The best songs aren’t created, they just happen, sort of.
Recently, an audience member at one of my performances asked me if the song I just performed was an original. I told him that it was. He said he could really feel the emotion in it and that the story was beautifully written and performed. What was the song? It was Comfortable Lyin' off my It's Not Rocket Science EP. I was blown away.
I’m from a small town, write songs and perform. I don’t have any visions of becoming famous and I am perfectly fine with that (Ok, a little famous would be cool). My goal has always been to tell stories that are honest, authentic and touch people. Comments like this, just tell me I am on the right path.
So what’s my advice to other songwriters? Stay the path and write from the heart. Writing songs from personal experience makes it easy to be authentic. I have always written songs this way and find it to easier than trying to write to a fad or follow some trend. So how do you know if your song is authentic enough? Here’s the litmus test.
If you have trouble keeping it together performing the song, you are probably pretty authentic. My song Already There is one of those songs for me. I actually have to hold back a little bit in my performance of the song (yea, my eyes get a little teary). So write from the heart and you will never go wrong. Have an awesome day. Cheers!