Songwriting

There have been many days in my writing career when I thought about quitting. The voices in my head have frequently tossed out “I’m not sure you’re good enough” or “The odds are stacked against you”.  Most of those days have followed some sort of big disappointment.  A hold lost.  A cut that was a…

If you are trying to get a song recorded on a major artist, you are competing with pro writers who write a song almost every day.  Those pros are pumping out more than 200 songs a year in many cases.  The sheer volume of material they produce increases their chances of getting a cut exponentially.…

On January 16th, 2013, I met with Mark Nesler and Josh Osborne at my publishing company at 10:30AM. The three of us had never written together before. We threw around ideas and finally found one we were all excited about. We decided on the title “Don’t Hold It Against Me”. My idea was “If you…

On Any Given Day You Can Create A Magical Song… One of the things I love about songwriting is that I can go into work on any given day and come out with a hit song that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars. You never know when those days are going to happen. It was…

The line between pro songwriters and aspiring pro songwriters is primarily a line of thought.  Pro songwriters learn to think differently as they write.  That different line of thinking usually involves a series of questions that they keep asking as they write.  Those questions cause the song to be more commercial than it would have…

Most songwriters I know have a lot of people who have helped them get to whatever level of success they are enjoying – even if it is simply being able to write regularly.  Here’s my list.  I’m guessing many of you have similar lists. My mom. When I was a kid, I would sit on…

I posted on Facebook one day that I had “worked really hard” to get on a particular album and had failed to make it. Someone asked me to explain what I had done to “work really hard”.  So, I thought I’d lay it out for you here so everyone could read it. I had heard…

Writing songs with artists is a completely different game. Writing songs with artists is a completely different game than writing songs FOR artists or simply writing with another writer to try and craft the best song possible.  When you write with an artist in the room, the goal is to help that artist find their…

Writing songs for artists is a guessing game. When I’m shooting for a particular artist as I write, I’m trying to guess what that artist wants to say.  Not only that, I’m trying to guess what they haven’t already said so that I can help them say something new. I look at it this way.…