Getting feedback – comments, notes, praise, criticism – on your songs can be very confusing.

It’s helpful, probably even necessary for most of us, to run our songs by other people before we perform or record them.  Friends, another songwriter, your band, a workshop, a coach…

Particularly if the song is new and not fully formed, the listener usually needs to be someone you trust… meaning what?  You trust them to be honest, yes… trust them to not be unkind or get ‘personal’ (staying focused on making the song – not you – better)… trust them to have some awareness of the mysterious quality of creativity, that fixing a song isn’t exactly like fixing a leak in the plumbing…

There’s a lot of wishful thinking going on in writing a song – it’s the nature of the beast.  I can be very excited about a new song… and it can fall flat when I play it for someone.  I can also be very doubtful and skeptical about songs that, exposed to the light of someone else’s listening and comments, seem to really work.  You find out things about your songs by playing them for others.  When it’s first out of the cage, does the bird fly, does the dog hunt (insert your metaphor here)?

But even the most sensitive, intelligent, and tactful critic can’t decide what’s ultimately right for your song.  Only you know that; that decision is in your hands.  This is the ‘feel’ part.  What am I going for?  Did I achieve it?  It’s no time for lying to yourself… but it’s also a time to remember that “From the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight was ever made” (Kant).  Meaning – nothing’s perfect.  Each work of art (let’s call your song that) has to find its own form… and each one is different, if only slightly.

Some songs, like most of us people, are just weird… and you love them for it.