My favorite songs I’ve written vary from time to time. But usually it’s the song I’m working on. But, in-between challenges, looking back, as of this moment, these are my top songs that I wrote during the songwriting challenges hosted by the FAWM (February Album Writing Month) community.
This collection includes comments from the FAWM community, where available. This is such a treasured testimony to some of my best times in the music community. Thank you!
Like my dad loved to listen to music, strap on some headphones, sit back, and enjoy. Thanks for listening!
More than once, I’ve heard a songwriter mid-session dismiss a lyrical or melodic idea outright because it bore too strong a resemblance to something they’d written previously. I don’t know why this is, but, more than practitioners of any other art form as far as I’m aware, songwriters act like it’s our cosmic destiny to constantly reinvent the wheel.
Tell me why Monet got 250 chances to paint waterlilies, and ceramicists can make a hundred clay bowls, but every song idea has to emerge from whole cloth or else it’s “derivative” or “unoriginal.”
Other mediums seem to inherently understand the value of refining an idea over time, also known as iterative practice. For one thing, most ideas are multi-faceted and require more than one examination in order to be fully understood. For another, feelings change over time; the song you wrote in anger a year ago might hit different now that your rage has cooled. Maybe you came up with a great melody/chord progression for one song, but it never really gained traction in your repertoire for whatever reason. Should that brilliance be doomed to languish in obscurity simply because it was already promised to another song? Heck no.
I couldn’t agree more. We’re so hard on ourselves. On our music. Thinking it’s all crap. Especially if we don’t have people praising it as often as we’d like. But sometimes it’s good to re-listen to a song you’ve written, produced, recorded and appreciate what’s good about it. And with the FAWM community, I get to revisit all the lovely comments I got. Here’s one I’m especially proud of.
Screamie Birds Studios 