A lot of discussions I happened to have with industry friends recently are about songwriting. Some for semi-finished songs or demos, some for commercial songs. Finally I come to realized that, a few of these common songwriting practices are just frustrating to me.
First of, let me just get this straight, there’s no songwriting technique that is wrong. Music is art. As long as the music and emotion is real and authentic to the creator, it’s ok for people to not understand, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. The idea of songwriting should not be a sacred statue that no one can critique or say anything about, or else how can we move forward? Also, what I don’t like does not apply to everyone either. But since I can’t shut up about music, I might as well just let it out.
One of the big problems in the music business today is how music has moving further and further away from a form of expressing artistic creativity. It’s becoming more of a way to cater market interest, kind of like how social media only feed you with stuff you like with its algorithm. And while intrinsically, that’s ok, the balance between these two objectives sometimes goes really off. Like very seriously, off. I hear people complain all the time that “good music is so hard to find these days.” But why? Are songwriters today less creative or less artistic than songwriters in the 90s, 80s, 70s?
Of course not. But here are some of the common problems:
1. When the emotion isn’t genuine, people know. A lot of the times, songwriters have to deliver and might be on tight deadlines. Of course, I’m not trying to deny that there is a craft side of the songwriting process. But don’t try to fool anyone when you don’t mean it. Unless they are your super fans aka are super blinded, generally speaking, we human beings are good at sensing the fakeness and bs, although sometimes we can’t really articulate that. If there’s something we don’t feel right or don’t really “click,” most of the times, it’s because the emotion isn’t real!
2. The “I don’t care” and “you don’t know me” message floating around in today’s love songs, especially mainstream stuff. I mean, seriously? This is actually one of the biggest frustrations I have with this generation of music. You can be sad, angry, disappointed, agonized, feeling painful and everything, or eventually you might be redeemed and born a new person. It’s all valid. Human emotion is hard and complicated to deal with. That’s essentially why we need music, literature, movies and all other forms of art. But honestly, if you don’t care, why go through the hassle writing about it? If you think this person don’t know you and you don’t give a f, okay, but why you pretend to not care when obviously you do, and in a form that you should feel free to express yourself and emotion? And kids think this is cool? Like, hello??? This is exactly what passive aggressive means, and sending message like this is just sweeping stuff under the carpet which really doesn’t helping anyone. Plus, it’s just not true, which also ties to #1, people can smell it and it’s really a lot less cool than you think it is.
3. Trying way too hard to come up with a “great song.” This one is really funny. You know, in my undergrad songwriting class, we once had this discussion about writing a “great song” or “hit song.” It seems most songwriters go through the phase of wanting to write a great song that everyone just love and adore, and eventually becomes a great hit blah blah. But usually what ends up happening is that we try way too hard and pay way too much attention on the details, wordings, production, whatever minor stuff, yet really overlooking the big picture here. You hear that in a lot of commercial music, when the basic idea is great but sounds like it was not quite developed well, and you hear a lot of great details, but with this really shaky framework.
And it’s rather frustrating, because when we try this hard it usually doesn’t go our way and we ended up feeling defeated and question ourselves and our creativity. At the same time, most of us write our best songs when we are not trying. Sounds funny right? I think one of the key components of writing a great song is to be true to yourself, and when you pay too much attention to minor issues, you press down the actual emotion which matters the most. The first draft matters but shouldn’t be perfect. I once wrote a song when I was very drunk to just let the emotion out. Luckily, I recorded a rough phone demo to capture all of that so that I can work on the details later (or was I that drunk? Hmmm). That song turns out to be one of my favorite and I was taking a very interesting turn from my previous style, which I was very happy with. Not to encouraged people to write songs under influence but, you get the idea, right?
4. Speaking be true to yourself, I think most of the times, songwriters need to realized that, we are the tortured ones. Most people don’t have to deal with this amount of self-reflection and emotional rollercoaster on a daily basis, however, for music, it’s about emotion. It requires massive amount of daily reflecting and digging out relatable pieces from experience in order to create this form of art. If you run away from it, and I see it all the time, when songwriters wanna just put words together to create this aura yet avoid telling the real story, it’s awful. I mean, you can write a poetry or what not, it doesn’t have to be country where things are all plainly laid out. But when the “realness” element is missing, when it doesn’t tie to any type of your own experience, again, people can sense it very easily, and you are fooling no one but yourself. In my very personal opinion, a great song, regardless of genre, is the result of combining years of music training, years of self-reflection from personal experience, years of articulation training to tell a relatable and most importantly, concise story, with a ridiculous amount of honesty. From the outside, it always looks like everyone can write music and put on the internet. And boom, you can be famous! But no, really, if you want to make songwriting your profession, the bar is not as low as you thought it is. Facing yourself, your true self, is always a painful process. Some people are lucky and don’t have to do it their whole life. But as songwriters, we are damned to do that from a very early stage. That’s part of the job. That’s just what it takes, and it’s a lot of pressure on mental health. Seriously, one of the costs for songwriting might be seeing a good mental health therapist to keep you sane on a regular basis.
Most of the times, if you know me personally, the advise I usually give to people who wants to get into music business is “don’t.” Not that I don’t love music or this business, in fact, I do very much. Yet, 99% of the people only see the glorious part of it, and nobody talks about the sh*tty part and the invisible yet ridiculous high bar in order to be in business. Nobody wants to say it, but being in music business is a place that can make your heart ache, if you love music like I do. At last, I think one of my career mentors once beautifully sumed it up, “if you can find another job, don’t do music.”