New Song Map: Flashback
When the past haunts the present
I once had a co-write with an artist who showed up with just a chorus and a line:
“You’re still here, even though you’re gone.”
The song idea was about a love that had ended months ago, but it lingered on in everything she did—driving, cooking, all in her head. When I asked her what the few lines were all about, she told me a whole story from the summer a few years before: a last-minute decision not to be together, a painful goodbye at a Nashville Starbucks.
We realised the real emotional gold wasn’t in her current mood, but in that moment of decision—that flashback. So we mapped it backwards: start in the present, cut to the past, and come back wiser. The result? A layered, cinematic ballad that struck a chord with so many listeners.
What Does Flashback Look Like?
This is taking one of the seven universal Song Maps, Timezones, to a deeper level. Flashback navigates between two different timeframes, contrasting the present with the past. It’s emotionally rich and layered, letting you reveal the why behind the now.
Flashback can be represented as follows:
Verse 1 – Present day or current emotions
Chorus 2 – Core feeling or hook
Verse 2 – Flashback to the key moment or emotions in the past
Chorus 2 – Same or reframed with deeper meaning
Bridge – Payoff
Chorus 3 – Now fully informed by the past
The trick is to make sure the Chorus applies to both timeframes. The Bridge is an excellent opportunity to return to the present with insight, decision, and realization: the payoff.
How to Use Flashback
There are several ways you can use Flashback. When the song is driven by unresolved emotion, it's a great way to revisit and paint the picture with words. However, coming back to what it feels like today, with more life experience, or realizing it was very different from what was expected.
It could also be when the reason for the emotional state lies in the past or when your chorus is emotionally “floatable,” but works in both timeframes.
Here are a few tips using Flashback:
Try to keep verses distinct in time but cohesive in tone; otherwise, the listener has great difficulty understanding the progression of time.
Use details and sensory imagery to contrast the two timelines – things like fashion, historical moments, even the weather (!) or other senses.
Let the bridge do the emotional lifting—it’s the turning point, the good moment of solutions, decisions, or other things that have changed.
The cool thing about this is you can harvest your memories of your own, even if it’s not exactly what happened in your co-writer’s life! To find out more about this, check out Value-Driven Songs and Mining Your Stuff here.
Example
While I haven’t got space here to write a lyric, here’s where I would start writing a Writable Idea from my Idea Bank: “Forever” –
This is about the time I returned to my childhood home in London, recalling a moment that changed our family forever. This setup allows the present-tense verse to set the physical and emotional stage, while verse two dives into the memory.
So, the Writable Idea is this:
Verse 1 – “Dust in the hallway,” “Key still stiff in the lock”
Chorus – Never again, never again, and forever
Verse 2 – Flashback: “My brother’s voice echoing down the stairs,” “the day the door slammed for good.”
Chorus 2 – Never again, never again, and forever
Bridge – Payoff: How could it end like this?
Chorus 3 – Never again, never again, and forever
Variations
Here are a few ways you can vary the Flashback –
Split Timeline: Every verse alternates timeframes
Delayed Reveal: Only the bridge gives the flashback (à la twist ending)
Reframed Chorus: Change a key word in the final chorus to reflect new insight
Flashback within Chorus: Each chorus line starts in the present, ends in the past
There are so many options!
Commercial Examples of Flashback
Here are some commercial examples I’d also suggest you look at to see how this Map works:
“The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” – Vicki Lawrence / Reba McEntire
“Back to December” – Taylor Swift
“Somebody That I Used to Know” – Gotye feat. Kimbra
“The House That Built Me” – Miranda Lambert
“7 Years” – Lukas Graham
All great examples of Flashback. Love the Bridge of Taylor’s “I’d go back in time and change it, but I can’t”. So cool and so well crafted.
Exercise
If you have a copy of my book, Song Maps, handy, you could take a similar approach to Timezones by substituting it with Flashback in a similar way. If you want further Song Maps, click here for Gradual Reveal and Question/Answers.
So this is Flashback. Flashback works because it builds emotional depth by showing not just what the emotion is, but why it exists. It’s a very cool way to take an emotional moment in the past and turn it into something usable.
And, if we can go back to them, we all have memories like that!
Hope it helps!
Simon.