When asked which came first, the music or the words, 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 real – a gig, a rehearsal, a meeting with a producer, a songwriting workshop – that raises the stakes and focuses the mind on bringing the song to a point where it’s at least presentable. (In most cases it’s not ideal for a recording session to be the first time a song is performed. Better to develop it in less permanent settings before recording.)

Songs are notoriously hard to complete. I’ve observed that one of the main reasons people come to a songwriting workshop is simply that most of us seem to write more (and in a more concentrated way) knowing that listeners are waiting to hear the song on Monday, or Tuesday, or whenever.

Playing the song, in a tolerable but far from perfect form, to other people – audience, band, friends, other writers – also provides indispensable information, in real-time and after, on where a song needs to go.

Deadlines are a powerful way to move a song much closer to that mysterious state…  Completion. (And how do you know when it’s complete? Ah… that’s a story for another post.) Leave it at this: when it comes to finishing a song, having a deadline is incomparably useful.

“All I need (to write music) is a piano and a deadline.” – Duke Ellington

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