How To Write A Hit – by the World's Greatest Songwriters

HOW TO WRITE A HIT

Stories, insight and advice from 50 of the World’s Greatest Songwriters

Supported by

YOUR MUSIC MOVES US.

We’re thrilled to celebrate all the songwriters and composers who are the creative force driving the music we know and love. Thank you for sharing your inspiration and passion with the world.

MUSIC MOVES OUR WORLD

From the first play to the world stage, we stand up for the songs that drive our industry forward. Music doesn’t stand still. Neither do we.

Proudly congratulates the WGS50

Thank you for inspiring us with your songs

FOUNDER’S LETTER

Pick a stat, any stat.

The global recorded music business was worth $28.6 billion in 2023. Music streaming services now reach over 700 million paying users globally. More than 100,000 tracks are uploaded to digital platforms every day.

They are all, every dollar, every company, every technological leap forward, founded on songs.

Everything starts — just as it always has — with someone, somewhere picking out a melody, a rhythm, or writing a line. It is the first and most magical link in the chain, the one that changes lives and builds empires.

Plenty of arguments continue to rage about whether or not songwriting, the most fundamental of music biz skills, is correctly rewarded. MBW covers these issues pretty much every day as part of our 24/7 global news coverage.

In this special celebratory publication, however, we simply listen to (and learn from) some of the best to ever do it. Across genres and decades, from Diane Warren and the late Lamont Dozier to Jack Antonoff and Amy Allen, this is a compilation of experiences and advice from the World’s Greatest Songwriters – all taken from the regular MBW interview series of that same name.

One piece of housekeeping: this is not a definitive list. We concentrate pretty much exclusively (and very deliberately) on ‘non-featured’ writers – those working behind the scenes. So, for instance, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift, undoubtedly two of the World’s Greatest Songwriters, do not appear. (Note to Macca and Tay Tay, we are absolutely not saying no if you fancy being interviewed in future.)

Caveats and Beatles aside, there are still hundreds of number ones, trillions of streams, and immeasurable genius contained in these pages. A guarantee, then: you will finish this book knowing more about how to write a classic hit than you did when you opened it...

Tim Ingham Music Business Worldwide

PROUD HOME TO THE

WORLD’S GREATEST SONGWRITERS

AS FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE:

RODNEY JERKINS

JIMMY WEBB

BENNY ANDERSSON

STEVE MAC

BRIAN LEE

BJÖRN ULVAEUS PER GESSLE

JIMMY NAPES

TIM RICE

NIJA CHARLES

JACK ANTONOFF

DAN WILSON

PARTNER’S MESSAGE

We’re thrilled to celebrate the world’s songwriters and composers who are the creative force driving the music we all know and love. There simply would be no songs without their essential contributions that provide the very foundation of our industry.

Songwriters are the storytellers who capture the universal emotions that resonate with all of us - love, loss, joy, heartache, and far beyond. Their work transcends generations, genres and cultures, bringing us together and connecting our shared experiences.

For over eight decades, BMI has had the good fortune to champion music creators, protect their rights, advance their careers and ensure they can continue to earn a livelihood through their craft. We’ve learned along the way that behind every great song is tireless dedication, exceptional creativity, hard work and boundless talent, and we are privileged to support this extraordinary creative journey.

Celebrating the art and profession of songwriting is what BMI is all about. BMI’s mission is to serve our songwriters, composers and publishers, grow the value of their music and help them, however we can, to create the world’s best music. From iconic legends to today’s hitmakers to bright new talent, we

“Songwriters are the storytellers who capture the universal emotions that resonate with all of us.”

are honored to advocate for the most groundbreaking and visionary creators who are defining today’s musical landscape.

In paying tribute to all songwriters, we are celebrating the heart and soul of music itself. Thank you to all the music creators who share their inspiration and passion with the world.

Mike O’Neill President & CEO, BMI

AMY ALLEN PUBLISHER : WARNER CHAPPELL

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Adore You, Harry Styles

Back To You , Selena Gomez Espresso , Sabrina Carpenter

Whether it’s Harry [Styles] or any other artist, you know they’re tremendously talented and writing 100 unbelievable songs for the album.

So it’s not, ‘I’m getting to work with Selena and this song’s for sure’. It’s about learning to go in, bare your soul and be OK if nothing happens with it.

And then it’s a huge cherry on top if you hear the song is in the 20 top contenders for the album. Then the really exciting moment is when it’s on the album and starting to get a lot of fan love and appreciation – that’s the best possible news. It’s always a journey,

When I’m working with an artist, it’s the same thing – we’ll talk for a couple of hours and my antenna goes up when I see they’re talking about a subject they could talk about for a long time. We’re undoubtedly writing about whatever it is you’re venting about right now!

Before I started writing with other people, I’d done the 10,000 hours in the van with my friends, playing a show to five people and then driving home, spending all my money on gas. I loved it, I’ve always loved it, but there was something intriguing about taking a step back, trying to write a song and not feeling like I needed to attach it to my own artistry.

“When I’m in the studio, I like making music that would make sense on stage.”

It’s so freeing. You can learn so much because you’re not boxed in to, ‘This is my sound and my artistry.’ Cowriting Back To You [by Selena Gomez], the first song I had that ever went to radio, sparked the love that I have. I was instantly like, ‘I love this rollercoaster so much, I’m down to strap in and be on this for a long time.’

When I’m in the studio, I like having a guitar in my hand and making music that would make sense on stage. I can hear a band playing it and it helps me to have that understanding of the song.

I’d like to think that every song I’ve co-written, if you were to strip away the production, you’d be able to hear it as an indie rock song. But it’s a very cool and exciting process to step away from it and then hear how producers can shape it.

HENRY ALLEN PUBLISHER : KOBALT

CREDITS INCLUDE:

All Night , Beyoncé Cold Water, Major Lazer Heartless, Diplo

Life is what inspires me. Most of the time, you’re writing from personal experience but there’s also a lot of times when you’re writing from other people’s experiences.

I could sit and write a song about losing someone, but it wasn’t me, it was my friend. Or, I’ll hear something in a movie or a TV show, or have conversation, and find a really cool lyric or a song title and write it down. When you go into a session a month later, you can bring it up.

When you’re with an artist, you always want to let them guide the song, unless they don’t have any ideas. I feel like the best songs come from a real experience.

I’m always on the side of total freedom. My approach to writing songs has always been just saying something over music and not worrying about symmetry and syllables lining up. But there is a whole science and school of songwriting thought that’s, ‘Oh, the syllables need to match, we started this verse on the downbeat, we should start the pre [chorus] on the downbeat’.

That old approach sometimes annoys me, because I’m like, if it feels right, it feels right; there’s a middle ground. And depending on

who you’re writing with, everyone has a different approach.

In music, I don’t think there are failures, we just have misses. I believe in dreaming big, but I think it’s really important to manage expectations in this world. When you’re new and excited about songwriting, it’s really easy to get your hopes high and think a big opportunity is going to happen and then it doesn’t happen. You may feel like, ‘Oh, I failed, this was supposed to happen and it didn’t’, but I’ve learned that nothing is going to happen until it happens.

As a piece of advice, it might be generic, but just keep making music. So much of it is right place, right time, right introduction to the right person. It’s totally random. So don’t beat yourself up if you’re not getting placements and opportunities and someone doesn’t listen to your song. If you’re making good music, eventually, things will fall into place.

Also, there’s a weird stigma about having to subsidise income other ways. There were times where I was teaching zero to four-year-old babies music and dance with their moms in Newport Beach, California, while also wanting to be a producer/writer; it just took timing and patience.

BENNY ANDERSSON PUBLISHER : UMPG / WARNER CHAPPELL

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Co-wrote all of ABBA’s 20 Top 10 UK singles – nine of which went to No. 1

Every day, I at least sit down and try to write. Most of the time it won’t happen, but if I’m not there it definitely won’t happen.

I just wish I could come to terms with what ‘it’ is. Why, all of a sudden [clicks figures]. Why, after three weeks of playing rubbish do I suddenly have eight bars coming out and talking to me? If that doesn’t happen, nothing will happen – but what is it?

If I knew what it was I would go straight there on Monday morning, but it doesn’t work like that. Maybe it’s the same for everyone who creates –every painter, every writer, you need to sit there, you need to keep going, you need to wait for ‘it’ to happen.

It’s a bit like someone all of a sudden feels sorry for you: ‘Look at him sitting there at his piano, getting nowhere, let’s send him eight bars today.’

So many songs are now written by committee, and I don’t understand how that works. For me, a song starts with melody combined with chords. I arrange the song, with bass and drums, after the song is finished, not the other way round.

If I start with the drums and the bass and then add some chords, randomly,

and then try to write a melody… I don’t know how that works, I don’t get it. What that lacks, I think, is a ‘sender’. If someone likes my music, that’s me, it’s me sending it to you. If there are seven people behind it, are they all honest? Do they all mean it?

“Why,

after three weeks of playing rubbish, do I have eight bars coming out and talking to me?”

Protecting • Building • amplifying

JACK ANTONOFF

PUBLISHER

: UNIVERSAL

MUSIC PUBLISHING GROUP

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Cruel Summer , Taylor Swift

Anti-Hero , Taylor Swift

Please Please Please , Sabrina Carpenter

There’s not one moment I look back on where I ever thought, ‘Shall I do something else?’ Not one. And Jesus Christ, the universe was screaming in my face that it wasn’t working out.

I’m not talking one year or two years, but years and years of losing money. But that’s all we have in life: believe in something, whether anyone else believes in it or not. And, if people eventually believe in it with you, it’s very life-affirming.

It’s very hard to talk about [his creative partnership with Taylor Swift], because it’s a lot of magic. I’ve been able to articulate and intellectualize it to a point where I can talk about

literal things that happen, but the real answer to that question has always been hard to access.

Because, like any of the great magical relationships in one’s life, I don’t sit around and think about that magic, I interact with it. I always think to myself that if I could explain it, then it wouldn’t be it.

“You can’t fake the feeling, it’s magic. But what you can get good at is capturing it when it happens.”

You can’t fake the feeling and you can’t get good at it, it’s just magic. But what you can get good at is capturing it when it happens. Just making sure, when I’m in the studio, that things are quite literally plugged in a certain way, so if I get the thing, I’ve got it in a way that I’m going to be ready to give it to the world.

If you have a great lyric, you don’t want to be fumbling around with Pro Tools or having an issue with the mic. You have to almost be like a fisherman; have your tools set up so, if it bites, you’re right there.

GLEN BALLARD

PUBLISHER : CONCORD

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Man In The Mirror , Michael Jackson Hold On , Wilson Phillips Hand In My Pocket , Alanis Morissette

Never mind Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours, I’ve got 100,000 hours, because that’s all I do – I just sit around and write songs. It’s like being an athlete; you’ve got to keep doing it until it gets better.

From working with Quincy Jones I learned that love is better than intimidation. In the studio, he was never intimidating, but always encouraging, he never once lost his cool.

I’ve worked with some producers and directors who were kind of tyrannical, but he was the opposite. You don’t compromise any standard, but the best way to get a performance is to encourage. I learned that in a big way from him.

Michael [Jackson] was the easiest person I ever worked with. He was just such a friendly guy – and he was patient. We would be in there tinkering with stuff for hours and hours. He would always go out in the studio, working on his dance moves, so I was being educated by the greatest performer of all time.

There’s a very tenuous line between failure and success. Jagged Little Pill could easily have just gone into the waste bin and no one would have

ever heard it, because it’s really just our demos. But somehow it got out and became the biggest record of the 1990s.

Life has a funny way of helping you out, even when you think everything has gone wrong.

My intention is always to make something that has lasting value. Most people right now are looking for things that just have immediate value, but I don’t think I serve an artist’s long-term career that way.

I certainly want to make sure they have a hit, but I want to give their fingerprint a place in the market so they can have a long career.

“That’s all I do, I sit and write songs. It’s like being an athlete, you keep doing it until it gets better.”

EDGAR BARRERA

PUBLISHER : SONY

MUSIC

PUBLISHING

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Boyfriend , Ariana Grande and Social House

Hawái, Maluma  De Vuelta Pa’ La Vuelta,  Daddy

Yankee and Marc Anthony

Every song has a different story, but most of the time it starts off with a guitar and a melody. For me, if it sounds good with a guitar and vocal, it can sound good with whatever you want to put on top.

Sometimes songs are developed from a beat, but if the beat is so weird that you can’t play along with a guitar, I find it really hard to connect. That’s the reason I always try to be really melodic.

I think that’s how I’ve proven myself as a writer over the years; the songs I write can be pitched to a mariachi artist or a pop artist. However you dress it up, it should still be a beautiful song.

You will have a lot of people telling you that you’re chasing a dream that is really hard to achieve, so believe in yourself.

I was lucky, because my father was a musician, but in the real world, being a writer isn’t considered a proper job. I’ve seen writers who don’t get support from family and friends, they get discouraged.

And always pitch songs yourself. Don’t be reliant on a third person, on a manager, on a publisher or an A&R to do the work for you. Finally, read the contract. And make sure you understand the contract. Know what you’re signing before you sign it. I’ve known a lot of writers who have given away rights to get a cut –but they haven’t really known just how much they’ve given away.

“You

will have a lot of people telling you that you’re chasing a dream, so believe in yourself.”

PETE BELLOTTE PUBLISHER

: WARNER

CHAPPELL

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Son Of My Father, Chicory Tip

I Feel Love , Donna Summer Hot Stuff, Donna Summer

I’m very grateful that some of my work is so appreciated, and I really enjoy talking about it now. It’s that far removed that it doesn’t necessarily feel like I’m part of it. I feel like I’m telling someone else’s story at times. When we recorded [ Love To Love You Baby ] the first time, we used a different drummer and the song really slowed down in the middle.

We decided to record it again and try to avoid that. I remembered that In the restaurants I went to, they had these trios that used small music boxes with awful cha-cha-cha beats, and if we got one of those and laid it down on tape for five minutes, that could be our tempo guide. That was the first time manual syncing – a click track, essentially – ever took place.

Meanwhile, the band were jamming and the drummer Keith Forsey had been

“It was revolutionary. And all because of Iron Butterfly and sex at Neil Bogart’s house.”

listening to The Crusaders’ song Sugar Cane. In the middle of that song, the drummer briefly played ‘four on the floor’ [a 4/4 rhythm with the bass drum hit on every beat] and no one had ever played that before. It seems impossible now, but ‘four on the floor’ didn’t exist.

Keith was also doing the hi-hat from Rock The Boat [by The Hues Corporation] and we appropriated those two things and that gave it this early disco sound, which was quite different. Neil Bogart [founder of Casablanca Records] saw its potential. He called us from the States saying, ‘We’re releasing this record. I’m having a party at my house and it’s turning into an orgy –and they want to hear Love To Love You Baby playing all the time. I’ve got someone on the record player lifting the arm up and putting it on again and again. And that’s given me the idea to copy InA-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly and do a whole side of one song. I need you guys to do that as fast as possible…’

As we had a six-minute song with a click track, all we had to do was copy the click track for 16, 17 minutes and we could drop in anything we wanted, at any part of the song, and it was all in time. That was revolutionary. All because of Iron Butterfly and sex at Neil Bogart’s house!

EVAN BOGART PUBLISHER : SEEKER MUSIC

CREDITS INCLUDE:

SOS , Rihanna

Halo , Beyoncé

It Girl , Jason Derulo

The hardest thing in the world as a songwriter is not writing your first hit, it’s writing your second. Because now you’re on the clock and everyone wants to know if you have the goods or if you’re a one-hit-wonder.

I didn’t have years of practice at my craft. It’s like I walked on a golf course one day and said, ‘I’m going to play golf’. And then I hit a hole-in-one and was like, ‘Oh shit, how did I hit a holein-one?’ I’d better figure how to do that again, because now people think I’m a great golfer! I needed to figure out how to be a great songwriter very quickly.

I wrote SOS on my own because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t even know what co-writing was. I was sitting in a room with a CD of beats and having a go. If I knew how to write songs, I’d never have written SOS, because it breaks so many rules of songwriting.

Now, I hate writing on my own because I already know what I’m going to say. I prefer being in a room with someone and seeing how that plays out. And all my successes have come from working with somebody where we had amazing chemistry.

The energy in the room writes the song. In my experience, it’s not any sort of ability you bring to the session, it’s about the combination of the

“If I knew how to write songs, I’d never have written SOS, because it breaks so many rules.”

energy in the room. You never know where or who the brilliant line, melody or musical idea is going to come from.

You could take the same three people, put them in a room five days in a row and get five different songs. Because, every day, people are informed by things going on in their lives. Somebody could win the lottery and somebody’s mum could pass away that same morning and you’re going to get a certain song from the combination of the energies that day.

The next day, someone could feel a lot better about their grief and the other person lost their lottery ticket –and you’re going to get a completely different result. You could use the same ingredients to bake the cake, but no one’s coming in there with the same recipe. More often than not, it tastes like shit, but sometimes you get a really amazing cake!

BOY MEETS GIRL

PUBLISHER : PRIMARY WAVE

CREDITS INCLUDE:

How Will I Know , Whitney Houston I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) , Whitney Houston Waiting For A Star To Fall , Boy Meets Girl

Shannon Rubican

There was huge pressure to follow up How Will I Know, and we did manage to write I Wanna Dance With Somebody, but there’s certainly no guarantee from song-to-song, day-to-day, that you’ll come up with anything of interest ever again! That’s always the fear, ‘Oh my God, I don’t think I can write…’

We’re kind editors, but we’re straightforward. We both usually know when something is really not working, one or the other isn’t relating to it. We’re pretty good at just moving on.

Janet [Jackson] was working on her  Control  album at the time so I don’t think anyone could be disappointed having created that body of work, that was pretty groundbreaking. She made a good call that  How Will I Know  wouldn’t have fitted in, and it certainly benefitted us, because it ended up with Whitney.

You just can’t say enough about how powerful and beautiful Whitney’s voice is. When we first heard the recording of her singing  How Will I Know , we could hardly believe it, because you don’t imagine that little song you wrote will come out as this giant track

“You have to go to an intimate place to get the nugget that’s meaningful to the outside world.”

and this magnificent voice. It ended up in just the right hands.

George Merrill

Whether it’s a co-write or you’re on your own, you have to go to an intimate place to get the nugget that’s meaningful to the outside world.

We didn’t know what Whitney Houston could do, and I don’t think Narada [Michael Walden, producer] did either.

But, just as Janet Jackson came up with a new sound, so did Whitney Houston. The song that we sent wasn’t the song that ended up being recorded. The whole process was a metamorphosis.

CLAUDIA BRANT

PUBLISHER : SONY

MUSIC

PUBLISHING

“CREDITS INCLUDE:

Aqui Estoy Yo , Luis Fonsi

No Me Doy Por Vencido , Luis Fonsi

Creo En Mi , Natalia Jimenez

Out of respect for the artist I’m going to work with, I study each case ahead of time. So, I listen to their music, read some interviews, and then, when I have them here in my room, we might spend hours chatting, without playing one note. I really need to get to know them and to see where they’re at and what they’re feeling. Some are more open to share than others.

We have to fight for what we deserve, because without a song, there’s no artist, there’s no career, no stadium tours, no recording, there’s nothing. The song is the number one thing you need to start. So, we deserve to be recognized, to be paid fairly, for our credits to be right.

When an artist goes up on stage and gets an award, the first thing they have to do is to thank the songwriters, because if it wasn’t for that song, they wouldn’t have gotten in the charts, in fact they wouldn’t have sold a single record.

To young songwriters, I would say write every day. And try to collaborate with writers from other genres, because that’s where your education is.

“Try to collaborate with writers from other genres, because that’s where your education is.”

You can go to college, you can get a degree in songwriting, You can go to Berklee College of Music, I understand that, great. But I didn’t have that luxury; I couldn’t afford any of those things.

I learned through experience, by writing with so many people from all over the world. Nothing is better than that.

NIJA CHARLES PUBLISHER : UNIVERSAL MUSIC PUBLISHING GROUP

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Rain On Me , Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande

Positions , Ariana Grande I Do , Cardi B

I have to start writing with a blank canvas and a headspace that’s mentally free with good vibes. I draw inspiration from everywhere — movies and TV shows, conversations, when I’ve been through stuff that the artist has been through, just every avenue that my eyes, ears and mind can view. I’ll listen to chords, melodies or tracks and I’ll pick something that moves me — that’s the only way I can get what I want out because I can’t force anything.

When I hear a sound that really inspires something, it’s like a melody or a word comes to me out of nowhere and I go in the booth and freestyle it out. I don’t write my rhymes or lines down, I just blurt it out and try to make sense of the melodies and what I’m saying. I’m a melody-first person so I make sure I get that right. Then I approach writing [lyrics] like a conversation, because that’s what it is.

The number one key to a successful session is good vibes. It’s never fun when you go into a writing session with a chip on your shoulder or carrying weight from other situations that may have affected your mood because it’ll affect the song. Some of the other ingredients are great melodies and catchy hooks.

There was one song that I was asked to work on and I wasn’t mentally right. I was tired that day and didn’t take the song seriously. It was just not a good day and I ended up leaving [the session] and not really being productive.

The song ended up going to No. 1 and that was a gut punch for me. I learned that you have to bring your A-game every time and you have to take everything seriously — you’re here for a reason. If you don’t take it seriously, things will slip and you’ll see it. It was one of the first times I let something slip through my fingers.

When I get writer’s block, I don’t force it, I don’t feel bad about it, I just make sure that I go home, I eat, call up some friends, just hang out and forget about music so that I can regroup and come back the next day with a free mind again. Every day is not going to be a great day, you can’t win them all.

Always believe in yourself, that’s the most important thing, because so many people won’t see your vision or will just tell you no. Make sure you don’t let that discourage you. Somebody will like your song — I’m a firm believer that music will always be heard, it’s just about timing.

DESMOND CHILD

PUBLISHER : WARNER

CHAPPELL

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Livin’ On A Prayer , Bon Jovi

Dude Looks Like A Lady , Aerosmith Poison , Alice Cooper

I spent two years with Bob Crewe [writer and producer for The Four Seasons] doing a very disciplined thing, writing every day with some blank yellow pads, pencils and – the only piece of technical equipment – a pencil sharpener. Oh no, wait, there was a coffee machine, but no milk and no sugar, just black coffee. The guy was a minimalist.

He was very intense, very commanding, and I learned how to write a proper song. Before, I would sit at the piano and mumble, and hope those mumbles would turn into words, and I’d write a No.1 song that way.

Bob wouldn’t even start a song unless it was clear what the song was about. Ideally, we would start with a great title, and the whole lyric would be about finding its way back to that. He was meticulous, and we would drill down on every line.

I owe him everything, because I wouldn’t have become the songwriter I became without him or those two years in that strange room.

I always wanted to be a serious songwriter, but I’ve excelled in writing fun songs – songs that aren’t Grammy winners, but are the songs of the street.

“I’ve excelled in writing fun songs – songs that aren’t Grammy winners, but are the songs of the street.”

Everybody wants to be thought of as being smart and cool, but I was never a snob in that way and I never made music coming from that place.

Our job is to know what’s going on in our times, digest that but also bring something out from deep within ourselves that people might just connect with, no matter what else is going on.

Sometimes you hit upon a combination of those things, the universal and the personal, and a song becomes transcendent. In its time, a song like Livin’ On A Prayer wasn’t considered artistic, but it transcended the critics and has become the most important song I’ve ever collaborated on.

LAMONT

DOZIER

PUBLISHER : SMP /

WARNER

CHAPPELL

“CREDITS INCLUDE:

Where Did Our Love Go? , The Supremes

Reach Out I’ll Be There , Four Tops Band of Gold , Freda Payne

We [Dozier plus writing partners Eddie and Brian Holland] spent so much time together, sometimes from 9 o’clock in the morning to 3 o’clock the next morning, if there was an assignment that we had to get out right away.

Berry [Gordy] would come in and say, ‘So- and-so needs a hit because they’re going out of town and they need something right away.’ We practically lived in the studio.

Songs all have a life of their own and a story of their own. Heatwave  I wrote in about half an hour;  Where Did Our Love Go?  took three or four days. It all depended on what the songs called for. Some needed more attention. It’s like children, with some kids you have to spend more time with them than others.

There was pressure all the time. Because you always had to be thinking about the next song. You’d be working on one song and thinking about two other songs that you had to finish.

But we handled it very well, because we were the top writers and producers – not only at Motown, but in the world.

“There’s no such thing as writer’s block.

That’s just being lazy; you’re not being honest with yourself.”

You have to have a good work ethic. There’s a lot of competition out there and the people that work the hardest and put their heart and soul into it will get the benefits. You have to work at it seven days a week.

There’s no such thing as ‘writer’s block’. That’s just being lazy, that’s something you put in your own head. ‘I don’t feel it today’ – that’s bullshit; you’re not being honest with yourself.

JAMES FAUNTLEROY II

PUBLISHER :

CHAPPELL

WARNER

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Pusher Love Girl, Justin Timberlake

That’s What I Like , Bruno Mars

Sorry Not Sorry, DJ Khaled

I don’t really do networking, it’s more about word of mouth.

I wouldn’t advise people not to network, because there can be benefits, you can build relationships. But for me, if you stay in one spot, and make sure what you do is really good, people will hear about it and people will talk about it.

And that’s exactly what I did: I kept working, working, working and people kept finding out about it and kept getting in touch. That’s basically how my whole career has gone.

In terms of ambition, I mean, I know Babyface, and I know Diane

Warren and I knew Rod Temperton, so I know just how far… look, it might not even be possible to reach their levels, because of how the business is changing or whatever, but as long as careers like that exist… I’m so far from being at that level, in my mind, and also in reality, it means there’s just so far to go.

“I’m more excited about the stuff between the goals, the journey to get there, that’s the fun part to me.”

There’s a never-ending flow of goals, but I don’t want to live for goals, because achieving them is so fleeting, and as soon as you get there, there’s 10 more in front of you.

What I’m more excited about is the stuff between the goals, the journey to get there, that’s the fun part to me.

And I tell you something else, if that’s not your favourite part, then you’re going to have a pretty miserable ride, living and working for something so fleeting.

OAK FELDER

PUBLISHER : RESERVOIR

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Here , Alessia Cara Good Kisser , Usher

Sorry Not Sorry , Demi Lovato

One of the things it comes down to when working with an artist is to try to peel back the layers of a personality. You figure out the real center of them, a real part of them, and that’s what you want to write about, you want to write about something that resonates with them.

Because then they’ll love performing it – and also because they’re going to have to live with it. When Demi [Lovato] goes out on the road in six years, Sorry Not Sorry will still be part of her set list – hopefully!

It’s almost like being a therapist; it’s helping them realize something about themselves that maybe they didn’t know was there to begin with.

[Andrew] Pop [Wamsel] and I really connected and we started doing

some pretty major work together. We would get in the studio, have a five hour argument and walk out with an amazing song.

“It’s almost like being a therapist; helping them realize something about themselves.”

I think probably the favourite song I’ve ever been involved with in my entire life is a track on Miguel’s Kaleidoscope Dream album called Where’s the Fun in Forever [a contemplation on mortality and the certainty of death driving the urgency of life]. It’s a song that came right out of my own fears.

Prior to that, the creation of music had been such an abstract concept: OK, what do people wanna hear, I’ll do that. This time it was, How do I feel? And then putting it into music.

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TOBY GAD PUBLISHER : GAD SONGS

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Girl You Know It’s True , Milli Vanilli

All Of Me , John Legend

If I Were A Boy , Beyoncé

It was very hard when I first moved to New York [from Germany]. I had a tiny little room on 46th street between Fifth and Sixth [Avenue], in Manhattan, and I shared the room with a jewellery designer. So half the day I would have it, the other half of the day he would have it.

I was almost broke and lived on instant soup and one bagel a day. I put little signs on all the traffic lights saying, ‘Are you a singer? Do you want to work with me?’. And I went to all the open mic events, really trying to connect everywhere from ground up.

I still had a  publishing deal in Germany, but the guy who signed me sent me an email that basically said, ‘You will never make it in America and you’re going to come home crying.’

Collaboration is probably the number one thing. I never wrote a song by myself and I’ve probably worked with 500 different writers and artists.

Also, I don’t do too much with any one person. I write a few songs with somebody, then I write with someone else, and someone else, and someone else. Everybody inspires you in a different way. They always bring something new to the table.

So collaborate with as many people as possible, and just be open to criticism. Play your songs to everybody. Nowadays, with YouTube, it’s easy to find an audience, and take the criticism seriously. Most of all, find your joy in the process and not in your eventual success. I’m super-happy being in the studio with artists and just writing a song. Then, if it becomes a hit… listen, with many of my songs it’s taken five, six years before it hit the charts, but that wasn’t what I was waiting for, I’d already enjoyed writing it. If your joy and satisfaction is at the moment of writing the song, if that’s why you do it, then you can do it for the rest of your life. Don’t try to be famous, and don’t try to be successful, just try to write the best song, every day, and eventually, hopefully they will resonate.

“Don’t try to be famous and don’t try to be successful, just try to write the best song, every day.”

PER GESSLE

PUBLISHER : UNIVERSAL

MUSIC PUBLISHING GROUP

“CREDITS INCLUDE:

Listen To Your Heart, Roxette It Must Have Been Love , Roxette Joyride, Roxette

It just seemed natural for me to write melodies to my own lyrics. But of course I always have collaborators with me when I make demos and when I’m in the studio.

I always tell people that one of my biggest strengths as a musician is that I always chose very good collaborators, people who know everything I don’t know.

It could be an engineer, or a fantastic piano player like [longtime Roxette producer] Clarence Öfwerman. I can show him the chords and ask him for eight different things based on those chords. And then I’ll take number two and number seven, maybe combine them; it’s like a jigsaw puzzle.

Generally, I feel the more people involved in songwriting, the less personal it gets.

“It’s crucial to find what is unique about your style. What makes you stand out in the crowd?”

And the older I get, the more I think music has to be personal – especially these days when modern pop music tends to be what I call ‘laptop music’. Everything sounds basically the same, but then everyone is using the same plugins.

Most importantly, It’s crucial to try to find what is unique about your style. What do you do that makes you stand out in the crowd? You have to try to find that – and it’s easier said than done.

Photo: Fredrik Etoall AB

ASHLEY GORLEY PUBLISHER : SONY MUSIC

PUBLISHING

CREDITS INCLUDE:

That’s My Kind of Night , Luke Bryan Sand In My Boots , Morgan Wallen Last Night , Morgan Wallen

I don’t write with anybody that I wouldn’t also sit down and watch a ball game with. I’m in a really fortunate position where I don’t have to chase stuff down.

And anybody that is dead set on finishing a song that’s a ‘B’, that’s not amazing, I’ll bail on that, because I’m like, hey, we already know this is not great, let’s start over.

Also, if somebody is really trying to chase something that’s purposely not commercial, I have a hard time with that, because I instinctively go toward melodies that are memorable.

Generally though, I’m proud of the fact that I can be a chameleon and blend in with whatever the session is. I really don’t mind being the poster child for somebody that is ‘just’ a songwriter.

I’m not a great singer, I’m not a great instrumentalist, I can’t record a vocal on Pro Tools. I come from a town where nobody famous ever came from. I am the person that moved to Nashville, worked my butt off and made the dream happen.

If somebody makes it, people think, oh they probably had a connection, or somebody introduced him to someone, he fell into this, it was luck or whatever.

No, I did this. I studied. I went as hard as I could, I believed in myself and I’m doing exactly what I feel like God put me here to do. So don’t ever find an excuse; there is no excuse, because I’ve managed to do this without an instantly recognizable talent [laughs].

Don’t chase trends. Don’t write songs that that are kind of a sequel to the songs that are already out there. Make somebody stretch, write what you think it would be cool for somebody to put out two years from now, don’t write Part Two of whatever they just put out.

You also have to realize how vast the field of writers is. I tell people there are no minor leagues in songwriting. Basically, from day one, you’re in competition with the best.

It’s different from sports, where you get drafted and you can get by as a rookie, or working your way up in a company. Here, the only job is President of the place. And from day one you have to beat me and everybody else that’s better than me.

So what are you gonna do? What are you going to bring to the table that will stand out? Because what won’t stand out is a slightly worse version of what everybody else can do.

DAVID HODGES PUBLISHER : KOBALT

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Afterglow, Ed Sheeran

Because of You, Kelly Clarkson

Here’s To Never Growing Up , Avril Lavigne

When I first went to write with Ed, everyone said I should prepare, work something up, but I basically just showed up with my guitar.

Because, truth be told, he will either like me and then we’ll work out some songs, or he won’t like me and it won’t be worth trying to show him something I’m not.

I probably take this for granted a little bit, but I do think that being anxious in the room [with an artist],

trying to make sure that it’s some perfect thing, can often sabotage it. You really have to love it deeply, lean in hard, but hold it loosely.

Ed and I have laughed about this since, and it may come across as weird, but I was not intimidated by him.

Not because his talent is not intimidating; he is incredibly gifted. His capacity as a writer is so amazing and so quick.

But I wasn’t intimidated because I knew that me being intimidated steals away from the thing that I have to offer him. And I’m in the service of him and in the service of the song we’re writing that day.

SARAH HUDSON PUBLISHER : WARNER CHAPPELL

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Dark Horse , Katy Perry Black Widow , Iggy Azalea Levitating , Dua Lipa

My ultimate scenario is good energy and no ego. When you’re able to just be in the room and feel like you can say the worst idea ever and no one’s going to criticize you, or laugh at you.

When there is a supportive, ego-free environment, that is when you can create.

There’s a real art to collaboration. Can I write a song on my own? Sure. But I thrive when I’m in a collaborative environment.

And I’ve been in rooms where I’m with writers who are very in their own lane, in their own head, in their own process and they don’t really have that collaboration skill. I don’t enjoy that.

So, ‘no ego’ is huge, and I think just creating a space where you’re comfortable and where you feel free, because it takes 100 bad ideas to come out of your mouth for that one amazing one. When that’s the case, being comfortable is everything.

When you start out, be sure that you are getting onto this career path for the love of writing and the love of music, because it’s not easy, there’s a lot of rejection and there’s a lot of obstacles. But, if you really

“Remember why you’re doing this: because you are a creator, you create art and music.”

do have that love and that passion, it’s like nothing can stop you. And always remember that’s why you’re doing this, because you are a creator, because you create art and music.

I’d also say something that took me a while to learn, and that is that as a songwriter and as a creator, we’re living our job 24/7. It’s not like a nine-to-five where we go home and it’s over. We are constantly in our emotions, and I think it can get all consuming.

So, go live your life, read a book, pet your dog, go to the museum. Find joy and happiness in little things outside of this career as well, because you need that balance. It will eat you alive if you don’t have that.

JOSH JENKINS

PUBLISHER

: YOUNG GUNS

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Fancy Like, Walker Hayes

Buy Dirt, Jordan Davis

Tucson Too Late, Jordan Davis

You have to position yourself to get lucky. Songwriting is equal parts craft and just getting the 10,000 hours in.

When I first moved to Nashville, I thought I was a pretty good songwriter, and then I listened back to those songs and they weren’t very good. What Nashville will teach you is the discipline of showing up every day and writing, just creating songs, getting better and learning how to mine your heart to find ideas.

At the same time, you serendipitously meet people that become your crew. You write a bunch of songs, one of those ends up working, the dominoes fall and it’s a beautiful thing.

But songwriting is not an A-to-B business, it’s not like ‘If you do this thing, this happens’. You have to follow your creative force, knowing that the more you do that, the more likely one of the things you’re a part of will find the light of day. It may be a big song or it may be a small win but, whatever happens, eventually these songs will find their way.

The best thing you can be as an artist is brave and courageous enough to tell what’s unique to you, what matters to you, what your story is. And not to operate out of fear.

“The best thing you can be is courageous enough to tell what’s unique to you.”

If you need to [write something] to get on radio, inevitably, fear can creep in. So it’s our responsibility as writers to help their vision come to life and part of that is helping them to be brave. The best art is unapologetic, honest, sometimes offensive – it feels unique, like God breathed.

Artists have a different set of tools and colours they work from and you get to facilitate that. When I write with Walker [Hayes], he can say things completely differently to how I’d say them.

The objective is not just to have a hit, it’s to make people feel less alone, more loved, more alive, more thankful. I’m not against songs being played a ton of times and making money, I just think we’re short-changing what a song is and the potential of what a song can do.

RODNEY JERKINS PUBLISHER : UNIVERSAL

MUSIC

PUBLISHING GROUP

CREDITS INCLUDE:

The Boy Is Mine , Brandy & Monica

It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay , Whitney Houston Say My Name , Destiny’s Child

I wanted to be the person behind the scenes, helping other people grow rather than be the one in the limelight. I never craved the limelight; I wanted to make my name as someone who helped other people achieve their goals.

For me it’s always melody first. Whether that’s me on a piano, starting with a progression, or it’s me humming a melody and finding a progression to the melody, it’s almost always melody first.

I think you have a lot of people who start with beats, but I believe that melody is king and that it’s melody that lives on – more so than the beat.

Networking is important, and the person who cares about the songwriter, and the rights of the songwriter, is the kind of person you want to align yourself with. Because I believe the songwriter is an artist in their own right.

We have to understand: without the song, there is no artist. It all starts with a song.

So, with networking, make sure you align yourself with people who really care about songwriters.

“Make sure you align yourself with people who really care about songwriters.”

Perfect your gift. I believe that sometimes we don’t do enough research. We want to write and we want to make music, but we don’t want to take the time to study.

Go back and study: Why was this song great in 1952? Why was this song great in 1960? What made this song special in 1970? Why did people connect to those songs? Study the sound of each decade, see how things change, but also look for similarities – what connects them?

I think that all goes towards perfecting your art. Before jumping in, take the time to study and perfect.

Although, it’s funny, I’m telling people to work hard, and I don’t believe I’ve ever worked a day in my life – because I love what do. The studio’s my playground.

STEPH JONES PUBLISHER : RESERVOIR

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Espresso , Sabrina Carpenter

Flame , Teddy Swims

People You Know , Selena Gomez

When I work with new artists, I often go to YouTube or their online pages and look at live performances. I’m always listening: is there something that sticks out about their voice or tone that maybe isn’t making it into the recordings and the songs they’re writing?

I’ll also be asking, What do they say to me as someone who doesn’t know them? What are they really telling me about themselves? Is there something here that’s not being seen for what it is? I want to see what’s there, not what can be made up.

The inspiration starts at home. For me, every day, it’s perfume, which is the weirdest thing. I am not really religious anymore, but something that I still use in my daily life from that time is from the Lord’s Prayer, where it says, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’. I think about that all the time and meditate on that thought.

What’s for today? I don’t want the stale stuff that’s old and I don’t want something that’s not ready yet. So I pick a perfume to wear based upon how I’m feeling. I’ll listen to the music of the artists I’m working with that day, get in that energy and how it makes me feel, coupled with how I’d like to feel, what I need.

Also, it’s about listening to lots of different kinds of music and staying inspired by myself. I take great responsibility for that.

I once heard the author Elizabeth Gilbert say that she would speak to her creativity as a person and say, ‘I’m not going to make you provide for me, I will always provide for you’. That’s something that stuck with me. If you keep on putting a demand on anything and you don’t give to it, there’s nothing there.

I try to stay in a place of believing in everything, but knowing nothing. I believe in what’s possible but steer clear of feeling like I know every answer, because I don’t. So never count someone out, whether that be an artist or an executive. Our brains like to judge, but we’re all evolving and changing.

Look at incredible artists like Chappell Roan, who has been around and doing it forever. So has Sabrina [Carpenter]. Honestly, I’ve been working really hard for a long time too. Don’t compare yourself so much, because my journey is just my journey. All I’ve got is today, this moment.

HOLLY KNIGHT

PUBLISHER : PRIMARY WAVE “

CREDITS INCLUDE:

The Best, Tina Turner Love Is A Battlefield , Pat Benatar Rag Doll, Aerosmith

It’s silly if you think about it: you can have a great actor but it doesn’t mean they have to be a brilliant screenwriter; they’re different gigs. But somehow, when it comes to music, you’re more credible if you write your own stuff.

That’s why the Songwriters Hall Of Fame is way harder to get into than the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and why it means more. It’s almost like they’re selling out if they do a song from outside their camp. And that’s a shame – all you’re trying to do is help them.

As a writer, you write what you know and what you feel, and that was what was coming out of me. It started to resonate with a lot of the new women rock singers that were coming out at the time, and who weren’t going to take any shit from anybody.

I had a fairly dark upbringing with my mother. But then one day I woke up and realized I could fight back. And once I started fighting back, it became part of my make-up.

You turn lemons into lemonade as they say, and I started to write empowering songs without realising it. I always try to think outside of the box musically and lyrically. When Mike [Chapman] and I came up with Love Is A Battlefield , we weren’t thinking, ‘Are people going to like it?’

We were just off the wall. We wrote the song when he taught me how to fly paper aeroplanes – we were flying them across the swimming pool in LA with lyrics on them.

“As a writer, you write what you know and what you feel, and that was what was coming out of me.”

We wrote the song in one day – but we had one line we didn’t like in the chorus and we took a week to write that one line.

We basically just farted around, being silly, writing these stupid lyrics – we came up with a hundred lines, until we came up with the one that sounded like it always belonged in there.

SAVAN KOTECHA PUBLISHER: KOBALT

“CREDITS INCLUDE:

Can’t Feel My Face , The Weeknd What Makes You Beautiful , One Direction

Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored , Ariana Grande

When I started doing sessions, I would tell myself to slow down. When I started having real success – and this is something I learned from Max [Martin] – I really started challenging every idea, every lyric and every melody after I created it.

You can’t just be satisfied as a songwriter. In the beginning, you think: ‘Wow, we wrote a song – a whole song! Amazing!’ But then you have to go back and make sure it’s something people will relate to and love. You always need to step away from it and think, ‘OK, how can we make this better?’

It’s about distancing yourself from your original idea, and being honest with yourself. Is it actually great, or do you just want it to be great? If you’re looking at the commercial hitsongwriting world, then you have to look at what’s out there, see what’s working and leave no stone un-turned.

You hear these stories where writers say: ‘I wrote this song in 10 minutes.’ And yeah, that can happen, but those same people won’t tell you they also wrote 300 other songs that weren’t as good.

When you start getting success, you suddenly get all these opportunities to do things, and it’s easy to forget that you don’t have to say yes. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.

In music, it’s about emotions and connecting people; it’s not about money or ego. That’s why you should do stuff you’re passionate about. It won’t work otherwise, because it won’t be honest.

“In music it’s about emotions and connecting people; it’s not about money or ego.”

BRIAN LEE PUBLISHER : UMPG / WARNER CHAPPELL

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Work From Home , Fifth Harmony Havana , Camila Cabello Goodbyes , Post Malone

If your favourite food is steak, and you eat it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday – come Sunday, if you eat it again, you’re gonna throw up. Same with if you’re watching the same thing or listening to the same thing.

So writing pop songs became really formulaic for me, even though that’s what I wanted to do.

Max Martin, who I looked up to, I don’t want to say he was just a formula, but he certainly had a formula as part of what he did, and I feel like I figured it out, which is why I had his face tattooed on my left arm.

I’m very particular on this topic [songwriting credits], because I don’t like everyone thinking they can do this job, because it’s my job! It’s like when DJs found out that various celebrities, I won’t say any names, were becoming DJs; they were furious! Stick to fucking acting and get the fuck out of my club. Like when Michael Jordan tried to play baseball, remember that?

I try to keep an open mind and an open heart, but when it comes to songwriting, a lot of times, I’m like,

‘You don’t know my pain, so get the hell out of here.’

Oh, you want to be a successful songwriter? You want to know how I did it? You mean you want to be miserable like me? Nah, you’re young, you’ve got your life ahead of you, fuck off.

My advice to aspiring songwriters? Go to med school. Have a family. Listen to your parents. Stay in school. Say no to drugs. Or maybe yes. It’s a tough one…

“Go to med school. Listen to your parents. Stay in school. Say no to drugs. Or maybe yes. It’s a tough one…”

PATRICK LEONARD PUBLISHER : PRIMARY WAVE

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Live To Tell , Madonna Like A Prayer , Madonna You Want It Darker, Leonard Cohen

My process remains the same. I get up quite early, I go in, I sit at the piano and I improvise. That’s what I did then and that’s what I do now. I would find something, maybe a chord sequence, or I might have a melody, but it would be the notion of a song.

I would put something together, usually just on piano, and then Madonna would come in at about 11, we’d mess around with whatever needed to be messed around with, she’d write  a lyric, she’d sing it, and the next day we would do another song, one a day.

And the really crazy thing about this, and I know this is out there already, she only ever sang these songs one time.

I mean, she didn’t sing the songs on  Like a Prayer  more than once, ever. There were no re-takes, there was the demo vocal and that was the record. It was absolutely extraordinary.

The second song we ever wrote together was  Live to Tell . She wrote the lyrics in minutes, sang it once, got it down straight away.

But these things weren’t designed to be hits – they were designed to be good. People have asked me, ‘Can you write a hit?’ [laughs]. Answer: no. I mean obviously I can, and I have, but not because I’ve tried to.

“These songs weren’t designed to be hits; they were designed to be good.”

I know some people do that, but what they have is a formula – and the formula gets old real quick in some cases.

What I would say to young songwriters starting out is don’t listen to other people’s music. Although the cynic in me says that these days, if you want to be a contemporary songwriter, that’s what you have to do. What I mean by that is, if you want to do something your whole life, and love it your whole life, then I know what I have done – and still do – and that is not to listen and copy, but to study and learn, so that you can add to your lexicon, so that you’re continually expanding your language.

I don’t know if that’s good advice for somebody who wants to be a contemporary hit songwriter, but that’s how I’ve always approached it.

HILLARY LINDSEY

PUBLISHER : SONY MUSIC

PUBLISHING

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Jesus Take The Wheel , Carrie Underwood

Girl Crush , Little Big Town

I’ll Never Love Again , Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper

So much about co-writing is psychology – and listening is such a big deal.

Also, dare to suck. Just throw something out there. It could be totally wrong, but most likely it’s going to lead you to the next thing and spark the conversation.

Sometimes it starts with a title or a conversation about somebody who’s going through something. Sometimes it starts with a groove that evokes an emotion.

For me, it’s always about finding the heart of the song, that’s always my goal. Whether it’s a party song, or a serious song, it’s like, ‘OK, what is this song wanting to become? What is the song wanting to say?’ And then just letting it evolve.

I get creative blocks all the time, and if somebody has an answer to that, I would love to know. I don’t deal with it well. I get mad, I get frustrated, I get mad at myself.

Yesterday is a good example. I’ve been in a little bit of a block lately and feeling really frustrated and down on

“It’s always about finding the heart of a song and then just letting it evolve.”

myself. Like, ‘Can I keep doing this? Is this even worth it anymore? I think I suck. I think I’ve totally lost it. Was I ever good to begin with? They’re all going to find out I’m not really talented’; the imposter syndrome thing that we all have.

I wanted to cancel a session because I was that mad, frustrated and sad. But I didn’t, I showed up, and we had one of the most magical days. So maybe my answer is that I keep showing up and I push through.

I could have hung it up yesterday and cancelled and then I would have missed out. Who knows if the song is going to get cut or if it’s going to be a single? But for me it’s exactly what I needed and I’m ready to go today.

JOEL LITTLE PUBLISHER : SMP

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Royals , Lorde Tennis Court, Lorde You Need To Calm Down , Taylor Swift

When I first met Lorde, I think she’d experimented with writing a little, but she wasn’t really a writer at that stage, I would say.

She’d written these amazing lyrics, but they weren’t really in any sort of structure or anything, It was almost just like amazing poetry on a page. So I would help kind of structure it and go, ‘this part here feels like it should be chorus, this part here could be a verse.’

I’d never written songs like that before. Usually, you have a melody and some chords and then you put lyrics to it, whereas this was basing everything around the lyric, which was a challenge at the time, something we’d never done before.

But once we figured it out, it’s an incredible way to write songs, because you can find the mood and melody that suits what the lyrics are saying as opposed to trying to come up with lyrics that suits the melody.

And her lyrics are so amazing, so figuring out a way to do that was a lot of fun and I think really beneficial to the song.

I feel like that’s always been a big part of my success, working with people before they skyrocket. If I hear a voice that I feel is special and has

something I think I could help with, I’m always interested.

When we won the Grammy [ Royals was Song of the Year at the 2014 ceremony] I remember being ecstatic, obviously, but also, a week or two afterwards there’s a comedown; like, have I just peaked?

And then I realised, we got here because we were trying to make something we thought was special, so just keep trying to do that.

“If I hear a voice that I feel is special and has something I think I could help with, I’m always interested.”

STEVE MAC PUBLISHER : UNIVERSAL

MUSIC PUBLISHING GROUP

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Shape of You , Ed Sheeran

Rockabye , Clean Bandit

What About Us , Pink!

There are no rules now. That’s the big difference. Five or 10 years ago, it had to be one of three different types of record that you were making, and that in turn had a lot to do with radio. Today, you can do absolutely anything and get away with it – so long as it’s of great quality.

Just because you have a hit doesn’t mean you have all the answers. Enjoy it, but realize that once the hit has gone, everything resets.

You must never be afraid to scrap something you’ve worked hard on. For some songs, it doesn’t matter how many times you re-do them, how much you dress things up with production, they’re just not good enough.

One of the very clever things about Simon [Cowell] was, when the original songs weren’t good enough he’d go with a classic [cover].

I spent about three or four years just producing cover versions. Some people might say that’s a step backwards, but it was the best learning experience of my life.

It sets the bar: ‘If I’m going to write something, it may as well be at this level – otherwise, what’s the point?’

“You must never be afraid to scrap something you’ve worked hard on.”

I always wanted to be credible as a young musician. It’s all I cared about. But then I remember something Simon once said to me: ‘Steve, you have to understand, there’s only one kind of credibility in this business, and that’s a hit. How do you become more credible? Easy, you have another hit.’

The best A&Rs don’t think they’re songwriters, they don’t think they’re record producers, so they don’t micromanage the whole thing.

I’ll take on board any criticism and address it. [A&Rs] are ultimately your clients. And I certainly don’t have all the answers. But great A&Rs don’t come in and sing you how they think it should go.

MOZELLA

PUBLISHER : SONY MUSIC

PUBLISHING

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Wrecking Ball, Miley Cyrus Perfect , One Direction One Call Away, Charlie Puth

I had a really, really tumultuous breakup that culminated in me calling my wedding off. It was a horrible time. And through that tragedy, it all came to be.

When people ask me how it happened, I just say I got crumbled into little pieces and then I rebuilt. And through the rebuilding, after the rebuilding, I became a lot more fearless. I was more raw and more open and I was writing real things, true things and that’s when I got my first hit [Wrecking Ball].

I was ready to quit. I was ready to quit everything. I had already kind of quit everything, there was nothing left.

There was no agenda other than to get better. And the only way I knew how to get better was to write from my heart, whether anyone ever heard it or not. There was no intention for this song to become what it became. I knew when we wrote it, it was so true to the way I felt. I knew that it was just utterly true to the pain I was feeling.

Every artist needs something different. Sometimes you’re more of a ‘shaper’; you help them shape their ideas, and help them edit their ideas.

Other times you’re taking the lead with lyric and melody, because maybe

they have great ideas and concepts, but they haven’t really learned how to write a structured song yet. It kind of varies.

Sometimes I’m doing everything, they sing it and they’re perfectly happy with that too. Sometimes an artist has so much feeling and so much pain and so much emotion, but they just don’t know how to get it out. I almost treat them like a muse.

I talk to them, I ask them a million questions and I pick their brain about the psychology of the way they were raised, their parents, their exboyfriend. I sort of dig in and it really inspires me.

Just write and write and write. And when you think you’ve written your best song, keep writing.

Also, be your own champion, but also be your own critic; have a healthy sense of, ‘Is this good enough?’ But also, ‘You know what, I’m good and one day I’ll get there.’

I certainly wasn’t that good when I started. It took me 12 years to have a hit after I moved to L.A. And then once I got in those bigger rooms, there was a sense of confidence because I had done the work.

JIMMY NAPES PUBLISHER : UNIVERSAL

MUSIC

PUBLISHING GROUP

CREDITS INCLUDE: Rather Be , Clean Bandit Stay With Me , Sam Smith Unholy , Sam Smith and Kim Petras

I have good relationships with most of the artists I work with. You’re telling a lot of your personal life stories in these moments, so I like artists to feel they can trust me, and I can trust them, because it’s in those safe spaces that you get the most magic.

I always see what the artist wants to do, I listen to where they’re at in their journey. Sometimes, someone’s just gone through a break-up and the only thing to do is to write a break-up song – that’s just what they have to do, so I have to help them do it.

And maybe it’s a break-up ballad or maybe it’s a break-up banger – that just depends on what stage of the break-up they’re at.

Don’t turn the tap of your creativity off. I wake up every day and just write at the piano by myself. Doing that every single day, there’s bound to be a lot of rubbish that comes out.

“It’s all part of the journey. If you don’t write the crap songs, then the great ones don’t come.”

I still write crap songs, of course I do! You just let them go. But there might be a chord, a lyric or a feeling that was manifesting in some of those other songs, that led to the point that [another song] became magic.

It’s all part of the journey. And, if you don’t write the crap songs, then the great ones don’t come.

DAN NIGRO

PUBLISHER : SONY MUSIC

PUBLISHING

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Drivers License , Olivia Rodrigo

Good Luck, Babe! , Chappell Roan

Vampire , Olivia Rodrigo

I grew up playing music and getting signed in the early 2000s, and the way that you had to do it back then was go out, play shows and prove to people how good you were in a live setting. Then grow a pocket of a fanbase and keep on building these little blocks. I was in the band As Tall As Lions, but I don’t know if it was necessarily the dream to be a rock star. I loved the idea of going on stage and being in front of people but, quite soon into playing in a band, I realised I didn’t love it.

Once we started touring and were on the road all the time, I realised how much I hated not having a routine and I found myself quite disconnected from reality at some points. You’re living in this weird alternate bubble, where you’re moving around, going from show to show. You’re in a new city, you show up at a venue, you’re performing and then getting back in the van and doing it all over again.

The allure wore off quite quickly for me and I realised I like creating music more than I like performing it.

I know a lot of people struggle with their identity once their band has gone, because whoever you are

“I find myself best suited to people who have really strong ideas about the song.”

is completely wrapped up in it. But I felt really lucky [when ATAL split] – I came into a creative group of people that were making music that was inspiring me.

Unlike most people, I took a hard turn into completely trying to cut away from that side of my career. Even though I’m proud of the band, I didn’t want it to be like, ‘Oh, Dan makes indie rock music’ or whatever. It was actually easier for me to fully separate from it and try to start from square one.

I find myself best suited to people who have really strong ideas about what they want the song to be about. I love playing that role of song-helper and helping shape what a song could be, based on their idea.

TAYLA PARX

PUBLISHER :

CHAPPELL

WARNER

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Thank U, Next, Ariana Grande Love Lies , Khalid & Normani High Hopes , Panic! at the Disco

Sometimes I wake up and I want to write a rock song; sometimes I wake up and I want to write a country song. And I love the fact that I can do that because it’s not always about me.

I was working with people like Babyface and Tony Dixon and The Rascals, and it was very hard to be confident around such successful men, to be confident enough to blurt out an idea, and not think twice about it; that was a lot for me.

I had to learn to speak up, because these people not only had accolades over me, they had age over me.

But it actually inspired me to reach out and find other female producers, engineers, writers and artists, because I was always surrounded by men.

I became curious about other women working where I was working and when I did that it helped me become more confident.

At first I was just thinking, ‘Please don’t let me say anything stupid.’ Now I’m like, ‘OK, I’m gonna say something stupid!’ [laughs].

Now I’m not afraid, because we might just be one more stupid idea away from a brilliant idea.

It’s always good to have someone challenge your ideas, and it’s good sometimes to play devil’s advocate on someone else’s ideas. My only thing is, it has to be somebody who can challenge you and somebody who actually adds to the room, which is why I’ve gotten a little more choosy about who I collaborate with.

I felt like I was writing full songs and giving away [credit]… like this person was just being in the room, you know?

So, make sure you’re writing with people who make you better. That’s all that matters and that’s the only reason somebody should be in the room anyway. I apply it to friendships, everything: be around people who make you better.

“I’m not afraid to speak up, because we might just be one more stupid idea away from a brilliant idea.”

LINDA PERRY PUBLISHER : WE ARE HERE

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Get The Party Started, Pink Beautiful, Christina Aguilera What Are You Waiting For?, Gwen Stefani

I like respect. I like you talking to me about how awesome I am. I like when I’m going to be 72-74, somewhere around there, I’m going to get a lifetime achievement award and I’m gonna have a lot of fucking respect. And I’m going to have respect because I did what I said I was going to do and I kept my integrity. That is what I want. I want a group of people to sit in a room and applaud me for staying true to my beliefs.

When I ran into Christina Aguilera, she said she’d heard some of the P!nk stuff and she really loved it. I said, Cool, thanks, and I asked her if she was making a record. She said she was, and then all I said to her before I walked off was, ‘If I were you, I would use that darkness that you have, that depression. Because, listen, the world knows that Christina Aguilera can sing; the problem is, no-one believes what you’re singing. Have a great night.’

When I got back, my friend asked me, ‘What did you say to Christina?’ I said, ‘Nothing much, why?’ He said, ‘Because she’s still watching you and her mouth has dropped on the floor’. A week later, I got a phone call from her people and she wanted to meet with me.

“I’m going to have respect because I did what I said I was going to do and I kept my integrity.”

The music business is fucking scared, it runs on fear, and you can’t run anything on fear, that’s why we are where we are right now: you’ve got a bunch of scared artists who are making dumb albums and singing stupid songs. Are they getting streams? Sure, but that doesn’t mean jack shit. I don’t give a fuck about your goddam stupid numbers, because that is fake news. That is not real, but for some reason labels run around thinking it is.

POO BEAR PUBLISHER : PEERMUSIC

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Despacito (Remix) , Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, Justin Bieber

I’m The One , Justin Bieber Caught Up , Usher

“I never feel complacent, I never feel like I’ve ‘made it’ – and I never want to feel that, to be honest, no matter what I achieve.

I want to grow and get better. I want a country hit, I want a country smash! I need new goals. I wanted to break into the Latin market and I did that. So now let’s do a country record.

I work every day, and I do one, two or three songs a day, which means I get at least eight or nine songs in a week. I try and keep that average.

I aim for 600 songs a year. It’s like me in the gym, shooting free throws over and over again.

Never get comfortable, never get complacent, never feel like you’ve made it just because you’ve had some success.

There will always be someone out there who’s willing to work harder than you, who has the passion and the drive that you used to have.

I’ve seen so many writers and producers come and go after they’ve got cocky and big-headed, and I’m just so grateful for the success that I’ve had, starting in the nineties, and to still be here doing this.

The people who last are humble and work hard, that’s why they stay in the game and those are the people I respect.

There are other people who are like, ‘I’m the best writer, I’m the hottest producer’ – and then you look up and where are they?

“Never

get comfortable, never get complacent, never feel like you’ve made it.”

ARIEL RECHTSHAID PUBLISHER : SONY

PUBLISHING

MUSIC

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Hey There Delilah, The Plain White T’s

Climax , Usher

Bitch I’m Madonna , Madonna

After Hey There Delila h, suddenly I’m getting calls to write with and produce any and all kind of acoustic guitar artists.

I started getting approached by labels and managers, but I sort of walked away from it. I wanted to write songs to my own vision, and get close to music that represented me a little better.

And that got me closer to other artists who also represented what I thought and felt about music. I got close with an artist named Cass McCombs, who I think is a completely brilliant songwriter. That was also the time I met Charli XCX and started writing with her.

All of these rules to do with splits and credits are very silly and antiquated, and I could go on forever about how unfortunate it is that if you sample a drum break from some artist’s record, the artist who didn’t write that drum part is getting credits and royalties, whereas the drummer who came up with it is getting nothing.

I mean, it’s all insane. Basically, what I’ve learned, and I’m not saying I’ve practiced it very well, because I’m

“Why wouldn’t you want to know about, listen to and be involved with everything?”

quite fine with how I’ve done so far, but essentially, it is what you say it is; you get what you demand.

Sometimes you’re given things, but most of the time the person with the most bravado gets things. It’s different when you bounce between genres like I do; the work doesn’t really change, but the way it’s perceived and credited does.

People might think it’s weird that I’ve worked with Usher and Cass McCombs, or Madonna and Dev Hynes, but it makes sense to me, because this is exactly my shit.

I was inspired by music that melded punk and reggae and hip-hop. I always had a foot in all these different worlds. Why wouldn’t you want to know about, listen to and be involved with everything?

TIM RICE PUBLISHER : UNIVERSAL MUSIC PUBLISHING GROUP

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Jesus Christ Superstar

Evita

The Lion King

Andrew [Lloyd Webber] and I both admired what the other could do. It was clear to me that he had a great gift for theatre and for musicals. I mean, he also loved rock n roll, he was totally aware of what was going on. But he wanted to write à la Lionel Bart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, etc.

I knew all the big songs, but I didn’t really know much about the theatre. I’d hardly been to a musical. But I could tell he was good, and when I

wrote some lyrics for him, he thought they were brilliant. I didn’t know if he was right about that, but it seemed to work and we stuck together.

For me, the story must come first. You’ve got to know what the song is going to be about. I’m not really good at writing one-off pop lyrics which don’t really have a point beyond being a song.

So, once the scene is established, like Argentine lady singing on a balcony to 10,000 fans, then the composer and the lyricist both know what sort of tune and words are required, so it almost doesn’t really matter which comes first. Everything has to serve the story.

TEDDY RILEY PUBLISHER : BMG / SMP

CREDITS INCLUDE:

No Diggity, Blackstreet

My Perogative , Bobby Brown

Remember The Time , Michael Jackson

I start with a beat. From that beat comes what I call the flowers: the lyrics and the melody.

If a melody don’t come, if I don’t think it works, I go to the next song. But when it’s working, a melody always comes.

The process of writing with Michael [Jackson] was being at an upright piano in his room. No beatbox, no drums – he was the beatbox! That’s how we came up with  In The Closet ; we made it up right there at the piano.

There are so many ways to write songs and I think I’ve tried every one of them, even down to banging on the table.

With collaboration, there’s no leader, it’s more like a gang. It’s whoever

comes up with the juice. Somebody goes, ‘I want to dance with somebody’. Next thing, someone else says, ‘I want to feel the heat with somebody’. And then somebody goes, ‘Yeaahhh, I want to dance with somebody’. And somebody ends it with, ‘With somebody who loves me’.

“Write because it inspires you. Writing should be a dream, it should be your dream come true.”

It’s really a team effort, it’s chemistry and it’s about everyone being in the moment – like a gang. And if we don’t feel that that day, we say ‘OK man, let’s come back tomorrow’, because you cannot force creativity. And if you do, you will hear it, it will sound false. Stay real. Stay true to what you believe. And write because you want to write, because it inspires you. Writing should be a dream, it should be your dream come true.

LIZ ROSE PUBLISHER : WARNER CHAPPELL

CREDITS INCLUDE:

You Belong With Me , Taylor Swift

All Too Well, Taylor Swift Girl Crush , Little Big Town

You have to read the room and figure out who you are in that room; I’m the person in the room that digs for the story.

It’s probably the only time I shut up, because normally I talk way too much. The key question is not, ‘What do you need for your record?’, but, ‘Hey, what’s going on in your life? You got anything you need to get out today?’

It’s not, ‘Do you need an up-tempo, do you need a ballad?’ Of course, we have to ask those questions, but I also like to ask, ‘What have you not said? If you have one more song in you and you want people to know something about you, what do you want to say?’ I can do it the other way, but I would much rather find your feelings.

I love getting to know an artist and being part of their journey. It’s so cool to be trusted like that.

Co-writing is wonderful. But it’s getting a little out of control for me – this four or five-way co-writing is bullshit and I’m the first one to bitch about it.

Well, I don’t mean I’m the first one, because we’re all bitching about it, but it’s funny, because when I get

“I love getting to know an artist and being part of their journey. It’s so cool to be trusted like that.”

in there, I go, ‘Why in the hell am I writing with four people?’ But then it’s so fun and you look at the song and say, ‘That’s what it took today and that’s OK’.

For some reason, before I walk in the room, I think I can’t adapt and the second I walk in, I adapt. I’m very fortunate that I can.

VALERIE SIMPSON PUBLISHER : SMP / WARNER CHAPPELL

“CREDITS INCLUDE:

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough , Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell

I’m Every Woman , Chaka Khan Solid , Ashford & Simpson

When we had a hit with Let’s Go Get Stoned by Ray Charles [1966], it showed us a new type of reality: Oh, there are people who sit down every day and make a living by writing songs. It opened our eyes to the possibilities of what might happen if we put the time in

The funny part is, you still don’t know if you’re going to get anywhere, if the phone is going to ring or if anyone is going to care about what you write. But it was something we loved to do and we were willing to give it a chance.

To young writers I would say, what God gave you, he gave you, he didn’t give it to anybody else. If there’s something in there to get out, say it your way, because nobody else will be able to replicate that, if you’re true to yourself.

I also pride myself on the fact that our songs didn’t all sound alike. We didn’t keep writing the same song over and over just because it was a hit. If you think you have a gift, protect it, nurture it, and be prepared to go through a lot of stuff to get to the real thing.

“We didn’t keep writing the same song over and over just because it was a hit.”

Sometimes people don’t work hard enough, they don’t work long enough and they won’t work in the dark; they want to know [too early] what’s going to happen on the other end, and you can’t work like that.

You have to persevere and believe that sometime special will materialise in the end.

The muse doesn’t drop down in your lap, you’ve gotta work to get there. But when you do, it’s such a rewarding feeling, there’s nothing like it.

Because here’s what happens: you know before the world knows, and that’s really special; that’s worth going through whatever it takes to get there.

“

STARRAH PUBLISHER : PULSE MUSIC GROUP

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Havana , Camila Cabello

Girls Like You , Maroon 5

Savage Remix , Megan Thee Stallion feat. Beyoncé

Smaller groups and smaller cozy studios are ideal environments for me. I like to build true bonds with the people I create with.

I’ve been in situations where people think I’m supposed to just accept whatever they bring me, that I’m not allowed to have an opinion or choice about what I’d like to work on – so they call me complicated or a diva.

A man with that same vision for themselves would be looked at as a boss. Or some people just plain leave me out of rooms or attempt to put me in a box.

Those reasons seemed racially motivated, especially when they would call me an urban writer when I

have multiple No. 1 pop songs.

I’m literally living out my dream every single day. It’s not a job to me, it’s something that I truly enjoy doing and that’s the most important thing for me.

“Have fun and make music that you want to listen to. Don’t chase trends. Create your own style.”

One thing I would change is the ‘hustle’ mentality. I hate the way people push the idea that the hustle mentality is the best way to fuel creativity; it takes away the passion and soul from the music.

Have fun and make music that you want to listen to. Don’t chase trends. Create your own style and stand on it.

DAVID STEWART & JESSICA AGOMBAR

PUBLISHER : STELLAR SONGS

CREDITS INCLUDE: Dynamite, BTS

What A Man Gotta Do , Jonas Brothers Giddy Up!, Shania Twain

Jessica Agombar

Whenever I’m with an artist, I take my ego, anything I’m going through, out of the room. When me and David write [a track], even if we write the lyrics, we talk about the artist’s life, we talk about their story.

One part of what’s incredible about working with someone like David is I always know we’re going to have a productive day. We’re going to start at the same time, eat lunch at the same time… our work ethic is exactly the same.

Honestly, if someone says, ‘This is what we need, can you deliver?’, we can always deliver. But, in this industry, as we all recognize, it’s sometimes up to the Gods, it’s sometimes down to timing, it’s about a whole load of things.

I remember having a really special feeling towards Dynamite, just because I knew it was instant, it was high energy, I knew it sounded American, I knew it sounded like a worldwide hit. That’s not me being arrogant, I just think you have to believe in everything that you create. And I truly believed in Dynamite

They say it takes 10 years to have an overnight success, and it has taken a lot of years and a lot of work to get to this incredible, life-changing moment.

David Stewart

I knew that BTS were looking for their first English language single; it was like the Holy Grail of cuts.

Everyone that I knew in America was fighting for it. I had conversations with a lot of my peers out there, and people who have had far more success than I have were fighting hard for it.

Ron Perry, who’s the Chairman of Columbia Records, had a conversation with one of my two managers [Neil Jacobson, the other is Charlie Christie]. He basically explained what they were after: something that was fun, exciting, with tempo, and kind of left it open-ended. I was just like, ‘Cool, leave it with me.’ And literally two days after we’d had that conversation, we delivered Dynamite

There’s honestly no set way of working for us. I might have a beat idea before Jess walks in; Jess might come in with a full page of lyrics; we might sit down and have a conversation that sparks something.

Jess is an all-rounder. There’s nothing that she can’t do, as far as her writing is concerned: she’s a phenomenal lyricist and incredible at melody.

ALI TAMPOSI PUBLISHER : RESERVOIR

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Stronger, Kelly Clarkson

Havana, Camila Cabello

Midnight Sky, Miley Cyrus

When I feel challenged, that’s more stimulating and fulfilling even than the success itself. It’s extremely exhilarating.

I’m trying to balance things out a bit more these days, because you can’t always be stimulated by the drive and not enjoy the result. I’ve learned to take a step out of the tunnel and look around a bit.

There’s power in collaboration. Once you think you’ve found creative chemistry, stick with it, great things will come. And honesty always wins; write as you and be true to you.

Stronger changed things a lot. I was still only 21/22 and it put me in a place that I wasn’t necessarily equipped for, looking back.

I mean a lot of great things came from it: I was working [as vocal coach and mentor] with Simon Cowell on X Factor and I built a close friendship with him.

LA Reid was also a judge and he signed me on as a songwriter at Epic. It definitely gave me a lot of leverage.

But there was a lot of pressure to follow it up. The years went on, I was left to my own devices and I struggled with substance abuse for a short time.

“Once you think you’ve found creative chemistry, stick with it, great things will come.”

I went through a heavy break-up, I was 23/24 years old and I didn’t really have the most solid sense of what life is.

Thankfully I was aware enough that this wasn’t the way to go and I knew where to get help. I didn’t need an intervention, it was more me saying, ‘You know what, the party’s over.’

I definitely owe a lot of my postStronger success to sobriety.

THERON THOMAS

PUBLISHER : SONY MUSIC

PUBLISHING

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Juice, Lizzo

About Damn Time , Lizzo

All My Life, Lil Durk

I stumbled upon songwriting and I was like, ‘Wait a minute. I’m making great money, my family is living awesome, and I can walk in the mall and nobody knows me? Why didn’t I think of this sooner?’

I love the competitiveness of it. I never played sports, but I love the, ‘I’m writing a song and Max Martin is writing a song and Diane Warren and Amy Allen, all the great writers in the game are writing a song and sending it to the same person’ thing. Then they pick your song and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I won this one!’

Or they pick their song and you’re like, ‘Oh man, I’ve got to go back to the studio and do better!’ Even when somebody else gets the win, it doesn’t make me feel bad or offended, I’m like, ‘OK, now I’ve got to do something to wow the world because they just did’. I love that!

Songwriting is weird. None of these things exist before you think of them from nowhere. So, no one understands the pressure of being labelled as a ‘hit songwriter’ when somebody puts you in a room with strangers and they’re like, ‘Hey, I need a smash!’

I give everybody I work with the same respect. At one point, Beyoncé

was the young girl in Destiny’s Child. So who am I to treat the new girl like she’s not going to be Beyoncé one day, or the new young man like he’s not going to be Drake one day? How dare I treat anybody like they’re not special because, in my mind, we all are special.

I’m like an Uber driver; I’m always trying to figure out what you need to get you to where you’re trying to go. You’ve got an address – the charts. So, with me as the Uber driver, how do I get you there the fastest and the safest?

That’s literally what I’m trying to do: get artists to the charts in the fastest and best way I possibly can. It doesn’t work out that way every time, but that is the goal every time.

I’ve written big hits by myself and that’s great. But collaboration is the way of the future. With everything happening in this world – artificial intelligence is going to start writing songs, making beats, writing articles and building houses. We’re going to need to form super-people!

The Power Rangers couldn’t beat the giant by themselves, everybody had to come together to defeat it. And I believe the future of every industry, including music, is going to be collaboration.

JUSTIN TRANTER

PUBLISHER : WARNER CHAPPELL

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Sorry, Justin Bieber

Lose You To Love Me , Selena Gomez

Good Luck Babe , Chappell Roan

Every songwriter is essentially their own small business, and that small business can be making a lot of money or it can be making almost no money.

The fact that there are amazing young songwriters out there who have had cuts on Ariana Grande records, cuts on Jonas Brothers records, etc. and they still can’t pay their rent –that’s a fucking problem.

I always think it’s so funny, the internet is like, ‘Oh, how many writers on this song, bleurgh.’ We like to collaborate, so fuck you. Like, how many people did it take to make that fucking movie?

And in that process of collaborating, I learned so much, I learned what my strengths are and how I can fit in to really elevate something.

To succeed in a business that doesn’t really want anyone to succeed, you have to be quite confident. Because although this is a creative, amazing business, that has saved a lot of lives through the joy that music brings, at its heart it’s competitive and cutthroat.

Sometimes I can be inspired by something I’m reading, sometimes it’s something a friend has said. A lot

“Be nice. Listen. But put your foot down when you really know you’re right.”

of times, actually, it’s something that somebody says at the beginning of a session. It might be while I’m catching up with someone, or getting to know someone I haven’t worked with before. They’ll say something and I’m like, That’s the fucking title right there, that’s the song.

The most important thing for me is I have to know what we’re talking about, it doesn’t have to be the title, but I need to know the main emotion, the main theme lyrically. Lyrics are my favourite part, and if I don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about, I can’t really help. Ultimately, work harder than anybody else for as long as you possibly can. Be nice. Listen. But put your foot down when you really, really, really know that you’re right.

BJÖRN ULVAEUS PUBLISHER : UNIVERSAL

MUSIC PUBLISHING GROUP

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Co-wrote all of ABBA’s 20 Top 10 UK singles – nine of which went to No. 1

Benny [Andersson, Ulvaeus’s writing partner of over 50 years] is very stubborn but that is also a quality that has been valuable through the years because he never gives up. Sometimes, when he was looking for a sound in a synth or something and turning the knobs, I would think, ‘Wow, this takes forever’. But you have to lift yourself up to a level which is above the level where most people would give up in order to make something that we thought was worthwhile and we could be really proud of, both in songwriting and recording.

Back in those days, a lot of people gave up too early — when the song or the recordings weren’t quite finished, and that little extra 1% up to 100 means so much. Nowadays, with all the technology available for both songwriters and producers, everything sounds really good, of course, but in those days, you had to try out the drum sound for hours in the studio.

So the stubbornness is sometimes infuriating, but it’s a good quality in the end. We’ve had tough discussions but we don’t let that come between us.

Even if it takes a week or weeks to produce stuff, a bridge that is useful or something, you have to have persistence because in the end,

it comes. You cannot just sit down with a guitar and a glass of wine, it doesn’t work that way. I was listening to Stephen Sondheim talk recently about his work and how painstakingly hard it was, how he had to put down the hours to get it right. I think people in general don’t think about that.

You have to be able to listen to whatever is up there and is willing to come down to you. You have to realise when it’s good, and, even more importantly perhaps, when it’s garbage. You have to find the 5% that is really good.

To become a craftsman is not only talent, it’s hard work. That takes time and time is money. Young songwriters today live on a pittance, very often because the songwriter is in the periphery, when he or she should be at the centre. The music industry revolves around the song.

Start by getting a few songs recorded and have a few hits, live off those for a while and become good. And don’t churn out songs, don’t throw them out before they’re ready, save them until the whole song is good. That happens very rarely today because they have the publisher or the producer breathing down their necks to deliver it and they have less time protecting it.

GEOFF WARBURTON

PUBLISHER : SONY

MUSIC

PUBLISHING

CREDITS INCLUDE:

In My Blood , Shawn Mendes Chances, Backstreet Boys Polaroid, Keith Urban

It was always writing the songs that I liked the most, and it was kind of irritating that I had to perform them myself.

So as soon as I found out other people could sing them for me, that was a way better option.

If I look at success rates, then most songs are probably started on a guitar or a piano. I’m not that great at writing to a track, to be honest, when it’s like looping; I get kinda hypnotized, like when you’re looking at the steps at the end of an escalator.

Some days I’ll have a bunch of ideas, just falling out, and someone will help me organize them. Other times I’ll be with someone and we’ll bounce ideas off each other. And then, yeah, sometimes I don’t have anything and the best thing I can do

“I love writing with people who are better than me, that’s when I get really fired up.”

is edit other people’s ideas, or just keep people stoked.

I just love being put in different rooms, meeting new people, developing relationships, writing with people who are better than me –that’s when I really get fired up.

What I didn’t realise straight up was the power of collaboration, I just didn’t know that was what I actually wanted and needed so bad.

I think when I was younger, writing by myself, I wrote off a lot of songs, because I was my worst critic. And then once I started co-writing, I was like, Damn, this is fun. Sometimes it sucks, but most times it’s fun.

And it’s how you learn. Those songs I wrote off, might have become really interesting or maybe really great, if I had been in rooms with other people who could have taken them and run with them. Plus, you’ll enjoy it way more.

Any time I’ve been intimidated, even with the biggest song writers, after like the first 20 minutes or so, they break down to just regular people. I’m still always shocked by that, I’m like, man, I thought they were going to levitate or something.

DIANE

WARREN

PUBLISHER

: BMG /

REALSONGS

CREDITS INCLUDE:

If I Could Turn Back Time , Cher Un-Break My Heart, Toni Braxton I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing , Aerosmith

I had friends who were going out with boys and this and that, and I would mostly be sitting with my guitar, usually in the bathroom, because of the good acoustics, playing the same song over and over. Those were the hours and days and nights that I learned my craft.

Here’s the thing with me: I just keep working. I’m a one-woman workforce. I never look back. As soon as I’ve finished a song: what’s next? Nothing’s ever enough for me, I’m always trying to get better and write better songs.

The key is showing up. I show up and I work, same as I did when I was 14. I’m just more successful at it and, I think, better at it. I go to work and I work.

Cher hated If I Could Turn Back Time . I had to get on my knees and literally hold on to her leg in the studio and tell her, I won’t let go until you at least agree to try it; I’ll pay for it, I’ll pay for the studio, if you just try it. I’ll put my ass on the line because I believe – no pun intended.

Whenever people ask me about ‘the process’, I don’t really know what to say because it’s kind of a magical thing – I just get to work. I sit at my keyboard or with my guitar and I get to work.

I guess I must have a process, I just

“The key is showing up. I show up, and I work, same as when I was 14. I’m just more successful now.”

don’t know what the fuck it is. I love getting that lyric just right, and slaving over every note. I drive myself crazy, but then when I get it, it feels so good.

I really don’t have much of a life, but I can get ideas from anywhere. Someone says something; that’s a song. My antenna is always up, never off.

I’ve pissed off some of my friends. One friend was really unhappy in her relationship and as she was talking to me, my response was, ‘That’s a great idea!’ She was like, ‘Wait, you’re not even listening to me!’

She was practically crying and I was saying, ‘I know, I’m sorry, but let me just write that down.’

Finally, don’t give up. Also, if you’re not going to die by not doing it, don’t do it.

JIMMY WEBB PUBLISHER : UNIVERSAL MUSIC PUBLISHING GROUP

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Didn’t We , Frank Sinatra

Wichita Lineman , Glen Campbell

MacArthur Park , Richard Harris

Young songwriters ask me, How do I become a songwriter? I say, Write songs! They think I’m pulling their leg, but you can’t come in with one song, you’ve got to write and write and write.

You know one of the skills you need to learn first? Wadding up a ball of paper and hitting the wastebasket on the first toss. Leave it behind, write more, keep writing, walk into a publisher’s office with 20 songs after you’ve discarded many more that weren’t good enough. And don’t give up on 20, because what if the 21st is the classic? You can complain that the business isn’t fair, sure, but what you should definitely do is concentrate on the one thing that’s in your control, and that’s writing songs.

For me, I think the first thing I did towards actually getting a deal was to commit; to absolutely burn my bridges and say, no, I’m not taking a 9-5 job. If I have to live rough, which I did for a while in LA, then I’ll live rough. But I’m going to as many publishers and as many record companies as I can, I’m going to get to know as many people as I can, and somehow I’m going to weasel my way in.

There is a grim determination required to make it as a songwriter. Collaborating is not my cup of tea, because, honestly, I’m not very good at it. I can hardly stand being in a room by myself; put another person in there and I really am uncomfortable.

To me it’s a very intimate thing, this confrontation with my most dreaded fears, and to make these very personal admissions and confessions.

“One of the skills you need to learn first? Wadding up a ball of paper and hitting the wastebasket.”

FREDDY WEXLER

PUBLISHER

: SONY MUSIC

PUBLISHING

“CREDITS INCLUDE:

Stuck With You , Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber Be Kind, Marshmello and Halsey Hard To Love, Blackpink

Be yourself, be humble, be OK with the idea that most songs you write are not hits, the same way most songs that a hit writer writes are not hits. And make sure you really want to do this. At least half of my success is work ethic. This is the Olympics, so if you don’t want to train incredibly hard and make real sacrifices, I would urge you to consider something else.

But, if you love music, if you’re OK with the idea of a job where stability is somewhat non-existent, at least for a long time, and that doesn’t deter you, then just keep going. If you’re talented, at some point, something will happen.

Oh, and perhaps the biggest thing I try to do as a songwriter in sessions with big artists, small artists, it doesn’t really matter, is listen. I have a PostIt note on my laptop, in big capital letters that says, LISTEN.

I also try to bring my own artistry to those sessions. I used to try to predict what artists wanted to say and how they would say it, and I would just do that. But I realized that no artist needs a writer to impersonate them.

“Be yourself, be humble, be OK with the idea that most songs you write are not hits.”

So, after I started releasing music under the pseudonym Jackson Penn, I rediscovered my own voice, and I started bringing that into sessions with big name artists. I still listen (always listen), but I also write from a place that’s authentic to me artistically, and I find that my songs are all the better for it.

DAN WILSON PUBLISHER : UMPG / WARNER CHAPPELL

CREDITS INCLUDE:

Closing Time , Semisonic

Someone Like You , Adele White Horse , Chris Stapleton

I’ve gone through the excitement and the bullshit and the overwhelmingness of both failure and success as an artist. And I’ve tried and tried, throughout it all, to be an artist as opposed to a business.

When I’m writing with an artist, they know that I’ve been through all that stuff. They know that I’m not monetizing them, and I think that really influences the immediate context of a session.

Artists are my people. We’re very volatile, very emotional, very heart on sleeve; that’s what my people are like.

So I’m not going to get embarrassed or feel awkward if someone begins weeping when they start talking about a story that becomes a song. If they start to cry, I don’t try to stop that.

I was really nervous [about writing with Carole King]. One thing that blew me away was that I played her the chorus for the song that became  One True Love , and she said, ‘How about this for a verse?’ She sang it and, somehow, I said, ‘I’m not totally sure about that’. Straight away, she said, ‘OK, how about this?’ And she played a whole other verse, the one that ended up on the record.

In retrospect, what blew my mind about that, of course, was, who am I compared to Carole King? Who is pretty much anyone compared to Carole King? But look how she reacted…

In so many sessions I’ve been in since then, if I say, ‘I’m not so into that, what about something else?’, the person begins advocating. But what Carol did was move on straight away, and have a whole other thing, another completely brilliant idea, straight away. I know not everyone can do that, but as an attitude and as a way of working with another songwriter, especially one who so looks up to you, it was mind-blowing and really enlightening.

When I was first trying to write with people, I discovered that everyone felt really uneasy and embarrassed about their method. Like, they didn’t want anyone to know how they made the sausage. Then, as I learned more, and I wrote with more and more different people, I realised, oh, everyone has a variation of the same embarrassing process – and that felt almost like an invitation.

If I can just be present at these sessions, be non-judgmental about the embarrassing process and have good ideas, ego-free, like Carole King, then I could probably do this.