Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy has a similar approach to Tellez. When he is stuck, he tries to write bad music. As he explained to Ezra Klein, “To avoid writer’s block, I write songs I don’t like. I get an idea for a song, and I just go ahead and do it, even though I don’t think I’m going to like it. And that frees me up to go to the next song.” While producer Brian Eno, best known for his work with David Bowie and Coldplay, introduces constraints to get out of a rut. He had a deck of one hundred cards with a simple command on each. They included such instructions as, “abandon normal instruments,
...more