SONGWRITING #6

by Keith Caldwell

What if you could write 57 top 100 songs over your entire career? Wouldn’t that be incredible? What if you could just write 37 top 40 songs throughout your career? Wouldn’t you be thrilled? What if I told you that you would have to write over 6,000 songs throughout your entire career to possibly get that many hit songs?

I’m actually describing the career of, none other than Smokey Robinson of Motown fame whose hits include songs like, Who's Loving You (1960), You've Really Got a Hold on Me (1962), What's So Good About Goodbye (1962), I'll Try Something New (1962), Mickey's Monkey (1963), I Like It Like That (1964), Ooo Baby Baby (1965), The Tracks of My Tears (1965), Going to a Go-Go (1965), My Girl Has Gone (1965), (Come Round Here) I'm The One You Need (1966), More Love (1967), I Second That Emotion (1967), If You Can Want (1968}, Baby, Baby Don't Cry (1969), and the international # 1 smash, The Tears of a Clown (1970).

When asked about he approaches writing a song, Smokey says he doesn’t keep a specific schedule. He prefers to write when the inspiration hits. “It just happens,” he says. “I look at it as a gift from God.”

He does believe, however, that rewriting is important to strengthen an already good song. “I belabor my songs. I don’t even stop writing them until the last minute,” he says. “A lot of times I’ll go into the studio with a song and I’ll be recording it and say ‘wait I think this is better right here’ and I’ll change it then and there.”

So, how does he know when his song is finally finished? “I just go by what I feel and hope that I’m right,” he says with a laugh.

Although Robinson has written numerous hits for himself and others, he has also cut songs by other writers. When asked what he looked for in an outside tune, he responded, “A song -- what I mean by that is that a lot of people make records and there are a lot of records that sell and those songs are never rerecorded. To me, a song is a song that lives on and on and on and on even after the writer is gone, and that’s what I look for.”

What can we as writers take away from this? One thing, obviously, is KEEP WRITING. Don’t stop writing. And then write more songs.

Some advice I can give you is, first of all, learn as much about music as you can. Study the theory of music, listen to various styles of music and as many different artists as you can. Live your life and pay attention along the way. The best songs come from human experiences usually lived by the composer. Some are from observing the life of someone else. Studying music theory is not mandatory, but it certainly can’t hurt. Some of the very best songwriters can’t read a note of music, and on the other hand some of the very best songwriters are degreed musicians from top schools in the country. What I can tell you is, if you don’t have any success with getting your songs recorded, take a look at your level of musical knowledge and talk to someone whose opinion you value as to whether they believe you could benefit with learning a bit of the fundamentals of music. There is actually a course called “Fundamentals of Music” taught at almost every Community College in the country for a small fee. In one semester you can learn to read music and write your own songs on staff paper that any musician can read.

The next bit of advice is, don’t sit at the piano or with your guitar waiting for inspiration to hit you. Again, life experience, studying the lives of others, as well as being an avid reader of anything you can get your hand on will all help in preparing you for the inspiration.

Finally, don’t edit yourself, unless you have been commissioned to write a song by an artist and they have given you a set of parameters to follow. For example, they give you a title and possibly a story to set to music. In this case, you pretty much have to follow their instructions and create the song according to their specifications. I know many of you will say, “But the Holy Spirit gives me my songs and I can’t limit the Holy Spirit.” Well, the Holy Spirit knows your circumstances and your needs, so please don’t limit what the Holy Spirit can do with a certain set of specifications. With God, all things are possible! That applies to the Holy Spirit giving you a song.

Now, back to not editing yourself. Write what comes out if it feels right. It might not be what you wanted to write, but then again it might be a much better song than if you had tried to adhere to what you thought you should write. Let me explain with an example.

A few months ago, I saw the movie, “Fireproof”, and was immediately inspired. The movie is about saving a marriage that seemed doomed from the start. Although I am not married, by the end of the movie I was crying like a baby, blubbering, “I’ll be a better husband!” That was an embarrassing moment. Anyway, I wanted to write the song, “Must Be Someone Else’s Wife” about a woman who, all of a sudden, has started being a better wife in a loving manner. I talked to my writing partner, Clay Howell, and with my story I had shared with Clay we started to put it to music. However, as we wrote, we never once used the words from what I thought would be the title in the song. Instead, the song became “Last Night She Loved Me” (the first line of the first chorus), a song with basically the same story, yet it changes in the second chorus to “My God said He loved me” as she explains to him why the sudden change.

What seemed to start out as a secular song in verse one, chorus, and then verse two, suddenly changes and becomes a testimony about what God can do to keep a marriage alive. The moral to the story is, “Don’t edit yourself.” As Smokey Robinson says, “write what you feel and hope is right.”

Then, KEEP WRITING!!!!!

Until next month, blessings!!

Clay & Keith