On Songwriting: What’s Your Antithesis?

If you want your song’s theme to have more impact, you need to juxtapose it with its antithesis. Why? Because life is relative. We don’t know what something is until we know what it isn’t. We know what night is because we’ve experience day. We know what cold is because we’ve felt warmth. 

So let’s say your theme is “we’re all in this together.” What’s the antithesis? Something along the lines of “I’m alone and there’s no one here to help me.” 

Maybe in the verse you show one disheartened person struggling to accomplish a task on their own. They’re about to give up when someone comes along to help, and then another. 

Your chorus about togetherness will be much stronger because the listener will have just visualized and vicariously felt its antithesis.