21 Songwriting Guidelines

 I like songwriting. I like songs. These days, it’s the thing that interests me most. It’s beaten out photography, and writing novels, and scriptwriting, and video production, and bicycle maintenance and houseplants and genealogy, and a whole lot of other things that have taken up my time thus far.

Songs. Just that. And the guitar playing that goes with it, of course, which my ex-wife once told me was the only thing in the world about which I was totally obsessive. Good observation.

I can’t remember when I first wrote one that seemed complete. I can remember writing a lot that weren’t, from way back, but it’s only in the last fifteen years or so that I’ve managed to occasionally put something together that I’m proud to go out and play. 

So I came to it late. And I’m not an expert. And I’m going to keep learning about this mysterious process till I fall off the perch. But I have picked up a couple of tips along the way. 

Guidelines, not rules. I’ve listed them below, for anyone who’s interested enough to stumble into this corner of the internet. I’m listening out for more, but right now this is about all I know, about anything, really…

1/ Paint a picture. It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but the listener should see the song.

2/ Detail. That overflowing ashtray on the table is how you lead the listener into the kitchen you’re writing about.

3/ Tell a story. It can be surreal, but it should take the listener somewhere they’ve not explored before.

4/ Rhymes don’t have to be at the end of the line.

5/ Your last romantic break-up might be the most important experience you’ve ever had. Your audience probably doesn’t feel the same way. They’ve heard it already.

6/ You can make your song as miserable as you like. But if you don’t include something positive you’re going to bring your audience down. They won’t thank you.

7/ There’s nothing wrong with philosophy. In a philosophy book.

8/ Edit. Murder your darlings.

9/ Learn Nashville notation. Understand that Em (the three chord) to C (the one chord) is the same as Bm to G, but in a different key. You’ll learn how and why chords fit together, and transpose faster.

10/ Learn scales. Not so you play faster, but so you see how the chords stitch together.

11/ There are a million songs that use the I-V-vi-IV or I-vi-IV-V progressions. It’s OK for you to use them too. Just train your ear to recognise when you've mimicked the melody of Stand By Me. It can’t be improved on.

12/ Melodies that follow the root of the chord are usually dull. Not always. But pretty often.

13/ A blues doesn’t have to have twelve bars. Hell, it doesn’t even have to have chord changes.

14/ Write a bridge. That’s the bit of the song that’s different to everything else. Bridges take you somewhere. You may decide later that you don’t need to go there, but give it a try.

15/ If you manage to write a bridge that leads you to a key change, award yourself a big pat on the back. Then check if you can actually sing it.

16/ Steal. Not whole songs, but changes, lines, and passing chords. Make them your own.

17/ The Lennon and McCartney rule: if you can’t remember it the next day, throw it away.

18/ Some songs are written in half an hour. Some hang around in your notebook (you do have a notebook, don’t you?) for years. Either way is good.

19/ A hook is a good thing. You want your song to be an ear worm. No matter how much you hate the Benny Hill Theme.

20/ If you can’t sing it accompanied by a single acoustic guitar or piano, it’s not a song.

21/ When you’re busy with something else and a chorus or a hook comes to you unbidden, that’s what Bukka White called a Sky Song. Cherish it.

Guy Clark: There It Is

I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard Pet Sounds. And Blonde on Blonde. And Meet on the Ledge.

And I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard Guy Clark. In a flat somewhere between Highgate and Crouch End, in 1976. Desperadoes Waiting for a Train, to be specific.

I hadn’t taken too much notice of ‘country’ music up to that point. Maybe a little Pure Prairie League, but I was ambivalent. 

That was when I got it. And I’m still listening today. Matter of fact, I was playing Guy Clark in the car this morning.

It’s not really ‘country’. It’s folk music, I suppose. People love to hang stuff on a category. All I know is that Guy Clark was the finest songwriter I’ve ever had the pleasure to listen to. If I could get myself transported back in time, I’d choose Guy and Susanna’s house in Nashville in the mid-70s. With Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle over for dinner. And Townes. Of course Townes.

Great American men of letters, every one. I mean that, anyone who still thinks songwriting’s just a popular art.

When I got serious about the guitar in the late 70s, after a long layoff, Old No 1 was the first album I took anything off. I sang She Ain’t Going Nowhere with the Dewhursts in the Red Lion at Stansted. Nobody knew what the hell it was.

When I was staying out late at lock-ins in the 90s (with David Hardie, rest his soul) we jammed on Guy Clark tunes so often that the drunken clientele took to calling out for ‘the tart’ because none of them could remember the title of Rita Ballou.

When my marriage was falling apart, Boats to Build helped me through. I owe that song. I owe Guy Clark.

I’ve sung Desperadoes Waiting for a Train for nigh on four decades. It’s about an old man Clark hung out with when he was a kid. I sing it for my grandfather every time. That’s how the great songs work.

Right now, today, we’re doing Nickel for the Fiddler and Rain in Durango from time to time with Thursday’s Band. One from each end of Guy’s career. I’m proud to know them.

I’ve admired Bob Dylan all my life. I admire Steve Earle and Tom Waits and Townes van Zandt and especially Bruce Springsteen. But with Guy Clark… 

With Guy Clark I’m a fan. I cherish the three precious times I saw him live, and the brief moment when I queued up at Cambridge Folk Festival to get his signature on a copy of Old Friends. No-one understood better than him how to turn a song on a single detail; how to walk the tightrope between emotion and sentimentality; how to make every single word ring out clear and pure.

Thank you, Guy Charles Clark. Rest in peace. 

‘Shores, distant shores

That’s where I’m headed for

Got the stars to guide my way

Sail into the light of day…’

Rufus Wainwright: Going to a Town

When you’re learning songs, some come and go like the breeze. You pick them up, figure them out, add them to the list, put them down, forget about them.

But some songs swirl around inside your head like the wind on a gusty day. You pick them up, figure them out, find you got it all wrong, go back and figure them out again. Discover you can’t sing them, then you can; you can’t play them, then you can, then you can’t. One minute the words are just gobbledygook, then you stumble across a meaning that might not be what the songwriter intended but it works for you, makes you able to internalise and sing them.

This is one such song. It’s frustrating and flawed and there’s a least one part I’ll never want to play, but it’s also gloriously gobsmackingly beautiful and I’m obsessed with it. Did I say something about obsession in my last post?