Suzanne Lieurance

How “Say It Isn’t So” Started in the Swimming Pool

Yesterday, my husband and I were relaxing in our pool when the phrase “Say it isn’t so” popped into my head. I liked the sound of it and started wondering what kind of song might grow from those four words.

Before long, these lines came to me:

Word on the street is that you’re a big cheat,
And I’m the only one who doesn’t know.
But it’s hard to believe I’ve been so easy to deceive,
So come on, honey, say it isn’t so.

I said the lines out loud to my husband. At first, he didn’t seem so sure about them. I could see why. We were having a perfectly pleasant afternoon in the pool, and I had suddenly come up with a woman asking her man if he’d been cheating on her.

But I liked the lines. They had a rhythm I could hear, and they gave the woman in the song a problem she desperately wanted to resolve. So I went with them.

Once I had those opening lines, I began asking questions about her. What had she heard? Had she noticed anything herself? How could she ask him for the truth when she was still hoping the rumor was wrong?

That last question became especially useful. She couldn’t already know he’d cheated and still mean it when she asked him to say it wasn’t so. She needed to be caught between what she’d heard and what she wanted to believe. That gave me a direction for the rest of the song.

I’ve had song ideas come from all kinds of places, but this one began with a phrase that surfaced while I was doing nothing more than enjoying an afternoon with my husband. I repeated it, played with the sound of it, and followed the story it suggested.

Sometimes that’s enough to get a song started. This time, it was enough to get me out of the pool and working on “Say It Isn’t So.”

3 days ago | [YT] | 0

Suzanne Lieurance

Catch Me If You Can

If you listen to to my new song, Catch Me If You Can, and find yourself thinking, Hmm, this sounds familiar somehow, then you probably read The Gingerbread Man when you were a kid.

The other night the line, Run, Run as fast you can, you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man, kept playing over and over again in my head. So, I thought I'd try playing around with that line to see if I could come up with a fun country song and that's how Catch Me if You Can came about.

Where do you find inspiration for your stories, poems, songs, or art?

1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 0

Suzanne Lieurance

Run Away With Me

I wanted this song to show the guy's sense of urgency, so I thought it needed to be fast and give listeners the feeling of his old truck zooming down the highway. 

At the beginning of the song, he's trying to get her to run away with him, and we don't know why, but he seems to think they need to leave right away. 

I really liked the line, "Let's get in the truck, let's just go." 

This guy was tired of waiting. He wanted to get away.

1 month ago | [YT] | 1

Suzanne Lieurance

Nothing But Trouble in a Good Shirt

I thought Trouble in a Good Shirt sounded like a good start for a song, but it quickly changed to "Nothing But Trouble in a Good Shirt."

Doesn't this guy look like trouble in a good shirt?

Listen to the song, though, and you'll find out that he isn't the only person who is trouble in a good shirt.

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 0

Suzanne Lieurance

Sometimes a Song Doesn’t Need to Say That Much

As I’ve been writing more songs and listening to songs by other relatively new songwriters, I’ve started noticing something.

We sometimes try to put an awful lot into one song.

Maybe it comes from wanting the listener to understand the whole story. We want them to know who these people are, what happened before, why something happened, what happened next, and how everybody feels about all of it.

But lately I’ve been thinking about how some songs don’t need to cover nearly that much ground.

My song "Just Waiting for You" is a good example.

There really isn’t much of a story to explain.

Someone she loves has been sent away in the service, and she’s waiting for him to come home.

That’s it.

We don’t learn their whole history. We don’t know all the details of their relationship. We don’t follow him through his time away. There aren’t a lot of twists and turns.

The lyrics are simple because the idea is simple.

She loves him. She misses him. And she’s waiting for him.

Staying in One Place

I think what I like about this song is that it stays in one emotional place.

It doesn’t try to take the listener through an entire relationship in a few minutes.

And I’m beginning to notice how easy it is to do just the opposite when writing a song.

You start with one idea. Then you think the listener needs a little more background. Then another verse starts explaining something else. Before you know it, the song is covering months or years, several different events, and a whole range of emotions.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. Plenty of songs tell big stories.

But not every song has to.

Sometimes there’s enough in one moment.

The Story Can Be Bigger Than the Song

There’s obviously a much bigger story behind "Just Waiting for You."

Who are these two people?

How long have they been together?

Where has he been sent?

What is he experiencing while he’s gone?

What is she doing while she waits?

When is he coming home?

I don’t answer those questions in the song.

And I don’t think I need to.

The bigger story can exist without being told.

Maybe that’s part of what I’m noticing more and more about songs I enjoy. They don’t always give me everything. Sometimes they just let me step into one little part of someone’s life for a couple of minutes.

Simple Doesn’t Mean There’s Nothing There

The lyrics to "Just Waiting for You" are simple, but the feeling behind them isn’t.

Waiting for someone you love to come home carries plenty of emotion all by itself.

There’s loneliness in it.

There’s uncertainty.

There’s hope.

There’s love.

And there’s that strange feeling of life continuing normally when, for you, something important is missing.

None of that requires a complicated plot.

The situation already contains it.

Maybe that’s what I’m learning to appreciate about simpler songs.

They don’t necessarily have less to say.

Sometimes they simply stay with one thing long enough for us to feel it.

And "Just Waiting for You" is one of those songs for me.

This feels much closer to a personal observation about songwriting rather than a songwriting lesson.

1 month ago | [YT] | 0

Suzanne Lieurance

Behind the Song: We Were Never Gonna Work

When I started writing We Were Never Gonna Work, I already knew how I wanted the song to sound.

I wanted something dark and haunting. More than anything, I didn't want the song to be overproduced. I wanted the lyrics and the voice to carry most of the emotion, with the instrumentation adding just enough to create the mood.

So when I put the song into Suno, my style prompt called for modern country, a male singer, and cello as the only instrument.

Suno seems to have slipped a little percussion in there anyway—or maybe what I'm hearing is simply part of the mechanism Suno uses to keep the beat. Either way, the arrangement is still very sparse, and I like the effect.

A Song for a Small Room

As I listened to the finished song, I realized I could easily imagine it being performed in a place like the The Bluebird Cafe.

Not with a full band.

Just a male singer and a cello player in a small, intimate room.

That's the feeling I wanted.

There's nowhere for the song to hide in an arrangement like that. No big production. No wall of instruments. Just the voice, the cello, and the words.

And I think that suits this particular song.

Finding the Idea Behind the Lyrics

The chorus came first:

We were never gonna work,
Never gonna work
All we did was hurt
'Cause we were never gonna work,
Never gonna work

Once I had that, I didn't want to build a complicated story around it. I wanted the song to stay focused on one simple realization: sometimes two people can care about each other and try very hard to make a relationship work, but they were simply never right for each other.

At first, I considered building the entire song around one extended metaphor. I'd recently done that with another song, Strike the Match, where fire, flames, and striking a match became metaphors for an attraction the singer couldn't control.

But We Were Never Gonna Work needed something different.

Instead of one extended metaphor, I started playing with pairs of things that simply don't belong together.

That led to:

You're a stick of chalk,
I'm a brick of cheese,
You're a brass padlock,
I'm the wrong old key

And later:

You're a desert wind,
I'm a pouring rain,
You're a southbound track,
I'm a northbound train

I liked the simplicity of those images. I didn't need to explain them. We immediately understand what they mean.

These two people don't fit.

They never did.

But They Tried Anyway

That's where the refrain became important.

The chorus tells us the relationship was never going to work. The verses show us why. But I felt the song needed another emotional layer.

So I added:

Still we tried
Lord, we tried
Kept on reaching
From opposite sides
Held on tight
Way too long
Trying to make right
What was nothing but wrong

For me, that's where the sadness of the song really comes through.

These aren't two people who didn't care enough.

They cared enough to keep trying.

And maybe that's why it hurt.

Love Can Be Real Without Lasting Forever

The bridge finally says what I think the entire song is really about:

We weren't wrong for trying
We weren't wrong to care
Sometimes love can still be real
When there's no forever there

I especially like that last thought.

We tend to judge relationships by whether they last. If they end, we sometimes assume something must have gone wrong or that the relationship somehow failed.

But maybe that's not always true.

Maybe two people can genuinely love each other and still not be able to build a life together.

Maybe the love was real.

Maybe the relationship was never going to work.

Both things can be true.

And that's the quiet, haunting feeling I wanted this song—and that lone cello—to leave behind.

1 month ago | [YT] | 1

Suzanne Lieurance

Where Do Song Ideas Come From?

People sometimes ask if my songs are based on true stories.

The answer is... sometimes.

A song can start with something someone says, a funny moment in a restaurant, a line I overhear, a memory, or even one simple question that won't leave me alone.

"Not a Working Number" started with an automated phone message.

"Gonna Get Rich Quick" started with wondering what would happen if someone thought becoming a YouTube star was an overnight success.

And "Shoo! Git!" came from asking myself, "What if the audience thinks she's talking to a man... until the very end?"

Most songs begin with just one little spark.

What everyday phrase or situation do you think would make a great country song? 

I'd love to hear your ideas.

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 2

Suzanne Lieurance

Welcome to My Song Writing Workshop

Thanks for visiting my channel, and (I hope) listening to my music.

This is my writer's workshop, where I write lyrics and use suno (AI music creator) to try them out.

My use of suno is very limited at this point, though, so most of the time my songs don't turn out exactly like I want them to.

But at least I can "hear" how the lyrics I write land and what needs more work.

I welcome your recommendations for making the finished songs sound better, but just realize I'm probably not able to make the kinds of changes to the song that you suggest (at least not yet - I hope to learn more about using suno at some point).

Anyway, thanks for listening.

Please subscribe, if you haven't already.

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 3

Suzanne Lieurance

Two Books That Will Help You Be a More Creative Person

Last month my online writers' group (Monday Morning Manifestors - www.mondaymorningmanifestors.com/) chatted about two books that I think can help anyone who wants to be more creative.

You can read more about the books here: www.writebythesea.com/two-books-two-chats-june-is-…

I'm finding that both books are helping me with my song writing because I'm realizing how important it is to be aware of what other song writers are publishing and recording.

Also, stealing like an artist is something all great artists do. And, when you do it right, no one even realizes you've used someone else's techniques for your own work.

If you've read either or both of these books, what did you think?

I'd love to know in a comment here.

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 3

Suzanne Lieurance

Are You a Superstar?

I think, no matter what type of writing you do, you probably tend to think superstars are different from the rest of us in that they don't have to deal with rejection.

But I was watching this episode of SongTown this morning - 5 Traits That Separate the 1% Songwriters from Everyone Else - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozfEk... and Marty Dodson said he's an expert at handling rejection. 

He went on to say that he's written over 10,000 songs, but only around 10 of them have been big hits.

It might sound strange, but I think that's encouraging because it means I can't expect to write anything really good unless I've written hundreds of songs.

Do you want to be a superstar?

Then get good at handling rejection.

By that, I mean, keep writing and writing and writing!

That's what I'm going to do.

2 months ago | [YT] | 0