A few people have mentioned recently that they enjoyed reading the blog posts on my website so I’ll take that as a kick in the ass to get back onto them. I really did intend on doing one a month but I’ve been slammed with work and family stuff which has had to take priority, but alas, here we are again.
Our twins turn two in a few days and whether related or not, I’m feeling a bit more freedom return to my mind and life. For the large part of the last two years I’ve just been knuckling down working and taking care of the family. Fortunately I’ve had heaps of upfront paid production and engineering work to carry us through, but I’ve also done a lot less co-writing sessions because of this. Recently I’ve been thinking about it more, and I’m going to start doing more again, starting with a trip to Sydney next month to do some writing sessions at my publisher BMG’s writing rooms.
I feel like unless you’ve been around the modern “cowrite” situation you probably don’t know how they tend to work, so here’s a bit of a run down:
The sessions are unpaid sessions, typically with a producer, topliner (lyric and melody writer) and artist in the room, although the format can look different. Ideally, the incentive for the artist is to bring in other collaborators to write with in a low- stress, commitment free situation. The incentive for the producer and top-liner is to get a cut of the publishing (I’ll assume everyone knows what publishing means or will google it) of the song, if it gets released. A lot of the time you may not have met the other collaborators before, so it can feel a bit like a blind date but they can be great for creating new friendships and professional relationships with people that you get along with.
When I first got introduced to cowriting I had a very different understanding of what it is to what I do now. The very first song I pitched ended up getting cut by two artists I love, Tia Gostelow and Holy Holy, so I naturally thought “this is so easy!”. The truth is, it isn’t that easy and it’s quite a nuanced little ecosystem. Since then I would say I’ve done at least eighty writing sessions and about twenty-five of those songs have come out, and even less than that have streamed over 50k times (I am guessing the numbers ). I understand from other peers that this actually is a pretty decent strike rate, so the odds definitely aren’t stacked in the songwriter’s favour but you probably will also get to work with artists that wouldn’t have hired you otherwise. Some of the songs that came from those sessions sucked, some were decent, and some were in my opinion really good. Even if a song is really good, there are so many factors at play which determine whether it gets recorded and released. Does the artist feel like it represents them at that moment in their career? Does the management and label like it? Maybe you didn’t even get the chance to fully realise the potential of the song within the time that you had with the artist.
After having some time away from it and also feeling frustrated at times that good songs haven’t seen the light of day, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learnt and what I’ll do differently in future sessions. I used to focus almost entirely on the song and very little on the production in these sessions. Although I am still a firm believer in making the song as strong as it can be at it’s fundamental, I’ve realised that not everyone, in fact very few people, can hear a song in a stripped back form and hear it’s potential as a fully produced track. I do feel that the outcome for some of the non-successful songs that I mentioned would have been different if a more refined production had been made before going out to the artist and their team. I also feel the approach for a lot of artists is to do a bunch of writing sessions on the chance that they may have a hit at the end of the day, and if it’s not all there at the end of the session then move on to something else. I think it’s a fine balance to craft the song as well as have enough of the production down in the time allocated for the session to indicate where it could go and how it is relevant to the artist stylistically.
Although I’m kind of opposed to the slapped together approach, it is somewhat the nature of these co-writing sessions. You really don’t have time to do anything too nuanced. Ultimately I’m interested in making long term relationships with other collaborators and if we vibe well, we can always do more sessions in the future. I think for me a balance of “bread and butter” fixed- fee producing/engineering gigs along with a few speed-date writing sessions is healthy.
Hope everyone is enjoying spring (or fall depending on where you are).
New releases in my Spotify playlist!
Thanks for reading!