Jeff Tweedy - How to Write One Song

Lets Go (So We Can Get Back)

Songs are mysterious. Any idea where they come from? Ive written tons and tons of songs and STILL the best I can think to say after I finish one Im happy with is Howd I do that? Its confusing when you can DO something and not know exactly HOW you did it (and then somehow expect to do it again).

I think thats why so much mysticism gets attached to songwriting when people try to talk about it. You hear things like Im just a conduit and The universe wanted me to have this song. Whatever you say, man. Im pretty sure its still ME doing the work. Some partnership between my conscious mind and my subconscious gets results, but when things are going right, the distinctions between the two become blurry, and Im never really sure which is in charge.

So the idea of teaching songwriting feels more like teaching someone how to think. Or how to have ideas. Because songs, to me, are much more like individual thoughts than other works of art are. Theyre hard to hold on toairlike and ephemeral. They pass through time. Theyre here, then gone... Yet theyre portable, they can linger as a memory, and, even crazier, they can just pop into our minds for no discernible reason. Other art forms like paintings and books have physical shapes and permanence, but how many of them can you hum a few bars of?

Understandably, I think we all sort of assume songs are more conjured than written. And it makes sense that people are skeptical about the idea that songwriting can be taught. I mean, its easy to see how a step-by-step approach might be applied to the craft of songwritingmusic theory, traditional song shapes, meterbut in my experience, thats just the architecture. How do you teach someone to write the kind of song that makes someone else want to write a song? A song that you can fall in love with, and a song that feels like its capable of loving you back. Can you teach that? Im not sure.

But I have a feeling that part of the problem is the enormity of teaching someone how to write songsplural. Instead, I believe that the only way to teach someone to write songs would be through teaching them how to give themselves permission to write ONE song. To teach them how to teach themselvesstarting with one song.

To me, the difference between one song and songs is not some cute semantic trick; its an important distinction, and its more precise about what youre actually doing. No one writes songsplural. They write one song, and then another. And its also a reminder of what you really want. Or what I think you should REALLY want, which is to disappearto watch your concept of time evaporate, to live at least once inside a moment when you arent trying to do anything or be anything anymore. To spend time in a place where you just are.

OK? OK. Thats all... Thats something that doesnt happen through songsplural. It happens only when youve lost yourself in the process of making one song.