User:Hyperbole/HowTo:Write a Death Cab for Cutie song

All aboard the U.S.S. Gibbard! I make learning fun!

Hi, it's me, Ben Gibbard, the songwriter and lead singer for Death Cab for Cutie. You might know me from such hit singles as "I Will Possess Your Heart," "Your Heart is an Empty Room," and other exciting songs about your heart.

I'm here today to share with you the secret to my success. You see, when I started writing songs, I really didn't know what I was doing. Critics tore my work to shreds, calling it "evocative" and "creative" and "groundbreaking," which are all euphemisms for "shitty." My record label was some barking-dog thing. It was a sad state of affairs.

Fortunately, in the year 2001, I created The Ben Gibbard Songwriting Method, and Atlantic Records signed me just three short years later. And now, when I go to Whole Foods, I can buy all the hummus I can eat. There's no limit to how much hummus I can purchase. It's true: at any given moment, I am entirely full of hummus.

Wouldn't you like to be like me? Well, you can! Just follow these very simple steps.

The Ben Gibbard Songwriting Method

The Ben Gibbard Songwriting Method is a simple, x-step process:

1. Look around.

Like a failed relationship, this lamp doesn't provide enough light to see clearly. And there's a song!

Glance around until you see something. Do you see something? Good.

Now, make an extended metaphor between that thing and a failed relationship. It's easy! I've done it dozens of times. I've made metaphors between a failed relationship and a glove compartment, a bed, a bird, a pair of wet glasses, a bruise, a suntan, and even math problems!

Once, the other guys in the band bet me that I couldn't write a song if I didn't have random crap lying around everywhere. I showed them! After twelve minutes in an empty room, I had written "Your Heart Is an Empty Room"!

2. Fill in short lines by repeating a word.

I've found this trick to make songwriting so much easier: if you have space to fill, just repeat the last thing you said several times. For example, if you're writing a song that's a metaphor between a freeway and a failed relationship, is "hide your bad habits underneath the patio" too short a line? No problem! Just expand it to "hide your bad habits underneath the patio patio patio patio"!

If you're writing a metaphor between bad dental work and a failed relationship, is "and refused to fall" a little too short? That's an easy one - just change it to "and refused to fall to fall-all-all-all"!

Did you write the lyric "and drove to a cemetery on a hill" and run out of things to say? I can fix that, too - try "and drove to a cemetary on a hill on a hill!" It makes it sound like the hill that the cemetary is on is, itself, on a hill, but hardly anyone will notice.

3. You simply cannot make too many references to the heart.

There is no word too cliché or over-the-top for a song. Every song should contain at least one grandiose noun like sorrow, love, or soul. Extra points for using all three: a line like "The sorrow I felt when your soul died with our love" is tops. Or, if that's too short, "The sorrow I felt when your soul died with our love, our love, our love, our love, our love."

But especially - and this is important - the word "heart" should be in every song. If you write a song and find that you have omitted the word "heart," just write a pointless bridge to squeeze it in. When I finished writing "Crooked Teeth," it just looked unfinished, until I tacked on a bridge declaring myself a war of head versus heart. Three grandiose nouns in a six-word phrase. I'm rather proud of that one.

See Also

• Death Cab for Cutie