When asked which came first, the music or the lyrics, the great lyricist Sammy Cahn famously replied, “The phone call”.

There’s nothing like a deadline to spur creativity.  And internal deadlines (“I WILL have this done by Wednesday!”) are usually not as effective as external ones.

The deadline can be anything – a recording session, a gig, a band rehearsal,  a meeting with a publisher, a songwriting workshop –  that focuses the mind on bringing the song to a point where it’s at least presentable..

Songs are notoriously hard to complete.  An important part of why people come to a Songwriting workshop is simply that most of us seem to write more (and in a more focused way) knowing that someone’s waiting to hear the song on Tuesday.

Having listeners who are expecting to hear your song at a specific time can move the song much closer to that mysterious state…  Completion (more on that in another post).