For me, what has always been most important is the next song.
I tried my best to make the song I was working on be as strong as I could. Then I’d move on to the next one.
Though constantly looking ahead made me quite productive, and advanced my growth as a writer, I was afraid to stop the flow because I was afraid, if I did… that the flow would stop. My worst nightmare.
But other than honing a song as it comes closer to being a finished product, I’d be looking ahead to the next and the next one. I’d drive my band members crazy with new tunes when they were still getting to know the previous ones.
A couple of years ago I revisited some of my non-songwriting writing and realized that much of it could be greatly improved if I was willing to work more – and harder – on it. I started seeing surprisingly good results from aggressive rewrites.
So I began to look at my older songs in the same way. Eventually I went back a few years in my notebooks to over 60 or so older songs, and some song starts.
After they were written, perhaps between 15 and 20 of these songs ended up getting rehearsed. We performed most of them at least once. Of those, some had staying power and remained in the band’s repertoire. An even lesser number of them made it to being recorded.
That left at least 2/3rds of my notebooks’ songs or song ideas discarded – never seeing the light of day, abandoned in either an unfinished state, or finished but considered sub-par. When revisiting these abandoned songs I had the same experience as with my other writing.
There was more quality and potential there than I’d realized. (Although of course some were just mediocre or worse.)
Why did I miss this potential when I was writing them? Why did I give up? I have to admit that it was more laziness than anything. I was getting enough songs written that I liked. If something was just too challenging I’d sometimes (not always) say ‘screw it’ and just move on… to the next one.
But in the process I was leaving some real value on the table. I’ve found that if I’m willing to put in the time, I can be proud of some of these songs that I’d previously abandoned and left for dead… once I brought them back to life and really worked on them.
It still makes me nervous to not always be thinking forward… next… next… to not be constantly trying to create something from scratch. But now I also see the value in periodically looking back and reconsidering my decisions. Coming back with fresher ears can make a difference.
Also, I hope that now, moving forward, I’ll be more careful about throwing songs under the bus that may be capable of driving the bus.
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