By SongTools.ai
Stuck on what to call your song? Here is how songwriters actually pick titles, six simple methods that work, a quick checklist, and 60 song title ideas sorted by mood to get you started.
Your song title is the first thing a listener, a playlist curator or a search engine sees. It is what people type when they want to hear your song again. A good title is easy to remember, easy to search and tells people something about how the song feels before they press play.
The good news: you don't need to be clever. Most great titles are simple. They just have to fit the song.
1. Use the hook. The most common method by far. Take the line people will sing back, usually the first or last line of the chorus, and make it the title. Listeners who remember the hook can find the song.
2. Pick the strongest image. Look through your lyrics for one concrete picture: a place, an object, a color, a time of day. "Kitchen Light" or "Last Train Home" is easier to remember than a general feeling.
3. Name the feeling in a new way. Instead of "Sad Song," try the moment that made you sad. "Two Coffees, One Cup Left" says more than "Lonely."
4. Use a name or a place. A person's name or a real place makes a title feel personal and specific, and it gives people something to search.
5. Go short. One or two words are easy to remember and look great on cover art. They are harder to find in search, so pair a one word title with a distinctive artist name or cover.
6. Flip a common phrase. Take an everyday saying and twist one word. It feels familiar and new at the same time.
- Can someone hear the title in the song? If the title is never sung, make sure it still clearly connects to the lyrics.
- Can you say it out loud easily? If you have to spell it for people, it will be hard to find.
- Search it. Look it up on Spotify and YouTube. Sharing a title with another song is allowed (in most countries titles cannot be copyrighted), but if a huge hit already has that exact name, your song will be buried under it.
- Does it match the mood? A slow ballad with an aggressive title confuses people before they listen.
- Check the spelling and capitalization before you send it to your distributor. Changing a title after release is a hassle.
Use these as starting points. Change a word, combine two, or let one spark a whole new idea.
Love and romance
Golden Hour With You, Slow Dance in the Kitchen, Your Name in My Phone, Stay Till Morning, Paper Hearts, The Way You Laugh, Two Shadows, Saved You a Seat, Late Night Drive, Forever Feels Short
Heartbreak
Half Empty Closet, Ghost in the Passenger Seat, Read at 2 AM, Leftover Love, The Last Time I Saw You, Cold Side of the Bed, Unsent Letters, Still Your Song, Rain on Replay, Glass House
Happy and upbeat
Sunroof Down, Good Day Coming, Neon Summer, Jump in the Lake, Lucky Shoes, Saturday Forever, Bright Side Avenue, Dancing on the Roof, Feel It in My Feet, Yellow Balloons
Hope and motivation
Still Standing, One More Mile, Bigger Than This, Rise Up Slow, Chasing Morning, Brick by Brick, Wildfire Heart, Don't Look Down, Wings in Progress, New Map
Dark and moody
Static in the Walls, Midnight Engine, Hollow City, Smoke Signals, Under the Floorboards, Black Glass, The Long Way Down, Quiet Storm Warning, Velvet Teeth, Empty Stadium
Nostalgia
Tape Deck Summer, Back Seat Kids, Old Polaroids, Our Street, 1999 Forever, Faded Tour Shirt, Streetlights Coming On, Before the Phones, Hometown Static, Remember the Lake
If you are still stuck, look at what the song is actually saying and how it feels. Run your track through Mood & Emotion to see its emotional arc, or Describe a Song to get a written description of the instruments, energy and structure. Words that show up there often make great titles.
If you have a title but no song yet, flip it around: use the title as your prompt in the Lyric Writer and see where it goes. If the title has to rhyme in the chorus, look it up in the free Rhyme Finder first: a title with lots of good rhymes is much easier to build a hook around.
Once your title is final, run a Content ID Check before you release, so nothing in the track gets flagged on YouTube.
All the tools discussed in this article are available on SongTools.ai, free to explore.