Five Books That Are Nothing and Everything to Do with Songwriting
One of the big ideas I write about a lot is that songwriting isn’t just about songwriting. Songwriting is about life, because art is about life. You have to be good at being a person before you can be good at being a songwriter. It’s an idea I come back to...
Five Common Things That Hold Songwriters Back
Leo Tolstoy once wrote that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Well, it turns out songwriting is the opposite. Every happy songwriter is happy because they’re unique in some way. But the causes behind every stuck,...
Sure, Blank Pages Are Frightening. But They Don’t Have to Be.
I know, I know. The blank page is frightening. It could be anything. Anything. That’s frightening. But then again, it could be anything. Anything. That’s exciting. I’ve never once sat down to write and not surprised myself with what I came up with. Not now. Not ever....
Five Different Ways to Start a Song
One of the most exciting things about creating new things is that there are lots of ways of creating new things. As I talk about in The Art of Songwriting, a song is made up bit by bit and piece by piece. It doesn’t really matter which bit you start with. It doesn’t...