I confessed something during a show I played the other night: I think Taylor Swift is the shiz. I think she has a strong voice that she knows how to use to very good effect, and it's imperfect enough to be interesting. She's a real musician. She has excellent stage presence. And above all, I think she is a distinctive, inspired pop songwriter.
I keep going back to videos of her performing "unplugged," just her singing and playing acoustic or electric guitar (she plays well). That's where you can tell whether a song is truly a good song or just the result of production. "Wildest Dreams" on the album doesn't particularly stand out for me, but Swift performing it solo at the Grammy Museum slays me. I watched a video of her playing "We Are Never Getting Back Together," a monster hit that sounds great with her singing and playing.
Before she sang it, she told the story of how the song came about. And there's no question that having the inspiration of saying about an ex-boyfriend that "we are never getting back together" in the way that she did helped create a hit song. But what struck me was Swift saying that she had gone to the studio that day specifically to write a song. She and Martin were going to work until they had produced something good.
This is not an unusual way to work. It's how pretty much all pop songwriters work. You don't wait for inspiration. You make inspiration. You scribble ideas, or draw, or play an instrument, or whatever gets your juices flowing. You bounce ideas off collaborators. You write and throw away the stuff that doesn't work until you have not just a song but a good song. There are bands that do something similar: hole up together and write songs for the next album until they have enough.
Me, I've usually been of the lazy, wait-for-the-muse type. The upside is that I'm generally happy with what I write. The downside is that I have so little output. The muse is fickle. And if I don't block out time to write, other things will get done instead, and song output will be less than my output on this irregularly updated blog.
It would be dumb to say, as I have said, that I'm just not a prolific songwriter. The reality is that I don't work enough at it. Neither harder nor smarter.
I have rarely collaborated to write songs, and almost never in the way that Swift and Martin do. I wonder what that would be like. I do know that writing with another good writer is likely to do two things: produce more good songs and make both participants better songwriters. I say I "almost" never work that way because that's pretty much what you do at rock camp. But rock camp songwriting does not usually produce hits. You're mainly concerned with getting the song finished at all!
I don't know if any of the songwriters I know would want to do any collaborating. I could ask. I could also seek out workshops where co-writing is part of what you do. I'm so used to writing alone, in a very personal way, that it's a bit scary to think of working with one or more other people. But I bet it would do me a lot of good.
I keep going back to videos of her performing "unplugged," just her singing and playing acoustic or electric guitar (she plays well). That's where you can tell whether a song is truly a good song or just the result of production. "Wildest Dreams" on the album doesn't particularly stand out for me, but Swift performing it solo at the Grammy Museum slays me. I watched a video of her playing "We Are Never Getting Back Together," a monster hit that sounds great with her singing and playing.
Before she sang it, she told the story of how the song came about. And there's no question that having the inspiration of saying about an ex-boyfriend that "we are never getting back together" in the way that she did helped create a hit song. But what struck me was Swift saying that she had gone to the studio that day specifically to write a song. She and Martin were going to work until they had produced something good.
This is not an unusual way to work. It's how pretty much all pop songwriters work. You don't wait for inspiration. You make inspiration. You scribble ideas, or draw, or play an instrument, or whatever gets your juices flowing. You bounce ideas off collaborators. You write and throw away the stuff that doesn't work until you have not just a song but a good song. There are bands that do something similar: hole up together and write songs for the next album until they have enough.
Me, I've usually been of the lazy, wait-for-the-muse type. The upside is that I'm generally happy with what I write. The downside is that I have so little output. The muse is fickle. And if I don't block out time to write, other things will get done instead, and song output will be less than my output on this irregularly updated blog.
It would be dumb to say, as I have said, that I'm just not a prolific songwriter. The reality is that I don't work enough at it. Neither harder nor smarter.
I have rarely collaborated to write songs, and almost never in the way that Swift and Martin do. I wonder what that would be like. I do know that writing with another good writer is likely to do two things: produce more good songs and make both participants better songwriters. I say I "almost" never work that way because that's pretty much what you do at rock camp. But rock camp songwriting does not usually produce hits. You're mainly concerned with getting the song finished at all!
I don't know if any of the songwriters I know would want to do any collaborating. I could ask. I could also seek out workshops where co-writing is part of what you do. I'm so used to writing alone, in a very personal way, that it's a bit scary to think of working with one or more other people. But I bet it would do me a lot of good.
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