There are a lot of different ways to write a song. In this post, I’ll give you an insight into the strange world of songwriting.

Just the simple of matter of whether to write lyrics or music first can sometimes spark lively debates and discussions amongst composers. Myself, I’m generally a music first guy. I have to come up with a good melody and a chord progression before I can start writing lyrics. I fit the lyrics with the music I’ve written.  There have been some cases, however, when I wrote a song, didn’t like the music, loved the lyrics I came up with, and wrote a whole new melody to go with them.

Some songwriters are prolific. Others, occasional. I fall somewhere in between. I’ve been writing pretty steadily as of late, steady for me being a song or two a week. Most of them will never see the light of day. Writing is therapeutic for me…I do it because I need to, and I’m blessed enough to get some songs good enough for everyone else to hear out of that. To give you some examples, Dolly Parton said in a recent interview that she writes every day, and that she has boxes filled with songs all over her house. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Tom Petty quipped that he writes whenever he feels like it, which may only be every few months. In the middle, John Mellencamp says that, like me, he will always write because it’s what he does, and he needs to do it. But, the inspiration is only there some of the time. All of the songs for his last album were written in a period of 13 days, for example.

Which brings me to the next element…inspiration. The vast majority of songwriters believe in a higher power. I certainly do, and I give the credit to God for all of my songs. I can take a little credit for having a good vocabulary and a creative thought process, but a lot of the time, songs just seem to materialize out of nowhere. Ricky Skaggs made a comment on his “Live At the Charleston Music Hall” album along those lines about a song. He said it was like it just “fell out of the air…that’s where they all come from. And I’m thankful for that.”

A famous songwriter, I believe it was John Prinem said in an interview with Performing Songwriter magazine that when you get a song in your head at 3 AM, and it wakes you up, it’s your decision as to whether you get up and write it down or not. He said that there were several times he went back to sleep instead of getting up to write the song, and then 6 months to a year later, he heard someone else singing the song that originally came to him.

The bottom line is, God has something to say, and if you’re blessed enough, you’ll get the chance to be the one to say it. And if you don’t want to, he’ll give it to someone else. I can think of many songs that “fell out of the air” to me…”A Windy Night”…”I Won’t Burn Anymore”…”Stuck On You”…”The End”…”How To Find Me”…I could go on and on and on.

But that’s not how it always happens. Notice, I said, if you’re blessed enough, this will happen sometimes. There are plenty of other occasions when I’ve sat with my guitar, or at the piano with a notepad and a rhyming dictionary, painfully scraping together songs. This works sometimes too.  ”Never Be Mine”, from my latest album, took me a month or two to get together. “Still Be Home” from ‘The Way’, was certainly a work in progress for a while too. As was that albums opening song, “Deliver Me”. That took a couple of rewrites.

Finally, there is the burning question that everyone always asks…what do we write about? I remember when I first started dating my current girlfriend, she asked me if a particular song of mine was written about her. It wasn’t, but I did write several about her after that.

For me, there are three main categories, and they all kind of go hand in hand. Relationships, life experiences, and emotions. Relationships of not just the romantic type, but the relationships you have with everyone in your life. Family, friends, lovers, God, you name it. Even pets sometimes, as in the excellent song my friend Dean Phelps sings,  ”My Dog Jesus”.  Life experiences being of course, all you’ve seen, done, and been through. And emotions meaning that it’s crucial to put whatever you’re feeling into a song. If you’re feeling pain, write about it. If you’re feeling joyful, write about it. If you’re feeling angry…lonely…you get the point. Ray LaMontagne said that sometimes he doesn’t like performing, because for him to give a committed performance of the song, he has to put himself in the place he was when he wrote the song, and that can be very, very difficult to do night after night.

Unlike Ray, I do distance myself from the songs. I said earlier that songwriting is a release for me, and I’m oftentimes in very dark places when I write. The only way I can go out and play my songs is to distance myself slightly. I still give my performances all the passion and energy that I can, but I don’t attempt to tap into the emotions contained within the song. Maybe someday I’ll let my guard down like Ray and let all of my emotions show. I’m doing that a little bit here, I suppose.

There are so many elements to writing…I hope this post makes a little bit of sense. I know it’s a little jumbled. But, it’s 12:30 AM as I’m writing this, and I felt compelled to share. Hey, I don’t want to miss any opportunities.

I posted a status on Facebook that summed it up perfectly. Songwriting is a strange, beautiful, frustrating, rewarding thing. But you know what? I wouldn’t ever want to be anything but a singer/songwriter.

Here’s a new song from me. Just recorded it today. “Your Love Ain’t Mine”

Lyrics

Always going round and round
But never getting to the end
I don’t know how you can say
That you’ve always been my friend

Treat me worse than a wrecking ball
Treats a run down flat
But you will never tear me down
And you’ll never lay me out

It’s taken all of my restraint
Not to put in your place
Anger lives deep in my bones
And it boils in my veins

I’m tired of living for change
And getting the same old pain
I won’t wait for you to waste my time
Your love ain’t mine

I screamed until I lost my voice
Thinking you would finally hear
But you’re deaf to my love, babe
And you’re blind to my tears

Hit me hard in the face
When I caught you in your lie
It left me in so much hurt
That I thought I would die

But now you’ll be the one
With the agony inside
That burning flame will curse you
Every single night

I’m tired of living for change
And getting the same old pain
I won’t wait for you to waste my time
Your love ain’t mine

They say that love is blind
But I’m about to regain my sight…

Thanks for reading. Visit my website at briankeithwallen.com to hear some more of my weird songs.

Advertisement