A Quote by Courtney Barnett
I've never liked songs that are about writing, or struggling to write. Maybe it's because it's too relatable to me.
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I used to write songs that mimicked other songs that I would hear as a kid, cos I was 12 years old when I was writing those, right. And you hear a radio so all I'd write about was [sings] "hey girl, look at you", you know what I mean. I think that even doing that made it easier for me to write non-personal songs because, from a kid, I never wrote personal songs, they were always like mimicking. And now I'm just trying to understand my writing and where it's coming from.
I like to write pop songs and the stuff I write is fairly poppy, so I thought maybe my lot in life was to write pop songs for people. It never felt right writing songs for other people to sing, though.
Throughout all of the changes that have happened in my life, one of the priorities I've had is to never change the way I write songs and the reasons I write songs. I write songs to help me understand life a little more. I write songs to get past things that cause me pain. And I write songs because sometimes life makes more sense to me when it's being sung in a chorus, and when I can write it in a verse.
I write about heartbreak because I like writing about sad things, but I'm writing happy songs, too!
My forte is playing along and singing along to music I love. I mean, who knows, maybe I could develop that knack or develop that ability to write, and I do actually co-write with people and friends, which is fun, too, because then I don't have to worry about writing lyrics, because for me writing lyrics is impossible.
Maybe someday there will be a song I write that I never let see the light of day because I don't want it to be uncontainable and have to play it again. And I have written songs like that that are just for me. It's like writing a letter to someone you're angry at but never sending it and just putting it in a drawer.
And the thing about me is, I have a lot of mellow songs, because they're the easiest for me to write. I wanted to try to make some more upbeat songs, so, I ended up gravitating toward writing songs with friends, which was a great learning process, and also we came up with great songs. Those are the songs that came out the most naturally.
I always liked to write and had fun writing, but I didn't have any pretensions about being a writer. I liked to read and liked to putz around and write little stories or poems, but my thing was sports.
If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there's too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me.
It's really hard to write personal songs. I'm not good at writing ditties because as far as writing hit songs that you pitch to the national artist, I just don't write that way.
There's something to writing a hook and something to writing a memorable melody. That's what I liked about musicals. Then I realized I could write my own songs, and I didn't have to sing other people's.
Some people say the things I do are annoying because I'm intentionally trying too hard to be relatable, but I'm really not. It's never really been my intention; I've never gone out of my way to be relatable to anyone. I just say what I want, and I'm pretty blunt about things.
I was never particularly a part of the following of tango; I just liked it... most of all, I recognized that the urban content and the approach seemed very familiar and very connected to the songs that I was doing, the kind of songs that I wanted to write - the songs about the street.
I kind of tend to write a lot of songs, so it's never too hard for me to finish an album; it's more about just getting enough songs that I really love.
My idea of making time for myself is writing songs. I never stop beating myself up about trying to be productive, so I don't really like to do a lot of things other than write in my journal and write songs.
It was writing about music for NPR - connecting with music fans and experiencing a sense of community - that made me want to write songs again. I began to feel I was in my head too much about music, too analytical.
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