It’s all very well coming up with a nice tune, but as a songwriter you’re also faced with the thorny proposition of what to actually write about. You can take the Oasis route of just stringing together some vaguely euphoric platitudes and buzzwords about shining and being high in the sky wanting to cry and not knowing why, or you can attempt to make a connection with the listener by tackling more specific subject matter. But if you do choose the latter path, you’re probably best off avoiding these well worn topics.

1. War

What is it good for? Well, historically it’s been quite effective for imposing your country’s will on another, but as a topic for a song, it’s increasingly hopeless, especially if you choose to just whimper on about the general miserableness of it all. You might as well sing a song warning people to look both ways before crossing the road. The subject is, if you will, a minefield – you’ll find yourself pinballing painfully between over-earnest, patronizing, morbid (yes, death metallers who write gory diatribes about people getting their limbs blown off, that means you), maudlin, or just dumb Finest example? Boy George shocking us with the news that ‘War Is Stupid’. Drunk on the importance of your subject, you’ll probably think it’s a great idea to throw in a children’s choir and military parade drums, and we’ll all beg for North Korea to bung over a few cruise missiles just to make it stop.

2. Real beauty is on the inside

Narrowly edging out ‘It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part’ for the title of most patronising saying in the English language, this is an increasingly common theme in pop songwriting. Like most other condescending tripe, it’s always (a) Easy for them to say, and (b) About as sincere as bailed out CEOs saying they always believed there was a place for government intervention in the banking industry.

Songs on this theme, such as Christina Aguilera’s cloyingly earnest Beautiful, will invariably be performed by bands who you know for certain would once have chewed their bandmates’ noses off just to get a walk on part in Byker Grove, and would gladly undergo enough major plastic in order to meet whatever puddle-shallow criteria of physical perfection currently hold sway.

3. Imaginary women

There she goes, she’s like the wind, she’s so high, she’s so heavy, and Sheena is a punk rocker. She is also a figment of your imagination, I’ll wager. Male artists have frequently used a woman as a ‘muse’ to spur them into frenzied creation. But sometimes the female subjects they immortalise in song just don’t quite have the ring of authenticity.

I mean, just how many women called Mary has Bruce Springsteen ever known? Either he grew up next door to the National Headquarters For The Advancement Of People Called Mary, or there’s a middle-aged woman in New Jersey who has been stalked in song by the same man for the best part of four decades.

4. Your Mum

You may have been under the impression that bad-ass gangsta rappers, the kind who regularly claim to shoot sucker MCs in the face, have suffered from poor upbringings. On the contrary, they invariably have ‘mama’s who could shame Mother Theresa in terms of earthly divinity. Snoop Dogg’s I Love My Momma is a particularly saccharine example.

It’s not just hip-hop artists who love their mums. Remember the Spice Girls’ diabetes-inducing tribute ‘Mama’? As yet, though, no-one has yet written about their dad being bigger than your dad and having muscles bigger than He-Man and the Masters Of The Universe put together. Apart from that clap-awful Tractor Song. The exception that proves the rule that rock’n’roll must always be a parent-free zone.

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