WITTY OR SHITTY?
Are you re-writing the SOUL out of your songs?
By Jimi Heath Whitelaw

Craft.  A word that I’m sure you’ve heard a million times on your songwriting journey.  Know your craft, study your craft, work on your craft.  While I agree that the more you write, the better you get at fine tuning your craft, I’m not so sold on the fact that you can study your way into being an amazing songwriter.  I believe you are born with the gift.  Crafting is just honing in your skills and refining the gift that you already have.   

I see so many writers trying to write witty.  Ya know what I mean? A clever title or hook, never ending lines of internal rhymes (hehe I made an internal rhyme right there!) and story lines that have so many twists and turns that by the end of the song, I’m even lost! This is not to say that writing a killer, witty song isn’t a good thing, it is…but it should take a natural evolution rather than being forced in my opinion.

I’ve seen it time and time again.  Someone comes up with something witty.  A play on words perhaps and decides to make that the central focus of their song.  Okay, that’s not a bad idea.  But then the writer wants to write EVERY line as witty and clever as the title. Ya know what it ends up sounding like?  Like you tried to hard.  It makes the song sound over thought and sanitized. 

I have found that my very best songs are songs that I don’t rewrite the hell out of. That I don’t rack my brain doing.  My best songs just flow out of me, they just are.  Yes, of course I am a little better at crafting what I want to say in an interesting way, but that just comes with writing a lot and with a lot of people, not from some class I took.

So my challenge to you is to NOT rewrite when you sit down to write your next song.  Just let it be what it is and then write another one and so on. 

Write a Hit!
Jimi