Welcome To Reality

The songwriter's dream is to write the ultimate hit, and then retire as a millionaire. Sadly, reality says otherwise. Here is what actually happens.

WRITING IS HARD WORK

Most songwriters work on their craft everyday. If you write lyrics, you find inspirational tidbits everywhere-the news, a picture, something a friend said in a phone call. While jotting it down you run across another idea you wrote months ago in your files, then finish out that stanza. On the way to work, you hear a radio tune, pull out your pen at the next light and scribble down that elusive bridge you'd been mulling over for the last decade, then rush home after work at your day job to finish the song it went to. You go to your third tryout this week, use your notebook to jam out some song with yet another poorly put together rock group, that laughs at your earnest lyrics over their beer bottles because you can't sing loud enough to be heard over their overamplified guitars, and commenting they have yet to find a singer good enough for them, so don't feel bad-go figure. Sore-throated, you go home trying to feel romantic for your neglected-feeling spouse, who tells you that the other car is in the shop, so no song contest entries, unless you can pawn your amp again, but that means you can't go to tryouts for a month or so until you can make enough money to pull it out of hock. Working for years, you finally get one major album cut, which netted you enough to pay off one credit card, but that record looks great in a case sitting on your wall to people you have over to potentially write soundtracks with. Quit? Never.

WRITING IS ABOUT PEOPLE

Unless you play all the instruments yourself, or are great at computer arranging, you have to deal with people. Sadly, many wannabe musicians feel that the ultimate life is to sit around drunk or stoned all day, play to packed houses at night, make loads of money with women lined up at their doors afterwards. Ask any working musician, and you find this simply isn't the case; it involves lots of practice, aching fingers, blisters and learning to sleep sitting up. The dreamers won't work to become famous, and quit over the most frivolous of reasons, leaving you with the studio bills and deadlines to meet. Finding the right people means lots of time networking, making friends with like-minded people, and endless tryouts that expose you and perhaps your home and loved ones to unscrupulous jerks. Because of this, a songwriter needs to not just write well, but to either find pals who are good judges of character to help when interviewing potential writing partners or sidemen, or to at least study a little basic psychology to help to recognize problems and to handle them tactfully before they really get started. This also helps when dealing with industry execs, because it seems many are under so much pressure to succeed that many are just as troubled as the average musician.

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