What Makes a Great Song?

What makes a great praise/worship song?

It's said a great song is a song people want to sing,

a song they can't forget.

But what makes a song one we can't forget?

I could talk about song structure, melody patterns, or rhyme schemes,

but I don't believe these alone make a song great.

What I am talking about is that little something

that sets one song out from another.

We have all experienced that song that hits us “right between the eyes”.

That “ah ha” song. What makes that song “jump out” and grab us?

I believe, what makes a song grab us is not the “technical”

aspects(melody, lyric, structure), although the song must be

“solid” in its parts.

I believe it is not the “intellectual” aspects of the song,

how it affects our minds, thinking.

What I believe makes a song “that” song is how it affects

our feelings, our memories. It is when something in the song,

the melody or the lyric, strikes something in the listener's emotions.

It is when this happens that the song starts to become

alive in that person. When people can feel something in a song that

makes them relive something in themselves, this is when it

becomes a song that they want to hear, feel, again and again.

The more deeply a song can make people feel the more that

song grows to be loved.

It is our calling a songwriters to endeavor to connect with the

memories, feelings of the people. It is not enough for us to

write a well crafted song, if it does not have life. It is more

than a soupy song. More than just feelings, a great song must be

both well crafted and a song with feelings of life. A great song will

bring the listener into the feelings of the writer, with the listener's

own memories, feelings, connecting them.

So, what makes a great praise/worship song?

It is when we, as songwriters, take the Truth of God's Word

and combine it with life feelings and set it to a well crafted melody,

that we bring our worshipers into a living experience of our songs.


Is there a song you have been touched by?
Share what feelings it brought up.

Perry G Walp
soundclick.com/perrygwalp
facebook.com/perrygwalp