The British singer-songwriter is known for having a way with beautifully putting feelings (and heartache, especially) into words. So we asked him to come up with a recipe to make the perfect heartbreak song from scratch.
Prep time: Around one year Cook time: About a month
Ingredients:– 2 cups of love
– ½ cup of tragedy
– 2 cups of miscommunication
– ½ cup of anxiety
– 1 pinch of regret
– 4 chords (either 2 major and 2 minor or 3 major and one minor)
– a bit of poetry (read on for word tips)
Step 1
For best results, you should start preparing for this recipe at least one year prior, working on the “love” portion needed. “Spend a whole year with someone, and make sure you’ve gotten used to them and have really fallen in love,” adds Rhys Lewis. Once the breakup has occurred and you feel ready, you can start cooking up the perfect heartbreak song.Step 2
Preheat the oven. In a bowl, put the cups of love, tragedy, miscommunication and anxiety. Add your pinch of regret. Stir it all together.Step 3
Pour the mix in a heatproof plate or container of your choice and put it in the oven. Let it overthink in there for a while. Keep an eye on it. The duration of the overthinking depends on your personal preference so it is up to you to decide how long it should last. An outside eye could be of good help here. As per our expert’s advice: “Take the plate out and show it to your friends. If they tell you that you are, indeed, overthinking, you can go to the next step.”Step 4
Once you take it out of the oven, cut your overthought mix into pieces. Then go find your poetry. Tip from the chef: the thesaurus and RhymeZone could be of good help in finding the right words.
A starter kit of words, provided by Rhys Lewis himself: Love, remorse, darkness, goodbye, broken and alone.
Step 5
Carefully glue the pieces back together with that poetry, then add your chords of choice.
At no point in this recipe should you add drums “otherwise it won’t get streamed very much” as it might be mistaken for a non-sad song.
Step 6
Serve your heartbreak song scalding hot on your preferred streaming services. Et voilà !Step 7
Forget everything you just read as this has been only but a humorous piece. Since you ended up here, though, you might be expecting real tips for writing a song. Here is what Rhys Lewis has for you:It sounds so, so obvious, but just try and be as true to the feeling you have with it. Sometimes it can take a while to express how you’re feeling, but I think it’s worth pursuing because- I don’t know, it’s a really special thing when you can get to explain something exactly the way you feel. It’s one of the most rewarding things to do, whether you’re writing a story or a poem or a song.”
Just write about what you know and what you love and what you feel, and you can’t go too far wrong.”
