Maybe it’s just me. It sure seems like it gets harder and harder to write good songs. I’ve done some mulling on the reasons, and it probably isn’t what you think.
It isn’t, for instance, that I have too much to do. I’ve had too much to do for the last 15 years. When I was 15 I had nothing to do. Hours and hours of nothing to do and the songs I wrote then were terrible. I can remember getting home from church on a Sunday, eating some dinner and rolling into my bedroom. I would often play and write until supper. 5-6 hours. Nothing to do but sit in there and hammer away. Wow…those songs were terrible.
When I first moved to LA I had nothing to do. I kept a diary for a time and reading that thing now is hilarious and quite sad. Sunday, May 9, 1992 “Ordered Pizza”. That was my entire days activity, and this was before the Internet. I remember one Labor Day weekend where i left my backbreaking job moving boxes at 6pm on Friday night and did not speak to another live human being until Tuesday morning at 7:30am. Lots of writing going on. Not nearly as bad as the teen years, but not so great either.
It isn’t because I’m happy. Although I am now mostly happy. (As long as I don’t think about how much my cell phone company rips me off.) Most songwriters start writing in order to express feelings of sadness or anger. All that piss and vinegar makes for conflict, drama and good songs. (good art in general.) Once life sorts itself out and they make enough money to live and find someone to love them - they have nothing to write about. These often leads to a sudden and unfortunate loss of quality in the songwriting department.
There are artists that never really get it together. Life is one personal disaster after the next and this helps them avoid the problem entirely. But GEEZ what a life. That would be like agreeing to relive my 28th year over and over in order to write good songs about my personal misery. I’d rather take a bullet. No, like many of the writers I admire - John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, to name a couple, I have gotten a handle on writing songs from a happy life. The songs aren’t happy, but I am. I just keep my ears open and my heart open and there’s enough pain and interesting stuff to fill my notebook. Of course, occasionally I do bump into some personal pain and that gets poured in as well.
It isn’t because I’ve said everything I need to say. I HAVE heard writers say this. “Well, I’ve got nothing more to say.” That strikes me as odd. Sort of like, “I have no more conversations I’d like to have.” or “I’ve met all the people I’d like to meet.” We all get burned out from time to time but I always seem to have something new that I’d like to tackle. Hell, I could write 10 songs that are attempts to do a better job of covering topics that I tried with past songs. If that makes any sense.
No…the reason it gets harder and harder to write good songs is that I seem to discover more and more rules. I see what people say about my records and my songs. It’s hard not to see it, because you’re trying to pass it along to others. I think I have a pretty thick skin in that I don’t take it personally. (After all you can’t criticize a critic for critiquing a record that you sent him to critique.) But when it is time to sit down and CREATE again…that stuff comes creeping back in. You play a riff and you think, “That’s a cool starting place.” and you hear a voice that says, “…retreading Rolling Stone licks isn’t country…” and you think, “Wait. Is that just a Rolling Stone lick? That isn’t really country, is it? That rhythm is too rock, and it takes the song too far away from what most people think of as honky tonk. Damn, maybe that isn’t good. Do we have any beer?”
You come up with a title that sounds interesting and you jot down a first line. Then you think, “That sounds mean. I sure have taken a lot of criticism for being mean. Maybe I shouldn’t write that. Is music supposed to be mean? Buck Owens wasn’t mean. Shit, do we have any beer?”
And sometimes you think…WHO CARES I’LL JUST DO WHAT I WANT. But if you do, and you finish, you still think, “You know my kind of country music can’t be like that. We could play the song…but doesn’t it just confuse the audience?” I suppose some writers are just like a machine that cranks out a clean and pure type of song. No questions. No variation. I can’t do it. I have a desire to wiggle around a little. Twist it. Turn it. And over time it’s easy to take the feedback that you’ve violated some sacred rules of songwriting for a particular genre. There are lots of rules, and as time goes on I seem to find a way to violate them all - “too slick”, “too dumb”, “too mean”, “too funny”, “too traditional”, “not traditional enough”. And of course…all the feedback could be right.
So, we’ll see how it goes. I’m hammering away now. It gets harder and harder. But I get more and more determined. I love this quote from Samuel Beckett.
“Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back.”
