If you put songwriters in a room with a time constraint, can they walk out with a finished product? Our very own Haley Griffin puts this method to the test.
*****
[Ambient: Your Song]
I came across an article from Insider that listed several hit tracks written in a single day; Sir Elton John was said to compose “Your Song” in just 20 minutes. This made me question: how likely is it to write a good song in one sitting?Many songwriters dream of writing chart-toppers. But the reality is few do it alone. Just last year, Hit Songs Deconstructed reported that 48% of songs that hit the Billboard Top 10 had five contributing songwriters or more, while only 3% came from a one-man band.
So, after reaching out to songwriters at USC, I came across three very different artists and asked them to be a part of my experiment.
\[Ambient: Hard on the Eyes]
EDMONDS: I’m Graham Edmonds.
My first artist is a singer-songwriter who’s no stranger to writing a full song in a day. Edmonds says he’s written around 170 songs to date, mostly thanks to this practice.
[Ambient: “Mama Knows Best”]
EVERS: Hi, I’m Chase Evers.
A pop artist, Evers has dabbled in both collaboration and single-sitting writing. Still, she had some nerves about the time constraint but was mostly excited.
[Ambient: Jim Beam Moonbeams]
The last artist to volunteer was Ampersand’s very own…
ROSS: Eva B. Ross,
An indie artist who has been writing since age 4. Her most recent release, “Jim Beam Moonbeams,” she wrote as a collaboration, but she’d never written with complete strangers before.
We booked a USC classroom for three and a half hours, and after brief introductions, the three Trojans sat down to song-write. Although the keyboard the school provided had a mind of its own…
[Sound bite-Beginning Songwriting Session]
Thankfully, Edmonds had brought his guitar for the songwriters to play. The songwriting session started with some mumbled melodies over gentle fingerpicking on the guitar. Eventually, all three were able to agree upon the opening line:
[”I cannot read you…”]
\From there, the songwriters determined the song took place in October, coming up with various Halloween motifs.
[Music sound bite]
The lyrics bloomed into an intimate story of a rocky relationship. But it wasn’t until the songwriters realized they spent 2 hours on Verse 1 that the song really took form, powering through section after section.Here’s the final product: “The 31st,” by Edmonds, Evers and Ross.
[Song: The 31st]
EDMONDS: I enjoyed the workshop a lot. I think the most valuable thing for me was to be able to write with two different people with different artistic perspectives.
EVERS: I’m honestly really proud of how the song turned out.
ROSS: The real challenge is opening enough to find something that’s worth writing about. Y’know, it’s pretty simple to put together chords and melodies and things like that, but figuring out a story that’s worth telling is a little bit harder to do with strangers, and I think we got to one quick!
Not only did these artists prove that you can write a great song in one sitting, but they taught me something else along the way: you can create something beautiful if you let other people in. For Ampersand Radio, I’m Haley Griffin.