How to Write One Song

by Jeff Tweedy

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.