Some Things I've Learned about Songwriting in 25 Years | Cliff Goldmacher | TEDxMemphis

but I'd give you guys a an insider's view into what it's like to be a songwriter and what the career of a songwriter is like another way to put that is how I earned a degree in political science into a career playing guitar for drunk people I wrote my first song in 1990 and I wrote my last song just a couple of days ago and along the way I've written about a thousand songs and I've learned some lessons along the way and what I thought I would do is tell you the lesson and then play you a verse in the chorus of one of my songs to sort of illustrate that so one of the first things that I learned is how important it was to balance the emotions that you're feeling with the story that you're telling I I think most songwriters come to songwriting with an abundance of emotion and I have heard songwriters described as emotional nudists and so if you equate emotion and nudity too much emotion is a little bit like being a flasher which is illegal and will probably get you arrested however if you choose to reveal the emotion slowly and weave the story in to continue with the analogy that's a little bit more like a striptease and I have it on fairly good authority that people pay money for that so this song if it had been all emotion it would have gone something like I'm lonely and there's a pretty girl and she's with a guy who probably doesn't deserve her instead I wrote this I'm talking at a table by the bar when she walks in and I can't help but hope she's come here by herself but anyone that beautiful laying out looking for me and I watch her sit down next to someone else then she tells him that she loves him and he doesn't even move if that were me she wouldn't have to say it twice if I'd have been a little bigger or could run two times as fast Ida offered him this small piece of advice when she tells you that she loves you don't just sit there can't you see you got to show her how much you love her look here I'll show you give her to me Thanks so the second thing that I learned over time was how important it was to look for a fresh angle on a familiar topic given that there's pretty much nothing new Under the Sun when it comes to writing songs I had a co-writer coming to a session once for example and he he sat down he said so are we going to write another song about love and people well yeah that that's kind of all we do so the trick is how to write a love song and still make it unique and I wrote this one with Dylan Dixon let's just say that a boy meets a girl and they fall head-over-heels it happens every day all over the world but they act like it's some big deal the next thing you know they're always together throwing around words like love and forever and I'm so tired of hearing that story they've been telling it since Adam and Eve blah blah blah love so boring except that it happens to be happening to me Thanks another thing I've learned is how important it is to write from what you know it's always more sincere to write from a place of your own experience and ironically over the years I've found that the more personal a song feels somehow the more universally it tends to appeal with this next song even though it kind of feels like my story it's been recorded and performed by a female artists too so I wrote this one with Scott Carter and Fred Koehler I'm well-adjusted I can be trusted you might even say I'm pretty swell old movies make me cry I'm a very normal guy let me tell you why my lives become a living hell I'm nice that's what I've been told I hope you never wind up in my shoes ask anyone who's met me and all the girls who've left me I'm the nicest guy they ever knew and finally and truly most importantly write songs because you love writing songs if I have learned anything in the 25 years that I've been writing songs it's this as a matter of fact I read a great quote recently which goes something along the lines of writing songs for the money is like getting married for the sex here's here's what I think that means if you do make money from your songs that is really great but it's not the thing that's going to sustain you over the course of your career and to that end I have a story and and the story goes something like this a couple of years back I was put together to write with a young artist who had just been signed to Universal Records it was all very exciting and we sat down and didn't know each other at all and we sat down and after about 20 minutes of chatting we wrote this song over the next couple of hours and he took this song and he brought it to his label and he played it in the showcase and everything was looking great and I got a call from him a couple of days later and he said listen I just wanted to call and tell you that I have lost my record deal and I would completely understand if you don't want to write with me anymore to which I had to explain to him look this is not why I'm writing with you and you're a talent this is going to work out just keep doing what you're doing long story short he did decided to go on and make the record himself and in classic music industry fairytale fashion there was a record exec in the studio next door who overheard the record he was making loved it signed him to a record deal put out our song as the single and it ended up in the top 10 on the Billboard jazz charts now this is not a business plan this is not how these things always work all that to say the only reason to really write songs is because you love it and if you stick around and do it long enough the rest tends to take care of itself I wrote this song with Spencer day a sleepless night in the city no peace and quiet in the city it's hotter than the water from a boiler in the basement of hell in this low-rent walk-up broken-down hotel counting the cracks on the ceiling flat on my back and I'm feeling lower than the roaches in the tunnels of the 1 and the 9 and the clock says that in half past losing my mind and through the tick tock tick I can hear the faucet drip and when the neighbors brawl I can hear them through the wall and I'm waiting I keep waiting cuz I want you I want you back again I can remember when you and I were 1 and I want to I wanna change your mind so I'm gonna bide my time barring my misery till you come to me Thanks I wrote songs for 15 years before a known artist recorded one of my songs and it was 20 years before I had my first Billboard charting single I wrote my first song because I couldn't help myself and I had to do it and it's exactly the reason I wrote my last song thanks so much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 150,012

Rating: 4.7062669 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Entertainment, Comedy, Music (performance), Music (topic)

Id: CnOXe1TiwMY

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2015