwriting and turn every idea into music-ready lyrics with a proven, repeatable system. Join our community: Story-First Songwriting on Skool.👉 ⁠skool.com/songwriting/about⁠
What's the difference between a song that keeps building pressure and a song that actually tells a story?"Junky Eyes" has everything you'd expect. A clear want. Rising stakes. Pressure that climbs. But something critical is missing, and that's why the song does not go anywhere.In this breakdown, we spot the gap between escalation and a real story.You'll learn what a crisis actually is, why it matters, and how to catch this mistake in your own lyrics before it kills your song.

✅ Stop guessing if your lyrics work. Learn story-first songwriting and turn every idea into music-ready lyrics with a proven, repeatable system. Join our community: Story-First Songwriting on Skool.👉 ⁠skool.com/songwriting/about⁠
More about Greg Amici: gregamici.com/He Was Silent for Sixteen Years ...Greg Amici was mid-set at a major festival when something went wrong with his voice. What a doctor found afterward closed one chapter and opened a long detour. Screenwriting. Acting. A master's degree in literature. Sixteen years where he was sure the music was finished for good.Then a small favor for a friend changed his mind about all of it.There's one moment in this conversation that made me speechless. Long before the comeback, in the early 2000's, Greg was standing a few feet from a New Jersey band nobody had heard of yet, on the word of a friend whose face you'd probably recognize from TV. You'd know the band now. Nobody did then.We also get into the thing that makes Greg's songs work, and it cuts against almost everything you've been told about writing characters. He explains why he does it on purpose, and he pulls in two names you'd never expect to see in the same sentence to back himself up.Watch the full conversation in the video, then drop into the comments and tell us what you loved most about it.

✅ Stop guessing if your lyrics work. Learn story-first songwriting and turn every idea into music-ready lyrics with a proven, repeatable system. Join our community: Story-First Songwriting on Skool.👉 ⁠skool.com/songwriting/about⁠
Want a fast way to catch a supposed "story"-song that was never going to work?Ask one question. Do the people in your song want the same thing the same way? Today we're on track four of Tragicomic, "Girl Next Door," and it delivers one of the most useful lessons in all of story-first songwriting:When two people want the same thing, in the same way, the song has nowhere to go. It can only tell you how things are.In this breakdown of the song "Girl Next Door", you'll learn what conflict really means, why it's the engine under every story-first song, and a simple two question test you can run on your own drafts before you pour hours into a song that won't go anywhere. Let me know in the comments below what your take on the song is. 👇