Eleanor Roosevelt and My Adventures in Songwriting

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people”

I never thought I’d find myself quoting anyone named Eleanor, let alone the First Lady of the USA, but here we are. I’ve mentioned in a previous post (Starting a Band When You're 30) that my adventures in songwriting mostly consisted of 9 years of procrastination and self-imposed failure. What I didn’t realise at the time was that like anything, songwriting requires practice. What you never realise as a young musician is that although an album might be end-to-end 10-12 of great songs, the band probably wrote 5 times that many songs and discarded them as sub-par in the quality department. The result is that I should be about 35 by the time I start pumping out good tunes at any rate that could be remotely considered consistent. I’m OK with that.

So where am I going with this? Well, Eleanor’s chestnut of knowledge applies to songwriting. I mean really, what is a song but a discussion but an open letter to the world voicing your opinion about something? The key to good songs (so far as I can tell) is what you’ve got to say. If you write a song about boy-meets-girl-and-the-rest-is-history, or topical-politician/celebrity-is-immoral-and-doesn’t-deserve-your-respect, you’re not really discussing anything people haven’t heard before and nobody’s going to want to listen because they can easily get it elsewhere such as a school playground, the Oprah Winfrey show or tabloid newspapers. And chances are their lives are already flooded with at least one of those.

With events you’re stepping it up a notch, but essentially you’re just discussing people on a grander scale.

“Oh there was a flood today,
So many homes are washed away
And I should be on A Current Affair baby,
Because this is lame-eh?”

(When writing crap songs, be sure to include gratuitous use of the word “baby”)

I guess there’s something admirable in deciding to try and empathise with a larger group of people, it takes a bit of a leap to generalise a mass of people and not come off looking pretentious.

Ideas. That’s where the gold’s at, and I mean that in terms of quality because the masses will never take to music that makes them think no matter how far the ‘hipster’ fashion/lifestyle weasels its way into popular culture – skinny jeans and a shit haircut does not an art critic make. When it comes to writing songs that deal with ideas as opposed to the lesser content styles, the biggest hurdle seems to be getting over the idea that your songs need to make sense when you read it back to yourself. If you do that, you’ll never ever finish a song, take it from someone who knows that rather well. And if you have to make up a word, go for it, I wanted to say perspiring but I needed more syllables and so “perspirating” was born, and of the 4 or 5 people that have heard that song not one of them has noticed. Writing about ideas doesn’t mean completely abandoning people and events, but they need to be used to make a point; John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats is probably the undisputed king of this in regards to people, while Bob Dylan’s early work probably has the market cornered on the events side of things.

In no way by writing this am I suggesting that I’ve achieved the ability to write songs about ideas, quite the opposite in fact. I’m saying if you want to write good songs, aim for the ideas, but if you end up with people, keep writing anyway because it’s the only way you’re going to learn. For 10 years I tried too hard, when I learned to stop giving a damn, I learned to write songs, but like Texas Hold ‘Em, it takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master so I (and you) better get cracking.