Thoughts On Songwriting

Hello all, I’ve been skim reading my blogs and have realized how little I’ve written about my day job so I thought as there are a lot of songwriters part of this brilliant online community, I should share my thoughts on this mysterious business.

My job is to write about love, life and loss and make it a damn hit!

This is the life of the song writer. I could write a song about penguins, Curling, or why I don’t like the feel of cotton wool (and I’d record them with my band and they would be cool) but these songs would be less likely to be recorded by an artist than songs about ‘the big three’.

But it’s hard to come up with new angles on love. Someone told me there are 6 stages of love you can write about- Looking for love. Falling in love, staying in love, falling out of love, getting over love and looking for love again. There’s also the question angle- what is love? Is this love? Was that love? These big subjects hit a chord with more people than songs about curling. Although I am tempted to write a big fat penguin based hit.

Who has songs written for them anyway?

Well, the vast majority of artists write or co write their own songs but manufactured pop bands, some R and B artists, overseas acts and a lot of country artists record songs by ‘outside’ writers.

These are the type of artists I write songs for. This is not to be confused with the huge amount of talented artists I co write with. They are more than capable of writing great songs. In this case I’m just there to add some input and concentrate on trying to co-write something ‘radio’ (catchy, fresh, exciting, often uptempo and usually chorus heavy in structure). As an artist myself I often resist writing these kinds of ‘Obvious’ songs in favour of more ‘arty’ songs. I like co writing with artists because it takes the pressure off. It’s fun and challenging to write something immediate.

So writing a song for specific pop artist is a bizarre job.

First of all I get sent a brief by my publisher who has spoken to the label. A typical brief might be- Artist ‘A’ s label are looking for a hit single in the vein of Daniel Powter’s ‘Bad Day mixed’ with Train’s ‘Drops Of Jupiter’ (oh, no problem, I have 7 of these on my song shelf)

The next thing I have to do is find out about the artist’s style, age, vocal range and any lyrical themes they have explored. On a really basic level, this avoids simple mistakes like writing a song called ‘together’ to find that the artist has already cut a song called this, or writing a song called ‘I’ve been in love too many times’ for a 13 year old girl.

At this point I picture all the other amazing songwriters out there being sent the same brief and in London, Stockholm, L.A and New York and furiously ‘Frankensteining’ a new song that sounds like ‘Bad Days Of Jupiter’. At this point I fleetingly lose the will to live.

What is it about these two songs on the brief that makes them hits? Is it  the feel, the lyric, the vocal performance, the marketing? If the two biggest songs of 2007 were called ‘Penguins are cute’ or ‘cotton wool allergy’ would A and R departments be asking for songs similar to this?

This is why I tend to ignore briefs and try to write the best song I can instead. If the song I write means something to me, has a great melody and groove then I hope it could connect with someone else. Also, I imagine an A and R person listening through 100 ‘Drops Of Bad Day’ songs and I hope that the song I’ve written might at least stand out from the pile.

Once I’ve written the song, demoed the song (usually with a session singer) to album standard it gets sent to my publisher who passes it on to the label. Then I wait, and wait, and then as hope dwindles, forget about the song. Sometimes, 4 years later the song gets recorded by an Albanian Shepherd who won Albanian Idol, more often than not, the song never gets recorded and gathers dust- if an mp3 can gather dust.
If I’m really lucky, the song gets recorded.

So how do you earn money as a songwriter?

Songwriters don’t get paid for writing songs. A publisher loans me money and hopes that the songs I write while under contract get recorded and earn money. The songwriter (and the publisher) earns money each time a CD is manufactured or legally downloaded.

Songwriters also earn money every time a song they have written is played on the radio, film or TV, downloaded as a ringtone or performed at a live show. Collection agencies and societies from all over the world try and collate all this information and work out who to pay. This can take a few years. When the money eventually wends its way back to the writer it firstly goes towards paying back the loan from the publisher. When you’ve paid the publisher back you start earning money. Woo hoo!

All songwriters start writing songs for no money and end up writing songs for no money. No one in his right mind would become a songwriter to make a quick buck. We all do it because it’s alchemy-
Turning a feeling into a melody, a mood into a groove, rhyming your emotions. The reward is in the moment (although I never tell my bank manager this). It’s a really weird job and I love it to bits. Now I’d better write that penguin song…….