Writing Songs For Your Voice: What Makes A Song Great With Logan Grimé

If you’ve ever felt like you’re not a songwriter or just don’t know where to start, you’re in the right place. I sat down with artist, songwriter, and coach Logan Grimé to unpack what actually makes a song great—and what singers specifically should be paying attention to when writing their own material.

Whether you’re chasing your first chorus or refining your next hit, this conversation will help you write songs that are not only objectively solid but also set you up for a powerful vocal performance.

So without further ado, let’s jump right in!

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How It All Started

🎙 Logan: We didn’t play live shows for a whole year, but rather polished our songs.

Logan grew up around music his whole life (his dad was a musician too), but in college he formed a band with his friend. Instead of playing a ton of live shows - where only friends and family would come watch them perform anyways, not new people to build a fan base - they focused on writing and recording really great songs.

Because the songs were so good, when they finally released them into the world they got millions of streams, a booking agent (now they were ready to play some shows!), manager, went on tour, opened for Paul McCartney (!!!) and more.

Eventually Logan started sharing songwriting tips on his social media profile and really quickly grew a following around that.

The Songwriting Checklist (And Why It Helps)

🎙 Logan: Most people think that songs get crafted out of thin air, but the songs that reach the most people are actually much more intentionally crafted.

Sometimes inspiration hits you and a song just starts flowing out of you. But that can only happen when you already understand the basics of songwriting - at least if you want to write a song that hundreds or even thousands of people want to sing along to.

Logan created this songwriting checklist to help aspiring writers better understand what exactly is going on in each song and what makes them so great. That way the first draft of your song doesn’t have to be the final version, but you can rather make tweaks to it until it’s exactly what you want it to be AND other people will love it too.

You can grab the checklist at https://www.vib3machine.com/toolkit. It’s such a useful tool to bring structure to your creativity.

The Universal Language

🎙 Logan: No matter what language you do (or don’t) speak, everyone can sing along to melodies.

Many writers think that lyrics are the most important part of a song. Logan believes that melody is what most people are drawn to. As someone who didn’t speak english growing up, yet only ever singing english songs, I completely agree! I never knew what songs were about, but I loved them because of the melodies. Even if you do speak the language it’s much easier to remember melodies than lyrics. How many times have you sung along to a song and you didn’t really know the words, but had a great time anyways? That’s the power of melody!

Crafting Great Melodies

🎙 Logan: It’s all about patterns.

A melody consists of pitch and rhythm - what notes you’re singing and how long those notes are. As a drummer, Logan heavily focuses on rhythms in melodies as that can make it feel more locked in and therefore more powerful.

A great exercise to practice this is by taking the rhythm of a phrase you really like and only changing the notes on it. It’ll make it sound like a completely new song, but you’ll keep a strong rhythmic pattern.

Logan also recommends visualizing your melodies so that you can literally see all the notes. Don’t worry, you don’t need to know how to read music to do this! You can use the website https://www.hooktheory.com/ to draw out the notes and see the melodies you’re creating. This will help you identify patterns more easily and create melodies that will get stuck in people’s heads.

🎙 Logan: What’s repeated is remembered

Don’t feel like you have to use all the different notes in your vocal range in every single song. Simple is often better. In songwriting it’s all about finding the balance between repetition and contrast. Repetition is what’s going to help your audience remember your song and getting it stuck in their heads and contrast is what keeps it interesting. If there’s too much contrast no one will remember the song, so don’t be afraid to create a lot of repetition in your melodies. You can then always use the harmony (all the other instruments) to bring new life to your melodies without actually changing the melody!

So… Lyrics Don’t Matter?

🎙 Logan: If all you care about are lyrics, then just write a poem.

Of course lyrics matter. Being able to create language is what makes the voice the most unique instrument out there! But instead of making a melody fit the lyrics, try crafting amazing melodies and then make the lyrics fit that. When then melody and lyrics flow together nicely it’ll be so much easier for your audience to pick up the lyrics and actually hear what you’re saying.

Singing Your Own Songs

🎙 Logan: My dad wasn’t a great singer, but he could sing his songs well.

He even went on to say that the songs that are vocally the most challenging are the songs he doesn’t like the most. Not because they’re hard to sing, but because there’s just too much going on.

When you’re writing songs for yourself make sure you keep your prima voce - the sweet spot of your voice - in mind. You want to highlight the best parts of your voice as much as possible and keep your challenges hidden on purpose. You don’t have to be able to do everything really well, you just need to stick to what you’re really great at and do that as much as possible. That’s how you’ll see the most success with your songs.

Final Takeaway

At the end of the day, songwriting is a form of self expression so you can do whatever your heart desires. But if you want to reach as many people as possible, there are certain rules or guidelines you can follow to create songs that BOTH you and your audience love.

🎧 Want to hear the full conversation (plus real tips you can use today)?

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