Every so often, someone will ask me for advice or perspective on songwriting - mostly young musicians or writers who feel lost in a wildnerness of fleeting inspiration and fractured, fragmented ideas.  It almost always causes me to think back to the path I've taken myself, refining and feeding my creativity and how my own songwriting has evolved as a result of it.  As someone who's never written a hit single or made a fortune off of my own music…at least not yet, I try to remain humble and defer to the accomplishments and characteristics of others who are far more successful than myself.  Having worked closely with some great, accomplished songwriters and having spent 2 ½ years working side-by-side with Robert Hazard, who wrote ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, which ultimately landed in Cyndi Lauper's lap and made her an international star, I do have SOME useful insight into the songwriting process and the ideas that fuel great pop songs.  

But none of that is, I feel, the best piece of advice I have to offer.  Instead, I generally advise young songwriters to LIVE…to live and experience as much learning and broadening of the mind as possible because THAT is what will ultimately fuel and feed your best music and songs.  I myself, as a teenager just starting out in the music business, wrote songs that, at the time, I felt were strong, cohesive and poignant.  Looking back on them and listening to the kind of writing I used to do…compared with what I've done more recently, I'm almost embarrassed at the level of narcissism, naivety and self-absorbed narratives I used to believe were worthy of a broader audience.  I was consumed with clumsy metaphors, thinly-veiled characters that were obvious stand-ins for my own narrow perspective and ham-handed imagery I had to conjure out of thin air because I hadn't really experienced anything yet.

It was living my life, experiencing the world and most importantly - taking an interest in the lives and experiences of OTHERS that unlocked real songwriting in me.  It was being able to find beauty in the simplicity.  It was finding strength and courage, as well as weakness and flaws, in the abundance of humanity around me.  It was turning the camera outward that let me actually SEE the world and its people and it was only THAT which allowed me to properly express what I saw and felt about it.