How To Write Songs

Category: Wisdom from Songwriters

  • 5 Books that Are Songwriter Must-Reads

    5 Books that Are Songwriter Must-Reads As professional songwriters, we have collectively read hundreds of books on the art of songwriting. What we want to do in this article is discuss 5 of the most influential and transformative books that we personally keep coming back to as songwriters. Some of these books aren’t specifically about…

  • How to decide Songwriter Splits

    Songwriting splits are an important part of being a professional songwriter and musician – but what is the best strategy when it comes to royalties and copyright? Well, if you’re the Red Hot Chili Peppers, just split everything evenly (hey, it’s been working for 40 years). For in-depth discussion on how to determine songwriting splits,…

  • Why the title of your song is so important

    When we are talking about ‘ideas’ in songs, it’s helpful to draw this distinction: There is the ‘big idea’ – the broad story, experience, or concept we want to write about. What Jimmy Webb is talking about here is when the BIG IDEA becomes a SONG IDEA. What’s the difference? A SONG IDEA isn’t just…

  • Mastering the Elements of Lyric Writing

    Studying and understanding the tools that go into making a song can help anyone learn how to write a song more effectively. I hope these conversations give you ideas for your own songs and songwriting. We were lucky enough to have a long conversation with Berklee Professor Pat Pattison. But was my teacher and mentor…

  • 6 Songs That Taught Us How to Write Songs

    One of the best ways to learn how to write great songs is to learn from great songs and songwriters. In this video, songwriter Ben Romalis and I take 6 songs that each taught us a crucial principle or technique about writing great songs. Drawing from a range of inspirations from Radiohead, Tom Waits, to…

  • George Saunders, Janis Ian, and Paul Simon—Where Meaning Comes From in Story

    In a recent newsletter by one of my favourite writers, George Saunders, he writes of one of his characters in a short story, The Falls: “A story has a surface dimension (let’s call it the overstory) and another, deeper, dimension (the understory). The overstory, in this case, is whether Morse will save the girls. That’s…

  • The Best Method for Writing a Good Song

    From a recent interview with John Mayer: “Whenever I want to write a big song, I can’t. And by “big” I mean spatially…the glacially large space inside the heart, that’s when I get writers block…trying to write a song to fill the entire galaxy. But if I write a song about the size of a…

  • Songwriters on songwriting

    I’ve been baffled lately that there aren’t more songwriters in the world who write about writing. Luckily, there are centuries worth of novelists, essayists, and other author types who have written so lucidly and honestly about the craft of writing, its messiness, its need for discipline. (Some of my favourites are On Writing by Stephen…

  • Ryan Adams: Let Your Ego Come Out to Play

    I love this video of Ryan Adams revealing his daily songwriting method, that he calls ‘Stacks’. It basically involves taking one reference book (like the Roget’s International Thesaurus) on one side, and another random book—a novel perhaps—on the other side. Open each to a random page. Scan the page of the novel until a line…

  • Eagle Rock Fall Songwriters Retreat

      EAGLE ROCK SONGWRITERS RETREAT – OCTOBER 8 2011   Former Berklee Songwriting faculty Keppie Coutts presents the Eagle Rock Fall Songwriters Retreat on Sunday, October 8!   Fall Retreat will involve a series of creative exercises and time-proven writing techniques in the morning, equipping you with processes to bring your unique perspective and voice…

  • Getting Fruitful Feedback – (Eagle Rock Songwriters Retreat this weekend!)

    One the most important things in the journey of a songwriter is being part of a community who can give you helpful feedback. Your friends, parents and audience will always be more than willing to tell you how much they love your songs (aka how much they just love you), and sometimes how much they…

  • Paul Simon on Listening to the Critics

    I don’t think it’s very good for a serious songwriter to pay attention to what critics say. It’s just too hard. And it’s not informative. They don’t know what they’re talking about. And can’t know what they’re talking about, by definition. Unless you write songs and make records, you just really can’t know what it’s…

Weekend Songwriting Intensive - January 4-5

Ignite 2025 with an immersive weekend of songwriting, led by Keppie and Benny.