How to Write One Song

by Jeff Tweedy

I think the disconnect is more related to the idea of “being” anything when it’s the “doing” that’s most rewarding. Being something isn’t real in the same way that doing something can be real.

you have to focus on verbs over nouns—what you want to do, not what you want to be.

Because one song is all it takes to make a connection. And in my opinion, connection is the loftiest of all aspirations.

At the core of any creative act is an impulse to make manifest our powerful desire to connect—with others, with ourselves, with the sacred, with God? We all want to feel less alone, and I believe that a song being sung is one of the clearest views we ever have to witness how humans reach out for warmth with our art.

If we’re being realistic about what an end goal should be, creating something with no ambition other than to get something off our chest might be the purest thing anyone could aim for.

“No work of art is ever finished; it can only be abandoned in an interesting place.”

inspiration wasn’t always the first ingredient in a song. In this case it was demand.

The point is, when I say something like, “Inspiration is overrated,” it’s not because I think you don’t ever need to be inspired. What I’m trying to tell you, and what I still tell myself frequently, is that inspiration is rarely the first step. When it does come out of the blue, it’s glorious. But it’s much more in your own hands than the divine-intervention-type beliefs we all tend to have about inspiration. Most of the time, inspiration has to be invited.

To me, process is whatever act you can engage in, whatever steps you can take, and whatever device you have at your disposal that you can use, together, that reliably results in a work of art. “Process” is also the only name I know of for whatever series of contortions and mental tricks we have available to lose ourselves in when we create. It’s the door to the disappearing that I’ve already described as my ultimate desired creative state—being able to get “gone” enough long enough for a song to appear.

You need your human frailty to be at least somewhat visible if you want to connect on an emotional level—if you want things to feel real.

I’ve found that most people who have a fulfilling life in art are, like me, the people who work at it every day and put the tools of creation in their hands frequently, who not only invite inspiration in but also do it on a regular basis. Instead of waiting to be “struck” by inspiration, they put themselves directly in its path. Pick up a guitar, and you’re much more likely to write a song. Pick up a pencil . . . etc.

There’s little doubt in my mind that because I do so much of that planned, methodical thinking in which I put the tools of inspiration in my own hands—a guitar, a pencil, a computer—I’ve trained my subconscious to always be working a little bit. Because I’ve already cleared the pathway and tended that pathway, kept it open and remained receptive to it, by practice.

I personally think that I am where I am because I aspire to make trees instead of tables. Because there’s something higher in my mind about doing so. And that I’ve accepted the fact that it’s also impossible to make the perfect tree—there’s no perfecting it. There’s no reaching some conclusion that you’ve made THE tree.

A tree could be almost anything. A tree is basically just . . . me. I’m a tree. I didn’t fit perfectly into any mold. I wasn’t made by a specific set of plans. The things that have happened to me in my life have taken away some of those straight edges and shaped me into a tree, shaped me into something less predictable, less understandable.

I’m convinced the dreams we have for ourselves go unattained from a lack of permission more than any deficit in talent or desire.

Stockpiling Words, Language, and Lyrics—doing exercises like freewriting, writing poems, refining, and revising, all of which I’ll talk about in the next section Stockpiling Music, Songs, and Parts of Songs—making demo recordings, practicing, learning other people’s songs, and writing parts for songs in progress Pairing Words and Music—writing lyrics to a melody and searching for matches between stockpiled demos and lyric sets, poems, and freewriting

I believe that you need to put yourself, consciously, in the path of your subconscious. To trust yourself that there are things you can get to. But your ego is working against you; it doesn’t trust your subconscious to come up with anything near as smart as you are.

What is ideal for this time slot is working on songs to have them in your head right before you go to bed, and then again first thing in the morning when you wake up. I truly think I do a lot of my best work while I’m asleep. I often wake up with the last musical puzzle I was contemplating completely solved. No joke! Try it! I’ve even had nearly complete sets of all new lyrics settle themselves down on the last melody I was singing before I fell asleep.

Just try to focus on your song with some intent in whatever moments you have before you zone out. Also, this same trick works extremely well for learning difficult passages of music. I’ll often practice a guitar part I’m struggling with right before bed, and it’s almost magical how much easier it is to play the next morning.

I love how much freer my associations become when I combine my semi-sleep state with the rhythms and melodies that have been danced to in my dreams all night long.

If you want to write a song, take a walk.

I believe that all art is about this truth, which is almost invisible at most other times, when we’re less aware, locked in the drudgery of our day-to-day existences, until art breaks through and points it out to us.

the joy of disappearing long enough to find something you didn’t know you had inside you.

That’s one of the problems with humans—that we can be talked out of loving something. That we can be talked out of loving something that we do, and we can be talked out of loving ourselves. Easily, unfortunately.

I believe words contain worlds of words and meanings that are, more often than not, locked beneath the surface. Poetry is what happens when words are opened up, and those worlds within are made visible, and the music behind the words is heard. And songs do that, too, just in a different order.

You want words to burst into the room, demand your attention, and remind you how exciting things can be. You have a responsibility to challenge yourself to use them in a way that is more vivid than your normal daily usage.

Here’s an example of a noun and a noun pair that drives me nuts: “smattering of applause.” You don’t ever hear someone say “a smattering of . . .” anything else. But a “smattering of teeth” or a “smattering of heartbeats” are both wildly evocative pairings that immediately form images in my mind.

Come up with ten verbs that are associated with, say, a physician, and write them down on a page. Then write down ten nouns that are within your field of vision.

Now take a pencil and draw lines to connect nouns and verbs that don’t normally work together.

Think of a melody, like I did with “I’m Always in Love” in the last chapter—it doesn’t have to be your own for the sake of learning this process. Open up a book anywhere, any page, and keep humming the melody to yourself as you scan. Don’t really try to comprehend what you’re reading; just let your mind skim over the surface of the words on the page and focus your attention on the melody. If you can get in the right frame of mind, words will jump out and attach themselves to the melody. Highlight (literally, with a highlighter, if you can) those words, and keep moving until you’ve collected a cache of words that potentially sound right in the context of your melody.

I think it’s important to stress that you should actually overdo it in terms of coming up with lyrics and words you like whenever you have the energy and time. Writing more than you need is almost never going to make a song worse. Sometimes every good line doesn’t make it into the song you’re working on. But that doesn’t mean you have to throw those lines away.

So grab something that you’ve been working on and write it all down on a legal pad. Or if you have access to a printer, print it out double-spaced. You can probably see where this is going. The cut-up technique requires scissors, or at the very least a steady tearing hand. The easiest cutting strategy is line by line, but word by word or phrase by phrase can provide equally interesting results. Once you’ve cut up your text, you can either put the strips in a hat or turn them over and pull each line/word/phrase randomly. Then scan your randomly chosen poem construction for any unexpected surprises. I almost always find at least one newly formed phrase or word relationship that moves me or makes me smile. Another way to use your cut-up strips is to forget about trying to make random associations and just use them as movable modules of language. It’s always fascinating to me how much more alive lines I’ve written can become when I’m able to have a simple tactile experience reorganizing the order and syntax of the lines and phrases.

Take the time to play with your words. Allow yourself the joy of getting to know them without being precious about directing everything they are trying to say. It’s still you! The decisions are still yours.

Circular Distant Ancient Haloed Cold Vast Bright Frozen Silent Infinite Ladder Kiss Daughter Hand Pool Summer Lawn Friend Blaze Window there is a distant hand on a frozen ladder climbing through a bright window a vast pool waiting beside a silent lawn where a daughter haloed lives a circular summer one cold kiss from an infinite friend away from an ancient blaze

Have a conversation. Find someone you can talk to with some degree of ease—friend, relative, drive-thru attendant—and ask them to interrogate you about your life, how you’re feeling, what you fear. Record your conversation somehow. Let a little time pass and go back to it. Ideally you could take the time to transcribe at least your side of the conversation. Now, look at what you said off the top of your head without any premeditation. Were you honest? Did you surprise yourself with any of your answers? Have you ever heard anyone sing any of the things you said? I’m willing to wager that you will recognize a similarity, at the very least, between how you speak and how songs are imagined. This is the real gift of human language and our desire to connect: that it works. And I’m convinced that if you can tell someone you love them and have them believe you, then you can write a song that’s just as persuasive.

I think that’s the starting point for writing anything. If you’re able to express yourself as a human, you’re able to mine that ability to create other modes of expression, to mine that ability for songs. To me, that’s the best evidence that everyone can write a song. Maybe not everyone can make a chord progression, but everyone can make up a story.

Just taking two rhyming words and connecting them can be very satisfying, especially when you’ve freed yourself of the burden of the architecture and logic of an entire poem or lyric. As an example: when Gwendolyn speaks to a county police plastic cup of beer held between her teeth It’s not a perfect rhyme, but you get the idea. I can’t wait to hear the rest of the song that fits in. I may never find it, but I enjoyed making that tiny little puzzle piece and I’m happy it exists.

Look around the room you’re in right now. What is the clock seeing from its perch on the mantel? Have you ever imagined what it’s like to be a rug? How about a vacuum cleaner? Chaka Khan? Or maybe YOU could try your hand at writing a song in Johnny Cash’s voice? That’s the beauty of this approach: What you hear will never be the same as what I came up with. And it won’t ever really be Johnny Cash or a paper wasp or a rotisserie chicken or an air conditioner . . . it’s always going to still be you. And that’s a great thing.

Basically, the whole gist is to set a timer for any amount of time you can spare (I think five to ten minutes is perfect) and tell yourself that whatever comes to you in that amount of time is a song. I even like to record what I come up with into my phone at the end of the time limit to really finalize the feeling that I met the challenge and stuck to the rules.

I know a lot of people think it’s not very rock and roll to be punctual and courteous, but I disagree. I think manners are cool, and even revolutionary, and you won’t convince me otherwise. So fuck you.

What really struck me about this experience was that I was certain that I had just made something that would never have existed without the limitations I had embraced, and also I had killed twenty minutes effortlessly.

So bang on a table and blurt out something primal. Play one chord and narrate your day so far. Just put something into a recorder. You’ve created something that didn’t exist before—how freeing is that?

The important element here is that you find some way to sidestep the part of your brain that wants perfection or needs to be rewarded right away with a “creation” that it deems “good”—something that supports an ideal vision of yourself as someone who’s serious and smart and accomplished. Basically, you have to learn how to have a party and not invite any part of your psyche that feels a need to judge what you make as a reflection of you. Or more accurately, the part of you that cannot tolerate any outward expression that might be flawed.

Another thing you can try is a different instrument.

When I come across chord pairings and passages of chords that are surprising or new to me, I often play them into my phone without the vocal melody or with a new vocal melody added to obscure the source.

I believe that writing your own lyrics to an existent melody is a damn fine thing to do if you don’t have much of a handle on the music side of things and you really need to get something off your chest in song.

Basically, start by finding one of the melodies or chord progressions you’ve collected that you feel drawn to finish, and then scan through your lyrical ideas for something that fits rhythmically and emotionally. If you can’t find anything, go back and work through the lyrical exercises that are related to tailoring words to a melody, like finding words on a page. Easy, right?

I read something somewhere about how Inuit carvers create. As I understand it, they take a walrus tusk or a piece of limestone, and they don’t think, “I’m going to carve an elk or a seal or an eagle.” They simply carve, and let the material tell them what it wants to become.

The creative state is the most important part. None of it means anything if you’re not excited by the discovery of what you’re making.

Take the time to find a nice-sounding room to record in. Bathrooms are generally excellent because of all the sound-reflecting surfaces. Lots of professional recordings have been done in bathrooms, and almost all singers prefer their voice with at least a little reverb.