Song Club #53: Weirdly Specific
Allowing listeners to see you in your strangeness
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Cameron Winter’s Heavy Metal fully captured my mind this week. I became obsessed when I heard ‘Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed)’ on Monday for the first time, and I haven’t really stopped listening to it and the rest of the record since.
What I love most about Heavy Metal is the weirdness of its specificity. Specificity alone is a powerful tool in songwriting. Phoebe Bridgers lyrics are a recent example of how the hyper-specific can be truly impactful.
But weird specificity—letting strange mental images through, or framing reality in such a way it seems absurd—can be magical. At its best it allows listeners to see you in your strangeness and bring their own.
This week’s ‘Entry Points’ are all anchored in ways to find your own weird specificity.
I hope you enjoy the exploration!
Lucy
‘Entry Points’
#1
Uncanny fragments: Think of a recent dream or a moment from your life that felt oddly cinematic. Capture it in a single, vivid image. How can you push the strangeness further?
#2
Found language: Eavesdrop on the world around you—half-heard conversations, bizarre ad copy, a weird phrase from an old book. Take something that catches your ear and build a song (or a line) around it.
#3
Warp the frame: Take a totally mundane experience (making coffee, walking home, opening an email) and describe it as if it’s from the perspective of an alien, a ghost, or a medieval poet.
#4
Collage writing – Take two completely unrelated ideas, images, or objects and force them together in a lyric. What happens when “a vending machine” meets “a lost love” or “a thunderstorm” meets “a childhood pet”? Let the clash create something unexpected.
#5
Prophecy mode: write a lyric describing an event that hasn’t happened yet, but in extreme detail—what people are wearing, the exact smell in the air, the way the light hits. It could be a real future moment you anticipate or something entirely surreal.
What’s a personal image, phrase, or detail that has stuck with you for years, even if you’re not sure why? How might it find its way into a song?