reading How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy
“If you can pull off a beret, you can definitely write songs.”
“Do you want to be a ‘star’? Don’t bother. You’re going to lose. Even if you make it, you’ll lose. Because you’re never going to be exactly what you’re picturing. But what do you want to do? You want to play music in front of people? You can do that.”
“...you have to focus on verbs over nouns—what you want to do, not what you want to be.”
“My father did have the impulse to sit down and write poetry. He would go to the basement from time to time when he was upset about something or when he was mad. He’d sit and write a poem, and then come upstairs, half drunk, and read a simplistic, heavily rhyming but not entirely artless poem about the Alton & Southern Railway, or our neighbor who’d died, or something else that he was stewing about.”
“...inspiration is rarely the first step. When it does come out of the blue, it’s glorious. But it’s much more in your own hands than the divine-intervention-type beliefs we all tend to have about inspiration.”
“You need your human frailty to be at least somewhat visible if you want to connect on an emotional level—if you want things to feel real.”
“I believe most of us only spend time doing the things that we truly want to do. So if you’re doing something with your free time other than writing a song, it’s because you really don’t want to write a song.”
“What do you care about? What do you talk to your friends about? Whatever is on your mind is a good-enough topic for a song, in my opinion.”
“...it can be very daunting and upsetting when people realize that others are more talented than they are. But you have to work through that. You can’t quit because there’s a Beyoncé in the world. You can’t quit because you went to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and realized that everyone on stage knows more about music than you ever will.”
“To me, showing up with a reliably open heart and a will to share whatever spirit you can muster is what resonates and transcends technical perfection.”
“I recorded birds, but I made a conscious decision to record that... The act of doing that seems as creative to me as the act of playing something on a guitar. It reconfirms my search for beauty and inspiration.”
“...some part of me still believed that creation myth, that you have to suffer. And then I realized that everyone suffers. Therefore, anyone who creates art can, if they choose, focus on their suffering and say that’s where it comes from.”
“...there was this notion that being in a rock band was a good thing to do if you didn’t want to work or get a real job. But all the rock bands you’ve heard of are the rock bands that’ve worked the hardest.”
“...the time I spend with my loving family produces very little in terms of pure songwriting material. Feel free to have a life. But don’t complain to me when it takes you a month to finish your first song. I’m kidding here.”
“...spending time with your family is living your life, which is way better than writing about your life. Also, it gives you something to write about.”
“...there are some songs from long ago that I’ve never been able to figure out. Songs that will never be finished... because I was a lazy idiot and didn’t bother to write down the crazy cool tuning I invented. Lesson learned.”
“I truly think I do a lot of my best work while I’m asleep. I often wake up with the last musical puzzle I was contemplating completely solved.”
“I’ll often practice a guitar part I’m struggling with right before bed, and it’s almost magical how much easier it is to play the next morning.”
“...I also think it’s OK to want to be great. I don’t feel any shame in saying I want to write the greatest song in the world. I want to write a song that would make someone say, ‘This is my favorite song of all time.’”
“That’s one of the problems with humans—that we can be talked out of loving something. That we can be talked out of loving something that we do, and we can be talked out of loving ourselves. Easily, unfortunately.”
“You want words to burst into the room, demand your attention, and remind you how exciting things can be.”
“We have thousands of years of evidence that songs help us live and cope, and they teach us how to be human. Becoming a part of the continuation of that rich human activity is all up to you.”
“...avoiding adverbs and adjectives is just good all-around writing advice.”
“...I’m convinced that if you can tell someone you love them and have them believe you, then you can write a song that’s just as persuasive.”
“Maybe not everyone can make a chord progression, but everyone can make up a story.”
“...get yourself to see the world from a new angle every once in a while. Look around the room you’re in right now. What is the clock seeing from its perch on the mantel? Have you ever imagined what it’s like to be a rug?”
“...if you really want to get into the mind-set of a songwriter, you should learn other people’s songs seriously and thoroughly. Tons of them. And don’t stop.”
“...set a timer for any amount of time you can spare (I think five to ten minutes is perfect) and tell yourself that whatever comes to you in that amount of time is a song.”
“...bang on a table and blurt out something primal. Play one chord and narrate your day so far. Just put something into a recorder. You’ve created something that didn’t exist before—how freeing is that?”
“Basically, you have to learn how to have a party and not invite any part of your psyche that feels a need to judge what you make as a reflection of you.”
“I don’t think you should be afraid to use the direct influence of someone else’s work, even though we’ve been taught that it’s wrong to take something without permission.”
“Recently I fell in love with a song called ‘Andromeda’ by the artist Weyes Blood. The song sounds a lot like its name—celestial and luminous. Think Karen Carpenter’s kid sister high on edibles. I had to learn it.”
“I would like to point out to anyone troubled by the sound of their own voice that your voice is your body, so you have to at least tolerate it.”
“If you don’t like what you’re singing, and how it feels to sing it, and how it sounds to your ear, you have no reason to expect anyone else will want to sing along with you. Isn’t that the point of all this in a way?”
“...it’s rare that you can’t make anything. I don’t believe a writer ever truly loses the ability to create.”
“...a good first line is the most determining factor in whether a song I’ve written sees the light of day.”
“I believe we stop ourselves sometimes when we’re happy. We create conflict in our relationships sometimes because we’re feeling uncertain and needy. Feeling attached to something can be uncomfortable.”
“I don’t like every song I write, but I like that I wrote it. I know that for every five or so songs I write, I’m going to have one that means a lot to me, and it wouldn’t have come to me if I hadn’t written the other four songs, if I hadn’t practiced getting to that place.”