Responding To Your Biggest Songwriting Struggles Part 7

Songwriter Theory Podcast: Learn Songwriting And Write Meaningful Lyrics and Songs

►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Cheat Sheet here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/

In this Bonus episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast, we're continuing to address your biggest songwriting struggles directly by responding to more of your responses to my survey. We'll be discussing struggles such as:

- I Can't Get My Rhythm + Rhyme Right!

- I Struggle To Write Lyrics That All Work Together

- Opinion: Songs Shouldn't Have A "Message" - I Struggle To Connect Verses + Choruses

- I Struggle To Pick The Right Chords For The Right Feels

- How Do I Start A Song?

- How Do Intentionally Write Songs With Certain Emotions?

- What Kind of Songs Should I Write First?

Transcript:

This is part seven of responding to your answer to my question of what your number one biggest songwriting struggle or challenge is. Let's talk about it. Hello friend, welcome to another episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast. I'm your host as always, Joseph Galla. Honored that you would take some time out of your busy day, your busy week to talk songwriting with me. And welcome again to another bonus episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast where we are talking about your answers to the question of what your biggest songwriting struggle is. If you haven't already, be sure to grab my free guide, 20 Different Ways to Start Writing a Song. This is a struggle that comes up. We might get to this question today actually, but somebody asks about, "Hey, I struggled figuring out where to start with songs." Not sure if we'll get to it in today's episode or not, but whether you're just somebody that sometimes wants to get out of your creative box a little bit more or you're somebody who struggles to actually start writing songs and not even just being original with starting songs but just starting in general, this is the guide for you to kick writer's block to the curb because writer's block sometimes comes from staring at a blank page, staring at your instrument and just being like, "I don't know. I don't know what to do next." But starting our songs in different ways can be a great way to overcome that, and this free cheat sheet gives you 20 different ways to start writing a song. SongwriterTheory.com slash free guide. First response for this bonus episode. Dear Joseph, songwriting is a very excellent form of literature and philosophy. I agree. As a result, I enjoy English literature such as short stories and memoirs. Songwriting is very special to me and my friends. The tricky part is the rhythm and rhyme. So let's address that first. So when it comes to...so with rhythm and rhyme, because you paired them together, I'm mostly going to assume that you're talking about the rhythm specifically of words and or the melody, aka meter. So the tricky part is meter and rhyme. First thing on that, because I've seen enough lyrics and had enough questions where I know that I think I need to say this, probably more often than I do, but your lyrics should not exist or not be made to serve an arbitrary rhyme scheme. Your lyrics do not serve a rhyme. Your rhyming or lack of rhyming should service and serve your lyrics. So you should never be, for instance, let's say you decide on a rhyme scheme that is A-B-A-B. You should never be significantly altering your lyrics or using corny words you don't really want to use. I'll pick on Night and Light. I've used it in one of my songs. There's nothing wrong with Night and Light. I've used it at some point, but you don't want that to be a constant go-to. If every single one of your songs has Night and Light, it's like, all right, come on. So if you've picked that as a rhyme scheme, A-B-A-B, and you're significantly changing what you actually want to say just in order to fit that arbitrary rhyme scheme, I think we've lost the plot when that happens. Because ultimately, nobody gives a rip whether your song rhymes or not. Just in general. I would argue in the scheme of all things lyrics, rhyme is towards the bottom of what's important. So to your tricky part is the rhythm and rhyme. Worry way more about rhythm, aka meter, than rhyme. Because to take it to the extreme, which is a good way to test any form of logic, but to take it to the extreme, if you had a song where every single, you did not rhyme at all, or a poem where you did not rhyme at all, not a single thing rhymes, not even family rhymes, or consonants rhymes, no rhymes at all, but you paid attention to meter, you could have a great lyric. You could have great lyrics. But if you reverse that and pay no attention at all to meter, your meter is just all over the place. But your rhyme scheme is perfect. Nobody will notice or care that your rhyme scheme is perfect because nobody will be able to see past or hear past the fact that your meter is all over the place. Now when I say meter is all over the place, I don't mean that you have some slight alterations in places. I don't mean that your syllable counts aren't exact, even though your emphases counts are exact so just for instance, take common meter, has four emphases three, four, three, which often comes with a syllable count of eight, six, eight, six, but doesn't have to. We talked about this in a previous podcast. I think the example I used was I have to go to school has the same meter as I have to go to the school. Now I tucked another word in there that's unemphasized to the school instead of to school, but that's the same meter because the emphases are still the same. They're on the same syllables, the same number of emphases. There's just one unemphasized syllable tucked in, which in the scheme of a song, totally fine, totally fine. It happens all the time. It's not imperfect. It's great. It can work marvelously, especially if it needs to be there. If your meter is all over the place, you might as well be speaking the way I am in basic prose where there's no real sense of meter at all, then your lyrics, they're not even lyrics. They're not even lyrics. I guess my first recommendation is don't pay attention to those two things equally. Get your meter right and if you can, use rhyme as a supplemental part to your lyrics where you make your lyrics even better because of rhyme, great. Because rhyme, I think should be viewed that way. Number one is say what you mean to say in your lyrics and get the meter right. And again, meter right does not mean exact with syllables and everything, but try to be as exact as possible with emphases or at least really close and you're good. And then for rhymes, to actually find rhymes, especially if you're looking for perfect rhymes, which would be like night and light where both the consonants and the assonance or the vowel sound and the consonant sound both match, rhymezone.com is a great way to go. If you're looking for lasso-vert rhyming, like family rhymes or things like that, I don't have a website recommendation that's going to just be on you. Although my recommendation is lean, for the most part, I would argue that ABAB rhyme scheme, especially if it's throughout a song, is too much. If maybe in the chorus of your song, one of the main points of your song, you have an ABAB rhyme scheme, great. The rest of your song, do like XA, XA at most because if there's too much perfect rhyming going on in a song, that's usually where it starts to get cringe and feel like everything is just serving the rhyme. So get the meter right. Worry less about rhyme. Moreover another problem is chaos, such as theorizing and being absent-minded. The challenge is that there are a lot of romantic lyrics and there's pain and sadness. However, rock and roll and blues are archaic. That's interesting. Rock and roll and blues are archaic. I don't think any musical genre is archaic and even if it is, you can bring it back. There's that new movement of like, Bardcore, which is like Bard style music. I don't even know what era that's from. 1500s, 1400s, 1200s, I don't know. Really old style music. Old European style music. But they do it for like, Down With The Sickness. It sounds like that. So any genre that gets archaic just comes back. So don't let that, I don't know if this is what you're saying, but don't ever let, "Oh, that genre's played out." Or, "That genre's heyday was 30 years ago." So bring it back. I mean, right now, seemingly half of pop music is just 80s round two. I mean, a lot of Dua Lipa stuff is like that. A lot of the weekend stuff is like that. We're getting towards the end of my pop knowledge here. But I've heard so many songs when I do have the, unfortunately I'm subjected to what is now pop radio. So much of it is, even, I like the 1975. They're a guilty pleasure of mine. And a lot of their songs are very 80s inspired. So anything that you think is archaic, it all comes back. You can breathe new life into something that maybe is actually archaic. But anyway, as a result, the time of day and such saliences as, wow saliences, big word, as country and folk music make poetry pretty. The melodies are always the fun part, but the saying is valid that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, for sure. Nevertheless, these forms from the 1980s forwards are very popular. Making money has been new investments. Moreover, I think new songwriters are cool. Yeah, okay. So I think that was the end of the question, implied question part. So Rhythm and Wrath. Yes, get the meter right, get the rhythm right. Mostly paying attention to emphasize syllables. Easy example again is forever. If you just listen to the word forever, you can hear which syllables are emphasized and which ones aren't. It's forever, not forever. It's hard to even say that. Or forever, it's forever. So the emphasized syllables, that middle one is the ee, ee, right? It's for, not emphasized, ee, emphasized, and ver, not emphasized. So just listen for the natural meter in your words and try to match that up. Just another tip on this. If you write melody first, that can help you worry a little bit less about coming up with an arbitrary meter or rhythm because it's already contained in your melody. Any melody has a meter built in because it has number of syllables in the form of number of notes. And yeah, sure, you can maybe stretch out a syllable or shrink a syllable. Yeah, you can do that. But generally speaking, the syllable count of your line and the melody note count of your line is going to match. And then there's natural emphases within your melody, right? There's a natural meter within your melody. So if you write melody first and then just write lyrics that match with the natural cadences, the natural emphases of the melody, then you're good and you don't have to worry about coming up with an arbitrary meter. As I mentioned in a previous episode, if you're really, if you're starting with lyrics and you're just looking for a place to start, common meter is a great place to start at least where you have four emphases, three emphases, four emphases, three emphases. If you want an example of that, Amazing Grace is a perfect example of exact common meter. Writing good verses. I never struggle with coming up with a chord progression, melody line, or rhythm for choruses. But writing good verses that stick in your head and make you experience something is a mystery to me. I always imagined verses to be more of the story writing section of the song containing some kind of message, but that mindset tends to leave me writing super generic verses that lack the feel I loved about the chorus. I struggle to connect choruses and verses. It's like I'm writing two songs that happen to be in the same key, but have very little momentum and flow connecting the two. I hope that makes some sense. So it sounds like this is mostly coming from a lyrical standpoint, given the emphasis on not knowing what to say and story writing section of the song. And first I'll say, not every song has a story. Sometimes I'll refer to this as like point in time songs. I think that's what I call it. But it's basically this idea that some songs don't really have a sense of time progressing. For every song that like Cats in the Cradle, which has a clear progression over really a man's entire adult life almost, right? From a kid all the way to his son, you know, him being very old and his son having kids of his own. Or 100 Years, which goes from 15 years old to 99 years old. For each one of those that has a very clear story time progression, there are other songs where the whole thing could be taking place in a moment. And it's just all the different feelings you're feeling in that specific moment. There's no clear progression of time. So it's not necessarily the case that it's a story in the sense that you or I may think about it, but very often it is. In which case, an easy way to... There's several easier ways to look at it. One is, one of the tried and true ways of doing things is to have present tense in the chorus and then have your first verse be the future and your second verse be the past. So you talk about the future you hope for or the future you dread or whatever it might be. Then you talk about here's where I am now in the chorus and then in the second verse you go back in time and say how did we get here? Or you can reverse past and future so it's actually an order past present future with first verse, chorus, second verse. Other things you can do is just see the chorus as something that's either a so or therefore or a but. So let's say your chorus will keep it really simple. Let's say your chorus is "I love you." The very main idea. Hopefully it's not just that you say "I love you." I mean I guess that could be okay. The basic premise is "I love you" is the thing being communicated in the chorus. So in your first verse and then second verse you might opt to make it so the chorus is a so or therefore. So in your first verse you could be like you know "You're so pretty and beautiful and you make me smile." So or therefore "I love you." That's the chorus. And then the second verse is "Wow you're such a great mom and you take such good care of our family and you're so kind." Whatever. "Therefore I love you." So have it be that each verse is something that supports the main idea of the melody. Where you could take the main premise of the melody and say "Therefore I love you." "Therefore I love you." First verse "Therefore I love you." Second verse or second idea "Therefore I love you." Or so. Same idea. Just less pretentious way of saying it I guess. And then you could also have "but." So you know we'll keep with "I love you." "You're awful to me and you left me for someone else but I love you anyway." You know and then the second verse is some other piece of evidence about how this person is awful and you probably shouldn't love them. "But I love you." That's another fairly easy way to go. And then for the, this might be nitpicking on something that you don't mean, but I always imagine verses to be more of the storywriting section of the song containing some kind of message. So I don't think, it depends what you mean by message, but generally speaking I feel like songs should, any form of message in art should be accidental via discovery. Meaning there's a difference between a theme and a message. A theme are ideas you're exploring. So a theme would be something like good and evil or love. A message is something that is more opinionated. So it's more like you know love is a lie would be a message or love is antiquated now or something silly like that. That would be a message, right? That's an opinion. The theme of love is not an opinion, it's just what we're talking about. So it's probably not what you mean by this, but just in case. I want to argue don't really think about what's the message of my song because that's where we quickly go from art to propaganda. And even if you think it's positive propaganda, it doesn't change those propaganda, right? We write a song specifically to get a certain message across, it's propaganda. And generally, if not always, I think that should be avoided. Again, your worldview is going to influence your songs. That's totally fine. But there's a difference between your worldview naturally influencing your art and you sitting down and being like I'm going to tell people X or I'm going to convince people of Y. Which at least now is sort of what message usually means. That's probably not what you mean. But yes, the verses probably should generally be the story portion of the song or the... You can think of it like if your chorus is the thesis, your verses are the pieces of supporting evidence. If you remember back in the day with essays or whatever, you may have had to write a paper where you have a thesis and then you needed three supporting pieces of evidence to support that thesis. You can think of that as your two verses and your bridge or something like that. So I struggle to connect choruses and verses. It's like I'm writing two songs that happen to be in the same key but have very little momentum and flow connecting the two. If you're talking about music, I think we already talked about that in a previous episode. I mean I guess we're recovering many things in some of these because we do have some of the same sort of stuff popping up which makes sense that people would have similar struggles. So I don't want to go too deep into that because I think we feel like I remember covering that for if anything too long in a previous episode. So that's something to think about and this is going to be in a YouTube video coming out pretty soon where I talk about how to finish songs chord progression wise. But something to think about is where, what's the last chord of say your verse or conversely what is the first chord of your chorus and then figure out the last chord of your verse based on the first chord of your chorus thinking about how well does one transition into the other. Because a lot of times I think people don't think about that they just think in wholesale chord progression so they're like one five six four and then they think oh so for my chorus I need another chord progression one six five four not really paying any mind to okay but does the four at the end of the first progression actually connect well into the one at the beginning of the next progression. The answer to that question is actually yes four to one is a great relatively powerful transition so that would be a good way to transition to a chorus generally but sometimes people don't think about that all I think that's worth thinking about. I'm struggling with understanding how to use the right chords to raise emotions slash feeling in the song or conversely to lower the feel not sure if that makes sense but I hope so. So I think I know what you mean by this and in which case I would say the right chords is just a part of what you're looking for. If you're talking about you have a verse and then you want the the pre-chorus to sound like it's sort of upping the ante and then from there you want the chorus to feel like it's upping the ante even more like there's a main point of the song. There's a lot that goes into that. I have specific videos on each of those things I believe. So right chords is always a difficult thing but just as a general answer to your question is it's not just in the chords. The chords are going to be a part of it but a lot of times how a song really feels like it's raising the emotion or feeling in a song is not just the chords it's in the arrangement. So for instance the pre-chorus may sound like it's upping the ante or raising the emotion as you word it not mostly because of the chords that are there but because the arrangement is changing. Maybe the arrangement is getting a little thicker that's when the bass comes in or some other instruments come in and it's elements of the arrangement that really help it pop up a little bit more. And so that's a very general answer but this is a difficult question because there is no one way anytime somebody says right chords it's always a struggle. There is no because sometimes people will be like oh just give me the right chords for the chorus. That doesn't exist. There is no is a creative thing right there are general guidelines for instance a great way to go is to avoid a one chord in a pre-chorus that way when you probably have the one chord in your chorus it makes it so that the pre-chorus is obviously not the chorus because you didn't have the one chord you didn't have that home center of gravity chord. So that's a really good way to make sure that your pre-chorus doesn't overshadow your chorus. So we have things like that but for the most part when it comes to right chords to raise emotions or feelings in the song that's not really a thing so much as it's very context dependent. Alright so if you have a three chord in the context of C major and E minor chord from a three chord going up to a four chord an F major chord it's probably going to sound like it's raising the emotion feeling partially because it's going up which by the way if there's an easy answer to this it's chords that go up or sound like they're going up which is going to be easier if you're a pianist because if you're going to be really specific when we say chords going up chords don't really go up or down because chords are just it depends on how you arrange it right so I can I can have an E major to an F major that actually goes down in pretty much every way even though E major to F major you would think is going up but anyway but going up is a great way to feel like you're sort of rising up and raising the ante and then you know going from minor to major will feel like rising whereas major to minor will feel like it's a little more deflating but those are super general right we're not even we're not even touching how inversions can affect this and how how every chord sounds is very much dependent on what came before it for instance when people talk about like oh major chords are happy and minor chords are sad by themselves that's probably true right if I just play this out of the blue that is sadder than than that which is E minor versus E major but depending on the context and and what chord came before it you can actually have major chords that sound really dark or really sad and you can have minor chords that sound happy depending on where it comes from especially when you get to borrowed chords and all that advanced stuff all to say that if there are some some things that we can glean from this for raising emotion going up and then you know thinking minor to major would be rising generally and then falling would be major to minor and and and going down super general that is not always going to be true you have to do it by ear and a part of it too is just doing it more and more so that you get a little bit more of a sense but I don't know that there's necessarily a science to it there's probably more of a science to the arranging side of how you raise emotion and feeling in a song or conversely lower the feel my biggest struggle is to come up with an idea of a song and how to begin to write it I keep hearing advice that I should write a couple of songs that would introduce me as a person as an artist my point of view my lifestyle etc also I'd like to write some happy joyful positive and energetic songs but all that comes to my mind is sad and depressing my main goal is to be a live performing artist and the songs that I wrote and write right at the moment are not the type that I would see myself performing live in a way that I cover that I perform cover songs so for my biggest struggle to come up with an idea for a song how to begin to write it first of all free guide again cheat sheet really now because it's shorter but has way more actually ideas of how to start a song songwritertheory.com slash free guide but to me I like to break it down into categories which is really you can start a song from a lyrical standpoint which is really anything that's based on words right whether it's a song title specifically and you reverse engineer a song from a song title or you just come up with a specific lyric or line that really resonates with you which sometimes is the same right there's a song that I I guess I'm writing technically I haven't finished the second verse yet or the second verse lyrics but it's called here until you leave and it came from the the idea for a line I'm here until you leave which struck me because it to me it well reflected that very specific feeling where you are in a relationship and you know that it ends one of two ways because you've decided that you want to be with this person forever but you know deep down that they're going to leave you so you know that the only way this relationship ends is with you being brokenhearted and them choosing to not love you anymore so the idea of I'm here until you leave it's sort of it's that right it's this idea that I'm not the one who's gonna leave it's you that's gonna leave because I'm here until you leave so that whole song which is probably my at this moment it might be my favorite song I've ever written even though it's not 100 written literally just came from the idea of that phrase and there's nothing revolutionary about that phrase either it just it just happened to strike me and from there I reverse engineered a song if you will or I ask more questions about like okay what's the story here what are the different symbols I'm going to use so so you can reverse engineer from a song title from a line idea that you like those two can end up being the same sometimes they're not you can have a compelling symbol that you want to use if you think of you know a specific symbolism that resonates with you preferably something that is a little more original than you know dark represents bad things but if you come up with a more specific symbol I don't know purple tiger like to you you think the representation of a purple tiger is something particular or white whale that's a great example right the white whale is actually something that already has symbolic meaning because ofI'm now like 20 000 leagues under the sea is that that one no that's that's the whatever the white whale mopi dick thank you I don't know who I'm saying thank you to I'm saying thank you to my own brain apparently for bailing me out from embarrassingly for getting mopi dick for a hot secondbut the white whale would be a reference to mopi dick right so the white whale is a symbol that white whale in general means nothing right but because of mopi dick the white whale has come to represent a lot so you can do the same thing with your own song right where whether it's a creature or anything else where you come up with a symbol idea and then imbue it with meaning because not symbols don't naturally have meaning you give them meaning and then ideas can start on the other side right musical this could be in the form of a baseline a killer bass line a really cool drum rhythm that you like a piano riff that resonates with you a guitar chord progression or a guitar finger picking pattern or pick picking pattern so there's so many different ways to start a song from a musical standpoint or from a lyrical standpoint and really you can end up doing both right you can come up with a bunch of lyric ideas by coming up with ideas from a lyrical standpoint and then come up with a bunch of music ideas and then mix and match them sort of mix not mix and match them but match them where you know you hear a piano riff you came up with and you're like oh that actually matches really well with this new lyric idea i have before i didn't know what that song was going to be about but now i have an idea of what it could be about because it actually matches really well with my song title here until you leave or whatever so that's that's there's so there's no one way to begin a song i would highly encourage you try a whole bunch of different ways grab the free guide try all of them and at least a couple of times and then from there you know maybe try to try to figure out what you think your bread and butter ways are which ways result in the best songs for you personally and then keep the other ones in your back pocket as ones to use once in a while to mix it up but i think having bread and butter is is a good a good thing i've said this a million times so i'll make it quick but you know for me bread and butter tends to be i start with the piano riff very often if not i tend to start with a bass line of sorts sometimes it's just a piano bass line so it's kind of starting with the piano riff still just in a different waythe best way for me to write catchy songs is actually starting with rhythm because i'm not somebody who can just sit at a piano and write something catchy almost always i'll do something that's a little more you know romantic sounding or emotional sounding sad uh so this also connects to the point that was it you that made no yes it is you that made this point right i'd like to write some happy joyful positive or energetic songs but all that comes to mind is sad and depressing uh finding ways in certain ways to write songs that can sometimes nudge you in different directions than you normally would go can be a great a great way to handle that so again for me i don't know if i would ever write a catchy song on the piano ever if it weren't for starting with drum patterns and drum loops it can be even really simple ones in fact the most simple drum patterns a basic funk beat or something or basic pop beat can be the best for inspiring you to write something that's catchy and more happy sounding perhaps but also uh to address i keep hearing advice that i should write a couple of songs that would introduce me as a person as an artist my point of view my lifestyle etc i don't know who's giving you that advice i don't know if that's bad advice but it kind of sounds like a business person giving an artist advice right it sounds like what a record label would tell an artist and i'm not saying there's no truth to it from a practical standpoint but i would say you need you don't know who you are as an artist yet because you're just starting so so the idea of your first songs introducing you as an artist is doesn't even really make sense because you don't know who you are as an artist yet you maybe have a decent idea you know generally but you know that and we constantly evolve as artists so i wouldn't worry about that is really what my answer to that is i would just write what's coming to mind which connects to with the i'd like to write some happy joyful but all that comes to mind is sad and depressing write what is coming to your mind right if you're inspired in a certain direction follow it when you're not inspired work anyway but if if all your inspiration is towards sad songs then lean into that write sad songs don't just arbitrarily be like oh i should write happy songs why why should you write happy songs especially if you if that's not the way you're naturally leaning and that's not to say that there wouldn't be value if you've written 10 songs and all of them are sad to say okay now i'm gonna try to force myself to write a happy song just so i can expand myself as an artist that's fair enough but if you've written basically no songs or very few songs which reading between the lines sounds like maybe is the case very few um which maybe i'm wrong but it sounds like very few in that case don't don't worry about any of that just write what is most inspiring to you right now lean into that and probably ignore the that and i don't even know what some of this means introduce you as a person as an artist my point of view my lifestyle nobody cares about any of those things except artists right like your songs introducing you as a person uh like does that is that something people are looking for like when i listen and i care deeply about lyrics i've never listened to lyrics in my life and thought i want to know this you know i i want to get to know this artist as a person no i want to know who they are as an artist i don't really care who they are as a person within reason you know there are some artists that are pretty terrible people one of whom is in jail for uh yeah r kelly type people rightso i i guess i care a little bit but for the most part you know i care who somebody is as an artist i don't know who cares who an artist is as a person or their point of view or lifestyle lifestyle is the maybe the most intriguing of those four because nobody nobody cares like you know nobody cares what your lifestyle is uh nobody cares what my lifestyle is in fact you might be somebody who's been listening to this podcast for a long time and you've never once thought what is joseph's lifestyle i don't even know what that means really but like what is joseph's lifestyle nobody cares right now nobody listening to this podcast right now watching this video gives half of a rip what joseph's lifestyle is you don't right and you might say it's not the same because you follow me for information is but i don't know just to me right right what is coming to you and don't worry about forcing it in all these different directions um and and be careful whose advice you listen to myself included uh just because i don't know i i'm trying to round my mind around who on earth or what kind of artist would tell another artist to write songs that introduce you as a person your point of view which is maybe one of the more legitimate ones next to artists and lifestyle lifestyle like that i don't need it nobody cares nobody cares and again this is not an insult to you right nobody cares about my lifestyle i don't care about any of my artists favorite artists lifestyle don't care at all i care about their artistic identity that is it right what kind of songs do they write what subject material do they cover things like that that's what i care about don't give a crap about the restin fact if anything if they shove any of the other things in my face like for example i feel like any pop artist that i get to know at all i like them even less than i did before right like i i don't know but i kind of get a kick out of dua lipa total total uh you know i don't pretend like it's great music at all uh but for whatever reason some dua lipa songs just do it for me uh but i bet and i've seen little clips but i bet if i watch interviews of her i would like her less and less and less and soon i would be like i don't want to listen to dua lipa soyeah it's kind of like actors right the more that not all actors but a lot of actors the more they're interviewed and they talk the more people are like you know what i mean like like brie larson is maybe the perfect example of this i don't know if there's any human being who has seen her in any interview in the last like five years who has thought this this person is incredibly unlikable i mean she's so unlikable that her co-stars can't even pretend to like her when they're promoting a movie with her like they're obviously annoyed and you can tell why too because she's like condescending to her more popular than her co-stars in an interview like wildly unlikable so anyway that long rant just to sayi'm sure you're way more likable than brie larson i'm sure literally every person who's ever listened to anything i've ever done is probably more likable than brie larson butdon't you know nobody cares about your your lifestyle or any of that just concentrate on making art concentrate on that worry less about the other stuff all right that's been so long than that one we're gonna cut this episode off here we'll be back for part eight to cover more of these songwriting struggles thank you so much for listening remember again if you haven't already grab my free guide 20 different ways to start writing a song song writer theory.com slash free guide thank you so much for listening or listening and watching if you're on youtube and i will talk to you in the next one