Songwriting – The Myth of Perfection

When you write a song, don’t try to be too perfect from the first line. No matter “how good or bad or ugly you think it is”, it can help you move on to writing a better next line, next song, next album. This is a great tip from Jeffrey Pepper Rodger’s book The Complete Singer-Songwriter.

Sinéad O’Connor about songwriting: I write from a different place

Sinéad O’Connor is best known for her cover of Prince’s Nothing compares 2 U, and for tearing up a picture of the pope in the 1990. Over ten years on, she has recorded several albums, most recently “How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?”. In the Guardian she talks about her songwriting technique.

Ane Brun: Songwriting is “magical”

The music magazine Three Monkeys has a great interview with Ane Brun in which she reveals her songwriting technique. While Leonard Cohen writes too many verses, Gillian Welch only records a song if she can remember it after weeks, Ane Brun is mostly “inspired by emotional and existential topics”.

Leonard Cohen: “Hallelujah took around two years”

After discussing how Gillian Welch writes songs, now it’s the turn for legend Leonard Cohen. In a Guardian interview he explains why he doesn’t like slogans in songs, and why it took him two years and 80 verses to write his song Hallelujah.

Gillian Welch: We suffered from writer’s dissatisfaction

Like many singer-songwriters, Gillian Welch does not touch her audience by being a “party band”. She tells Acoustic Guitar that people come to her shows to sink into her world for little while. In its latest issue, the magazine reviews her album The Harrow and the Harvest and calls it a “unique body of work”. In an interview with the artist we also learn why it took eight years to write the new album.