Why Your Mom Loves Your Songs & What You Should Do About It
For most songwriters, Mom isn’t a trustworthy source of feedback. She’s delightfully ignorant about the craft, never worked at a record label, and has a history of giving her sweet baby James the benefit of the doubt. Even if mom’s perfected the art of sugar-coated criticism, deep down our inner teen knows the old eye-roll and ‘you just don’t understand me’ puts the guilt back where it should be - in the relationship rather than the song.
Whatever our stage of psychotherapy, Mom’s got a point. She hears your song in context of who she knows you to be, rather than comparing it to the artists you want to be like. In the scope of your music, she forgives your imperfections. It’s as if she just wants you to succeed.
I wonder about the songs I might have written, the shows I might have played, the collaborations I might have pursued, had I assumed I couldn’t fail. What would it be like to make music for an audience I held dear rather than held at a distance? Had I treated each song like a gift even with its imperfections, I wonder how much more I might have learned about how and why I create music in the first place?
But the reality is, calling ourselves songwriters is a vulnerable proclamation. Sure, we’re the apple of Mom’s eye, but when it comes to extending ourselves the same compassion, we’re our own worst critics. And it’s no wonder. With solid talent out there churning out songs every pitch-perfect minute, we can’t help but focus on our deficiencies. Many of us are creating alone, or with whatever patchwork of free time and free help we can muster. All the while, our idols are working in well-established teams with an assistant’s finger on the record button.
Songwriting is a skill that can be learned, but when we’re starting out, it’s natural for our songs to sound like an awkward sum of its parts. For months or even years, our chord changes, melodies, or lyric expressions may emerge as a sort of Frankenstein creation that should never have been brought into the world. But as we continue to write lots and lots of songs, an amazing growth happens. It happens so gradually that we don’t even see it. We begin to be able to imitate what works for other writers. Then, instead of only imitating the writing styles we like and have listened to over the years, we might begin to be aware of our own style, a sort of mix of our past experiences with music and our natural expression. That natural expression may come out in our instrumental abilities as well, including vocal stylings, our lyric and music composition abilities and preferences, and our production stylings.
It’s important to note that when we’re limited in our ability to execute our songs, we’re only giving the audience part of the picture. It’s a little bit like meeting someone from another culture, and who doesn’t speak our language very well. Some of their mannerisms may feel strange to us, and it’s as if there’s a hazy film in the air as we struggle to understand one another. Collaborating with other musicians, such as session players, great writers, or producers that take our ideas from clumsy or just ordinary to innovative, is like having a translator mediate the conversation. Suddenly we can laugh, share stories, and connect as human beings with shared experiences.
Many writers never collaborate enough to get to that point of hearing their songs in context of a professional situation, like having it rehearsed with a great band, sung by a really competent vocalist, or recorded within the scope of a commercial sound. Having those experiences helps to enunciate what’s actually working with our songs so that we can separate the writing from the execution. Suddenly we can gauge more clearly what we need to tweak to get a stronger song, instead of attributing the weakness to poor vocal quality or production ideas. This is one reason why songwriters with access to professional musicians and high-quality writers get better faster. It’s not that they’re all more talented. It’s that they’ve got access to highly specialized musicians and can see how each functions uniquely as part of the whole writing and recording process.
But Mom knows you’re special. She knows there’s nobody just like you, and believes that if you showed your true colors, the world would find out we need you. And I have to say, I agree with your Mom. The world does need you.
Can you imagine your favorite artist never existing? Favorite song? I can honestly say that the basement walls of my childhood home would never have gotten sanded and painted that one high school summer if not for Sting. But I am not so naive to think that Sting proceeded to embark on an artist career because he saw a musical space in the market and intended to fill it. Marketing departments do that. Artists create and promote enough so that the market makes space for their art.
That doesn’t mean that our music will be as valuable to the market as it is to Mom. But that is less a comment on the value of our music and more on the current values of the music industry. Nobody embarks on a career as a songwriter because they heard it was lucrative. We write songs because lights a spark within us.
What I’ve learned from my own mother’s dimpled responses to my songs is that I am much too hard on myself. It’s okay to enjoy the process, embracing the unique set of influences, circumstances and life experiences that make my songs my own. It’s in fact the only way to write the best songs I’ve never heard before. I also need not covet the skills of others, but offer them my own skills to create something the world has not had before, Frankenstein and all.
What I create can be less an assessment of my value, but a celebration of what emerges when I open up the floodgates of creativity. Like my mother, my audience wants me to succeed and lose themselves in the experience I bring to them. In the end, we’re both after the same thing. I just have to stick with it long enough to get good at being me. Gee, thanks Mom. That’s what you’ve been telling me all along.
Stay creative,
