Writing A Blues Song

Feeling ‘blue’ – sad, unhappy, miserable, down, these are all words associated with the style/genre of blues.

Jimi Hendrix put it poetically: ‘blues is easy to play, but hard to feel’. This is so true. Some of the greatest blues musicians had the hardest of times, Bessie Smith, Howlin Wolf and Robert Johnson being a few out of many truly ‘blue’ artists.

It is important to note that there are many styles of blues, what will be discussed here is what I like to refer to as ‘Raw Blues’, back to basics blues.

So here we go. ‘Raw Blues’ lyrics have much repetition. Your opening line should repeat itself.

For example, taken from the great Crossroads by Robert Johnson here is the opening verse:

I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees.

I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees.

Asked the Lord above for mercy

"Save me if you please."

Your lyrics do not need to be complicated to be great. But remember, you are writing a blues song – stick to the genre.

Ok, so you may not have experienced real hard times. But everybody has experienced some form of pain, try to express this. Depressing, I know, but this is blues!!

Moving onto the music, the chord structure for blues is usually I, IV and V. For example in the key of C the chords would be – C, F and G. However, when writing blues it is best to use dominant 7^th chords: C7, F7 and G7 (in the key of C).

This article is aimed at helping you to write a blues song. Adding the essence/soul/feel/heart (or broken-heart) to the song is down to the performer – you.