As the songwriter, I am the first listener, the first audience. A song has to hook me with the first guitar part. I play it again and the hook-factor either hooks me or I keep exploring.

I am especially hooked by that first lyrical line, and must be, for me to want to know where the song can go. The guitar mood and rhythm hook me. Then some line I ad lib hooks me into the story implied in it. I begin to wonder what the singer-character in the song is talking about, what they will say next, what their situation is, where the story may go.

I'm writing for me, the first listener, the first audience. If I'm at a concert I'm the only one whose entertainment I'm concerned with. When I'm writing a song, I'm the only audience I'm concerned with. Hopefully, the next audience will enjoy it as much as I do, but I can't be concerned with them while I'm writing, and listening, and hooked by the germ of the song.

I hear a lot of songs I am skeptical the writer was truly hooked by, motivating them to write it, and suspect their mind was on something else while they wrote it. They weren't listening, weren't an enthralled audience for the work. They were writing with their focus somewhere else, marketing, prestige, money, something other than the mood, the story, the accompaniment.

Write for the first listener, the first audience, you, and, if you satisfy their sense of what's good in a song, odds are anyone else who hears it will appreciate it the same way you did.

There will always be another song to be written. Someone will write it. Why not you? www.garyeandrews.com