“I don’t write songs, songs write me”
—Sammy Cahn
Trying too hard to make a song happen—force-feeding the songwriting process— rarely leads to great results. A song that is labored often lacks the emotion of something that comes to you naturally like a perfectly-formed idea that you just pluck out of the air (or, more accurately, out of your subconscious).
“If you don’t try and force it, a song will find the proper moment to come to life,” says Valerie Simpson who co-wrote classic songs such as ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ and ‘Solid (As a Rock)’ with her husband Nickolas Ashford.
Stephen Stills also believes in not pushing things if you feel your efforts during a writing session are exhausted, or if you’ve got songwriting block. “I sit down and start playing the guitar, if nothing comes I put it down,” he says. “If something comes I pursue it until I get bored. I know better than to force it.”
His former band mate Neil Young holds a similar view: “If you don’t have an idea and you don’t hear anything going over and over in your head, don’t sit down and try to write a song. Go mow the lawn…”.
When inspiration does come, don’t stop the flow. Take the chords, melodies and lyrics that come instinctively and accept that they may change during the creative process. Don’t go chasing the ‘perfect’ melody or rhyme or the correct phrasing – just get the first draft of the song written.
If you spend too much time trying to perfect one element of the song, you may lose your connection with the spark that ignited the idea in the first place.
Similarly, don’t try to rush a new song. Be patient. We’ve all heard the stories about classic songs that were written in 10 minutes, but the majority of well-crafted songs are actually the result of many rounds of re-writes and careful polishing.
English songwriter Ed Sheeran told American Songwriter magazine that he’d spent five years working on a particular song. “This one song keeps evolving,” he said, “and I keep adding bits to it.”
If you find you’re stuck with one of your songs, try sleeping on it. Scientists now believe that a nap can boost creative thought.
A study by researchers at the University of California in San Diego concluded that problems are more likely to be solved after a period of dreamy sleep. Scientists believe rapid eye movement (REM) sleep allows the brain to form new nerve connections without the interference of other thought pathways that occur when we are awake or in non-dreamy sleep.
Anecdotal evidence suggests there could be some truth in this. Paul McCartney has often spoken about the melody for ‘Yesterday’ coming to him in a dream. Keith Richards wrote the riff for ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ in his sleep. And ‘Norwegian Wood’ came to John Lennon in the same way.
“I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good,” Lennon recalled, “and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, ‘Nowhere Man’ came, words and music, the whole damn thing. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something….”
More recently, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr said: “I sleep in little three or four hour bursts and then I get these creative ideas around three o’clock in the morning. Sometimes I go to bed late and then wake up two hours later and I’ve got a better song.”
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