JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Do you primarily write for yourself or your audience?

Tricky stuff Tom

You can write what ever you feel like or for yourself as some put it and your audience FINDS you...
Or you try to write for the masses in one popular genre or another... Or or "in general" so to speak.

The big key is knowing that if your a songwriter & NOT an artists or band that those areas are very very limited commercially.

While writing and completing stuff for me is soooooo difficult and time consuming it is also has a very easy natural side at the same time as well. Why? Because when I write for myself I AM writing for an audience.
They are one in the same 80% of the time for me.. I do not know how to write complicated and I do not know how to not write catchy, or to be obscure. But I could fill a book with what "I don't know"

That is why I do not berate and appreciate a side of writers/artist like a Taylor Swift
She writes exactly what she wants 100% and the perfect age audience wants it 100%. So there is nothing contrived about it at all.. And I know for a FACT that if she sat next to me in the studio she would love my material and ideas instantly. I wouldn't have to try.

How do I know this for a fact? Because we have a kid here who does exactly what Taylor does, Only she is much younger and a superior singer.. And I often see & get her reactions when I show here a song or song idea...

The trick for me is doing that with a wide range of listeners making each one find the song/style they like and making them believe that is the ONLY way I write & play...

The 20% for myself is probably Instrumental music, as nobody in the main stream cares for it at all anymore....Unless it's club or rave.. Being able to play,perform, create & produce music on instruments is what being a musicians all about...

And the more "musician" you incorporate into "songwriting" the deeper and better you grow and become.. Not richer $ though