If you take a look back at the best performers and bands from the past six or seven decades of pop music, there’s one thing you’ll see that’s in common with all of them: they were all able to produce songs where uniqueness was a vital factor. Uniqueness, at least from a songwriting/performing standpoint, does not […]
If there’s one thing songwriters usually strive for, it’s uniqueness. No one wants to simply write songs that sound like everything else that’s going on out there. That would make it hard to build a fan base of your own. Except… there is something worse than being overly predictable in your writing style (and predictability […]
You’ve probably noticed that great songwriters, when being interviewed about what they do, often talk about old songs. They’ll talk about the songs of their youth, and sometimes even further back. If you’re writing songs that you hope are on the cutting edge, songs that you hope sound fresh, new and innovative, it begs the question: […]
The thing that’s bad about a songwriting formula is the predictability of it. When you write to a formula, you’re working out a song based on the notion that “when I do this, I should then do that.” And if you write that way, every song you write is going to have an undesirable sameness. […]
Everyone has a songwriting style, and if you listen to enough of someone’s music you’ll start to hear those similarities, assuming it’s not immediately obvious. Similarity between songs is not a horrible wrong that must be corrected. It’s unavoidable. And it’s a part of being creative in the sense that creativity usually builds on things […]
The danger of innovation in songwriting is the possibility of losing fans. They know what to expect from you, but suddenly you’re moving in a new direction that they don’t like. The danger of not being innovative is that you won’t build a fan base, or at least build it painfully slowly. I maintain that the […]
