Where Do Songs Come From?
Thinking of songwriting as labor versus divine inspiration can be helpful in resisting the endless churn of big streaming.
This short essay went out as part of today's edition of the weekly Hearing Things newsletter, and is also being published here.
I’ve been working on a song this week. Sometimes, they arrive all at once. This one is taking its time. I pick up the guitar for 10 minutes between finishing lunch and getting back to work, or for an hour in the morning before the day’s obligations start calling. I have a good melody and an opening line that might lead somewhere interesting. That’s where things have stood, more or less still, for the last few days. For now, working on the song means playing and singing the first line over and over in those small moments, waiting for it to show me what’s next. Here and there I might adjust a note or two, erasing one contour of the tune and penciling in another. Then I go back to singing and waiting.
I like asking other songwriters about their processes when I interview them. Some people have stories like mine, or detailed theories about their own tendencies and preoccupations. Others say they just start playing and something comes out. Some take it even further, nearly denying responsibility for their own work, claiming that some outside force was speaking through them. I don’t always believe the people in the second and third camps. But I don’t think there’s much correlation between an ability to articulate your songwriting process in a compelling way and an ability to write a compelling song. It’s hard to imagine any members of the Ramones waxing eloquently about the composition of “I Wanna Be Sedated.” A conservatory-trained virtuoso could lecture all they want about harmonic substitutions and still never come up with anything that good.
