Career Songwriter

When I began writing songs, I remember the fear of sitting down in front of a blank page. There was a certain amount of trembling expectation, a sense of humility as I’d attempt to express myself through lyric and music. Nowadays, I still feel those same jitters, but with a great deal more foresight and confidence as I move through the writing process. Looking back, I realize it was not one moment of realization, one tool of the craft, or even one song that single-handedly sparked a growth spurt. It was the culmination of many beginnings, many first tries, failed bridges, stumped second verses, and flopped choruses that allowed me to emerge an experienced writer (who still sometimes writes failed bridges, stalled second verses, and flopped choruses).

I’ll be the first to admit there is a lot left to learn. I hope there are songs I have not yet written that will blow my other songs out of the water. I know there are ideas I have no yet had because I lack the experiences and the breadth of mind to conceive of them. But, that’s the beauty of an art that evolves as I evolve.

That said, I am sometimes asked what some of the most common pitfalls of new writers are. I’m sure the question is of particular interest so that those asking can evade the pitfalls and skip that step in the process of honing the craft. However, the most common pitfall is not writing frequently enough to understand where the other pitfalls lie, and so it’s a bit of a catch-22.

If you are writing a song a week, or at least a few songs a month, you’ll find yourself moving along a path to becoming better. Some of the scenery you might encounter along the way is generalized lyrics, strings of songs that are beginning to all sound the same, a lack of ideas, complex or difficult melodies that fall short of being memorable, disconnected harmonic progressions, etc. Which combinations of these depend on our musicality, training, our influences, our listening habits, and so on. With practice, we can improve no matter what our foundation.

But one particular pitfall I remember so clearly from my own experience (or lack thereof), had to do with the lyric content of the songs. I wrote the typical themes, love lost, love found, being the angry dump-ee, and being the self-righteous dump-er. As a whole, I suppose the lyrics weren’t particularly bad, but just not particularly memorable. The themes were universal enough, but what was missing was heart. My heart wasn’t in them. As years went by and I started writing for life events and experiences closer to me such as death in the family, or a celebratory song for a wedding, an interesting shift happened. Instead of the songs becoming less accessible because they were so much more specific to my situation, they were becoming more universal because they were specific and purposeful. It didn’t matter that my description of canning peaches as a little girl with my Grandma wasn’t a universal idea. What did matter was that by revealing personal and vulnerable details with the listener I connected us for a moment in time. I was singing about real situations, believable situations.

Now, one could argue that songs about canning peaches with my Grandma aren’t commercial. Indeed, it may not fit the mold. However, while I was writing detailed songs about my own life experiences, I was becoming fluent with a tool. I was involving words and situations I didn’t normally use in love songs, and taking risks with content beyond the ‘we met, we got married, we had a child’ formula. Eventually, that tool became a part of my process without my having to consciously think about its use. That’s the whole point with studying a songwriting process and gaining new tools. The tools themselves are merely vehicles for getting where we want to go. We’ll employ different tools in different songs, depending on what we need to accomplish.

Whatever pitfalls that keep us all from writing what we feel are our greatest songs, all can be conquered or at least minimized by exercising our writing muscle. Write often, and write without hesitation.