A good way to come up with song ideas is to start simple, and then slowly expand on your initial thoughts. Start with a word, or a short phrase just to get things on paper. Things like “airport,” “a neon sign” or “porcelain.” You might be saying “those aren’t ideas for songs!” You’re right. They’re not… Yet. Let’s vamp on them a bit.

For example, let’s start with the word “airport.” The best stories are typically going to be about people, so start to think about how people relate to an airport. Who’s there? Where are they going? What do they do there? Ask yourself questions about what’s going on there, to get your creative gears cranking.

When I start to ask myself these questions about an airport, it makes me think about a guy who’s working at the airport. He’s seeing a thousands of people pass him by every day who are traveling to all different parts of the world, or coming in from all different parts of the world. He shows up every day and stands at the world’s gate, but never gets to actually go anywhere else himself. That’s the start of a song idea. There’s certainly a story to be told about that employee.

Now that we have this idea about a guy working at the airport and seeing all these different world travelers pass him by, we can even flip the perspective. A separate idea would be to look at the view of one of the world travelers who’s constantly bouncing around the globe. Someone like George Clooney’s character in the movie “Up in the Air.” How does he look at the airport employee at each airport he arrives in? Maybe he thinks that while they’re technically all different people at every airport he arrives in, he sees them as exactly the same, because they’re stagnant, unlike him.

Another phrase we came up with was “neon sign.” We can ask ourselves questions about that. Why is it there? How bright is it? Who sees it? When I start to ask myself these questions I think about a fading neon sign. A fading neon sign could be a nice metaphor for someone past their prime. Or it could be about someone who never reached their prime in the first place. Both valid starting point for a song, with a nice metaphor built in from the start.

When you’re taking this approach, these are some questions you can start with. Of course you’ll want to come up with your own questions as well, to really dive deep and pull a story from the object you came up with.

Who sees it/him/her?

Who interacts with it/him/her and what way?

What emotions does it/he/she make people feel?

What are its/his/her characteristics? What makes it/him/her unique?

What else has similar characteristics?

When no one else is around, what’s it/he/she doing/thinking?

Focus your questions on what can create a story and involve people in an interesting way, and you’re bound to have a ton of great ideas.