How can I make a song that mixes inspiration and themes?

Hey everyone. I hope you’ve had a wonderful weekend and are primed for another productive week of music and anything else you’re working on. This week is an odd one where I’m releasing a song I wrote a while back for an ongoing project I’ve been working on. What inspired the release for this week is the release of Blink 182’s new single.

When I wrote this song I had been working on experimenting with different sets of inspiration. I wanted to write a song that sounded like it would have been made by a combination of Blink 182 and Katy Perry, so I took a popular Blink 182 song and made my own version of the intro to make my own set of music and then wrote a vocal melody I thought could have been composed by the combination of Katy Perry and Blink 182.

The lyrics are what makes this song part of a pseudo-musical I’ve been writing about a person that is just trying to make it through their week(s) at work and through life – something most of us experience and have struggled with at one point or another. There are two main characters in the story that don’t have names yet but are labeled in my project files as “Boomer” and “Person” because I’m super original… and just haven’t come up with names for them yet (if you must have a name for them right now just call them both Dave).

Listen here:

Anyways, how did I put this together? I wrote out the form for a few Blink 182 songs and listened to some Katy Perry tracks. After getting the two in my head – I’ve been a lifelong Blink 182 fan, so they’re kind of always in my head – I started plucking out some four chords material, and then made sure that I based the main guitar section (beginning of the song) off of a popular Blink 182 song, like I said above. I’m not saying exactly which song because I’d love for you to give it a go to figure out or guess what song it is (it’s not rocket appliances to figure it out).

Anyways, after I had the verse section, I pretty much had the whole song because, as usual, I just reused/rearranged material to make the rest of the song. The form goes like this:

• Dialogue
• Verse with just guitar
• Verse break with band gradually building up to join in
• Verse with band
• Chorus
• Verse break
• Verse without guitar
• Chorus
• Bridge with guitar and band gradually joining in from a fade
• Chorus
• Chorus out (harmonize)
• Verse riff with final words from the chorus
• Dialogue

We haven’t fully discussed the lyrics yet, and we won’t get into their meaning that much because you can get the idea of what they’re about pretty easily just by reading them. They are, as stated before part of a kind of musical I’ve been working on. Here they are below:

Lyrics

Verse

Every time that you die it’s at 9:00 AM
Then at 5:00 o’clock you come alive again
Endless cycle where you work and you get your pay
But you look at your boss and know it’s not the same

You put in everything
Thinking you’d climb above
Your standards set too high
They keep you worn like a glove

On for way too long
Never to be removed
Until the seams are ripped
Discarded never renewed

Verse

Another training day
Someone to take your job
But you teach them well
Like you’re obeying the law

Until you learn from them
They’re starting twice as high
But the last time you asked
There was no room for a rise

Chorus

You gave up years just to start again
Blood sweat and tears and your discontent
They took from you every breath that they could
Just saying that you’ve been misunderstood

Verse

Now you’re on your own
You turned the page this time
Another chapter in
This round it’s you in your prime

Begun another day
This time you feel alive
And every breath you take
Is for yourself not just to survive

Chorus

You gave up years just to start again
Blood sweat and tears and your discontent
They took from you every breath that they could
Just saying that you’ve been misunderstood

Bridge

The only way it seems today
Step off the path and start to stray
Make the unknown become your very own
As you work to make your forever home

Chorus

You gave up years just to start again
Blood sweat and tears and your discontent
They took from you every breath that they could  
Just saying that you’ve been misunderstood – we’ve all been misunderstood

Parting thoughts

I didn’t plan on releasing this song or any material from this upcoming album until a later date, but the times (and students) kind of demanded it with the resurgence of Blink 182. Many of you had been asking for a Blink 182 style song and have been discussing both nostalgia and new love for the band, so this is kind of a simple way to show an example of how to make some music like theirs of your own. Of course, the lyrics aren’t quite their regular toilet humour and/or typical teenage love story, but that’s okay; the music fits their heyday in the late 90’s to mid 2000’s.

Thanks for taking the time to check this one out. In some personal news, my main band Inner Urge has released our latest and final single called “Chosen One” for our upcoming album “Consume and Waste” that’s being released on October 27th, 2022.

Take care of yourself and do what you enjoy when you can do it. It’s worth it and you deserve to get to have some fun (as long as it doesn’t harm others or yourself). Be kind to yourself in and out of the practice room and have a wonderful week.

All the best,

– Matt