“Sometimes I’ll do something clever, but I try not to be clever just to be clever—that would be contrived”
—Stephen Stills
Unless you’re simply writing to please yourself or entertain your family, it is essential to take the listener and the commercial market into consideration when creating your songs. Don’t just write for yourself.
As Emeli Sandé puts it: “You need to understand the market you’re in. You can’t become too self-indulgent.”
The urge to express yourself may be one reason why you started writing in the first place—especially if you’re a singer-songwriter or writing for your own band. How- ever, there is a huge difference between communicating your personal thoughts and feelings forcefully in a song that has a well-balanced shape and form … and an introspective self-indulgent opus that goes on and on, doesn’t actually go anywhere, and only gratifies your own whims.
If you want your songs to be heard and enjoyed by other people, you have to be able to step outside of yourself and hear the song from the listener’s point of view. Does your song communicate clearly what you want to say without it needing further explanation? Are there chord changes and musical phrases that are repeated more than three times within a verse or a chorus just because you like them?
Have you written too many verses when, with some self-discipline, your story could be condensed and told in two or three high-impact verses? Is your bridge too long and meandering? Are you deliberately trying to be obtuse and abstract to make your lyrics sound ‘intellectual’?
If you want to be able to earn a living from songwriting, you’re unlikely to achieve substantial commercial success by writing self-centred and self-satisfying songs that don’t engage listeners and therefore fail to communicate your messages easily to them.
# # # #