I am a big fan of the American band, Wilco. I happened to find a book written by the lead singer, Jeff Tweedy recently. It is called “How to Write One Song,” and it was very inspiring. After reading the book, I started writing a song on the guitar. I haven’t written any songs for about 15 years, but it was interesting to try Tweedy’s methods.
Here are a few quotes from the book, and some of my thoughts about them.
1
“Don’t undervalue things that come easy. Sometimes they’re the things that would be the hardest for someone else to do and often they are the things that would be almost impossible to do when you try too hard.”
I once wrote a song in my sleep. When I was a university student, I had a dream in which I was holding a guitar and singing a song. I had a unique melody, and what seemed at the time to be interesting lyrics.
Unfortunately, I didn’t own a guitar, and I didn’t know how to play one yet. I had no recording device, either. So I went back to sleep and my song was lost.
Paul McCartney famously wrote the song “Yesterday” in the same way. He wrote it in his dream. So maybe Jeff Tweedy is right: sometimes the best things you create can come easily.
2
“No work of art is ever finished; it can only be abandoned in an interesting place.”
Songs which someone has tried hard to perfect can often be less interesting than the first demo version of the same song. Somehow, you can get a better sense of the warmth of the human musicians if you hear a rough vocal or a sigh or laugh caught on the microphone. A good example of an imperfect but warm and slightly wonky recording is Orange Juice’s version of the song, “L.O.V.E.”.
3
“I find it’s almost impossible to put two words together and not find at least some meaning. We’re conditioned to look for patterns and identify mysteries to solve much more than we are designed to dictate what we’re searching for. I recommend allowing that natural curiosity and our sense-making brains to do their thing.”
Tweedy suggests playing with words, and finding random connections between them to make unique lyrics. Obviously not all random collections of words will be interesting, but you might be able to pick out a few interesting combinations, and build a poem or song lyric around those random combinations.
4
“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.”
Don’t
complain that you have no time to do something creative, and then sit down and
watch tv for two hours.
5
“Being willing to sound bad is one of the most important pieces of advice that I can give you. Writing a song will teach you that it’s OK to fail. And more than that, that it’s actually good to fail, and that you can come to appreciate the gifts of failure.”
The book
sounds a bit Buddhist at times: It’s not
the destination that counts, but the journey.
Tweedy is convinced that doing something creative is good for your mental health. It can be writing haiku, drawing pictures, or finding the beauty in an unusual sound. Like God, we all have the power to create something that wasn’t there before, even if it is only ourselves that appreciate the creation. And like a child we have created, our poem or song doesn’t even have to be great in every way for us to love it.
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