Where Good Songs Come From And How You Can Write (Find) Them

By society’s standards, I am not a professional or successful songwriter. If you know who I am, there’s a chance you know about the music I make, perhaps even enjoy it, or perhaps dismiss it. I am far away from any large scale success. Despite the grand aspirations I have for approval from my peers and/or monetary success I may gain with the songs I write, these things don’t tell me I am a good songwriter. I’m writing this piece to serve as a reminder to myself and potentially others. It’s important to remember that the quality of art is only objective to the people making it. It becomes a subjective and distant emotional connection when someone outside of the creative process experiences it, for better or for worse. More importantly, I want to further investigate how one achieves a “good” song.

I can only speak from the experience of writing music, but I believe the philosophy I’m about to present can extend to any form of what we can consider art. So when I talk about writing songs, feel free to apply this to your own medium for expression.

The foundation of a well written song, and its performance, is its authenticity. The existential questions we ask ourselves, more specifically, the major one, “Who am I?” is always addressed in art. The closer you get to honestly answering that question, the better piece of art you’ll create. I’ve written over 300 pieces of music, some fully formed, some half formed ideas, some ideas are only a few lyrics or a guitar riff. Of those 300 pieces, only 7 have been professionally recorded with my band, Blonde Otter. How did these 7 songs stand out among the hundreds of other ideas I’ve pursued? On the surface, it is an instinctual feeling, and one of the main things I want to stress is that one should trust their instinct. The feeling I had said to me that these 7 songs effectively captured who I am or was, and convey who or what my band is most accurately in a specific moment in time.

As mentioned earlier, this idea of honesty and authenticity does not just apply to our creative work, but it’s an ever constant reality in the world around us. A Sociology 101 class might tell us the clothes we choose to wear are informed by life experiences around us and the perspectives we form. My band is comprised of four of my closest college friends and my brother. There is a chemistry and identity that we all share. I would argue audiences don’t need to know us on a personal level to recognize this.

The first song I ever wrote for my band, Blonde Otter (at the time we were named Chemtrails) was called “Worth”. Like our first band name, the song was devoid of a personal connection and identity. It was a strange song, a 128 beats per minute dance rock song paired with what I considered at the time unconventional chord progressions. It sounded like a poor attempt at a Radiohead song set to an EDM beat and I hope the demo we recorded never sees the light of day again. Quickly, I realized that this wasn’t who I was or who we were collectively. I was trying to make something unique for the sake of making something unique. What I erroneously did not understand at the time was I should be capitalizing on channeling the person I had grown into, a person who is already unique, as everyone is.

“Worth” never felt good to perform or listen to and I immediately recognized a problem I didn’t know how to solve. After writing and finishing my first song, I was ready to resign as a creative force for the band. My idealization of being a Brian Wilson or Roger Waters figure, a bass player, but an essential creative force in the direction of the group was about to dissipate instantly. Not much later, the band’s lead guitarist, Dan and vocalist, Mike brought a song called “Month Ago” to a practice. When we finished piecing it together with our parts, we were all in awe. It made perfect sense. Instead of being discouraged, I felt inspired to figure out how and why it worked. After deconstructing the song, I realized Dan and Mike’s collaboration arrived at a personality, identity, and perspective that connected all five of us. I probably analyzed their song more so than they had when they were writing it. The melodic and harmonic structure emulated the sounds of Weezer and The Strokes, something the entire band could passionately and authentically get behind. The lyrics, centering around a male with a concerning obsession with a female’s reciprocal affection, was bold as it was tongue in cheek. Fortunately, around the same time a new band released music under the name Chemtrails and we forfeited the name. We eventually arrived at Blonde Otter, a name that was lifted from a nickname given to our other roommate who wasn’t involved in the band. As I saw it, there was an invaluable personal connection to the name, its true meaning only meant for us. Additionally, the image of the name, a common, endearing animal, paired with an uncommon coat of fur, essentially described who we were: a rock band, but determined to be seen as something slightly different than the climate of rock music we saw around us. The image itself is also funny, which amused us. As I reflected more on our name and our first song, I realized the more we dive into our own personal selves and connections, the grander themes start to appear and resonate. People seem to think the band name is cool without knowing where it came from. So if you’re looking for one yourself, look to your own life before Googling “Random Band Name Generator”.

Now we had a name and a song that captured the spirit of our music influences, sensibilities, and perspective. Instead of purposely searching for a sound I did not intrinsically have, I followed Dan and Mike’s model. I drew from the major alternative rock bands who came up a generation before us, the ones I and we all grew up listening to. These are alternative rock bands who spoke to white suburbia and gave us all an identity that brought us together, essentially helping us become close friends in the first place. They are etched into our subconscious and spirit, whether we like it or not. When I began tinkering with songwriting again, the melodies and chord structures came to me much more easily and naturally. Of course we can be and are influenced by other artists of different sounds and backgrounds, and we do incorporate that into our music, but I realized it would be foolish to run away from the home base, the art that made us who we were. When you pick up a new creative voice, you must start at your beginnings and work from there. The songs we have are simple, but they’re simple with the idea that we are continually growing towards an acute body of work that defines who we are.

Following these realizations, the second song I wrote for the band, “Hello, Bye Bye” came almost immediately. A popular interview question musicians are asked when discussing a song usually is, “What does this song mean?” It’s a notoriously bland question to ask a musician because from what I’ve discussed above, the answer is never simple. A simple and accurate answer, if there was one, would be this song, and any other song is about myself, and by extension, as what the business model of music is designed for, is to have the song be hopefully about you too so you can connect to it and buy it or stream it. Using “Hello, Bye Bye” as an example, the subject matter is surface level. The song’s lyrics talk about going to a party you don’t want to go to. By the end of the first verse, the narrator is convinced to go to the party with the idea that maybe their own instinct was wrong. This is followed by the chorus, or resulting theme, “Everyone comes to me / Expecting someone I don’t want to be / I’m backing up to the door / When everybody wants me on the floor / Hello, bye bye / Hello, bye bye”. In the second verse, the narrator realizes his own instinct was right and decides to leave. This might sound like a typical college experience, because it was to me. Although this is what the song is “about”, this isn’t necessarily what the song “means”. As I intended and as the song further reveals itself every time I listen to it or perform it, this story functions as a grander metaphor for exactly what I’m discussing: being yourself, functioning purely on instinct, and not consciously thinking about what others want from you. This will bring the best work out of you and allows likeminded others to connect and access who you are.

This also brings us to considering the authenticity of performance. When writing all the parts of a song for Blonde Otter, I have a visceral approach to thinking about who is playing what and how they play it. Since writing “Hello, Bye Bye”, this became an instinctual process, I know my friends and my brother better than most people. If I had to analyze though, my brother, Matt, a self taught drummer brings a Keith Moon like aggressiveness to the songs as well as a Ringo Starr focus on the best ways to have the drums serve the song. Our sibling relationship and symbiotic connection effortlessly extends to our performance. There will be no other drummer I ever play with who I will feel more in tune with. Our vocalist Mike, inspired by David Byrne, Thom Yorke, and many theatre productions brings his bare, Id personality to a performance as I do when writing the songs. My lead guitarist Dan, a headstrong and devout metalhead will handle the more intricate and melodic guitar parts while Brendan, our most reserved and mediate member would play the standard chords to give the songs its center. I don’t have to think about these things, but when writing a song, these are the things in back of the mind. They are the factors determining whether a piece is meant for a specific outlet and not another. Basically, I write and then I see if I see the other musicians in the song, and if so they can bring even more of themselves to the song.

If we are continually honest and authentic with ourselves, we can naturally expect growth, like any other facet in our lives. Songs and art should only become increasingly more difficult to complete as you continue. If it becomes easier or you believe you figured out the best way to go about it, you are slowly detaching yourself from your chosen medium. I don’t bring a song to the band unless I personally think it’s better than everything I’ve written before it. One of my band’s most recent songs, “Calm Like a Bomb” introduced putting a capo on the guitar for a different guitar voicing and uses a lot of 7 chords. To musicians, this is not a radical idea at all, but this was a sound and flavor we had yet to incorporate. Musically and lyrically, it’s completely unlike “Hello, Bye Bye”. I challenged myself to authentically introduce chord progressions, melodic techniques, and words that fit in the schema of the band, but showed a side of myself and us that had not been revealed before. This should be the goal for the artist to continue experimenting to find more avenues and routes to showcase the self.

This band of mine has only had two EP releases, but around six months following each release so far, the excitement and pride begins to naturally erode. There are a lot of musical and lyrical decisions that I regret later on that I wish I could go back and change. You start to think these songs you wrote before aren’t “good”, but they are, and at the same time, aren’t, as you continue to work towards improvement in the craft. However, this feeling differs from a “Worth” situation because in the moment, as I finished writing or recording the other songs with the band, I and we felt 100% satisfied with what we were creating in that moment. When the art you determined is wholly complete and now out there in the public, whatever regrets you have in retrospect become irrelevant. This point of view is why I chiefly oppose when classic rock bands (mostly 80’s hair metal bands, most of which I admire very much) rerecord their old hit songs or when an artist like Kanye West (who I also admire very much) “updates” an existing recording of a song. We can sympathize with this because this kind of experience of course isn’t unique to the music world. I would liken it to photoshopping an old unflattering photo of yourself. We are constantly cringing at aspects our former selves and yearn for people to give us another chance to show who we are now. Instead of trying to rewrite the past, one should feel driven to move forward because that is what is happening constantly in life.

Of course people will sometimes, and in some cases with popular artists, say the new material is not as good as the “older stuff”. But is the way an audience romanticizes old material any different than when we criticize an old friend who has seem to undergone a drastic personality change that we don’t like? It isn’t really. The audience does not determine if a song is “good”. The quality of the work is an honest conversation with yourself. Even peers aside, what individual is ever nostalgic for their older self? If they are, it’s generally agreed that chasing your youth or former self is an unhealthy and unfruitful pursuit. To avoid any conflicts with my previous points, I’m not saying we can’t draw from our past. We should do so when we are trying to inform our present, we shouldn’t use past glories as a crutch. When we can fully accept our present selves and therefore present something that says who we are in a particular moment, you and others begin to understand who you are. When that’s done, you’ve written a “good” song.

So I feel that I’ve written a good and insightful piece here. I hope you agree, if not, I’m sorry, and I promise to try again soon. Also I’m a hypocrite because I will be continually editing and revising this. Thanks for understanding.