Mistakes that “amateur” songwriters make

For this special theme episode, we reacted to the Song Town podcast video “10 Mistakes that Peg You as an Amateur Songwriter.” We were pleased to have singer-songwriter Jessica Stuart join us as co-host. We covered a few of the mistakes, but be sure to check out the entire Song Town episode below for more.

We talked about:

• Songwriting as a meditation with Jessica Stuart
• All stats and no story: make sure your song has an emotional core, and it’s not just a list of stuff – also see our recent episode with Zoe Theissen
• What’s the purpose or intent behind your songwriting and why’s that’s important, and What does it mean to be an “amateur” songwriter?
• Pronoun mixups, and how it’s a powerful tool to play around with the pronoun of your song
• Slave to the rhyme: rhyming with intention – see our episode Rhyme-a-rama with Blair Packham!
• Writing or creating (anything) with intention – see our episode The Laws of Creativity with Joey Cofone
• Same ‘old same: finding our own voice, and our article The Strange, Strange World of “Sound Alike” Songs
• Too many ideas: lyrically, but also musically, how many hooks do you need? And what our awesome guest Jeremy Voltz has to say about that
• Lack of contrast, and our Songwriting Challenge 2021: Write a song where the chord progression never changes
• Theme episode: Getting Past Writer’s Block with Susan Cattaneo, and Jessica’s tips for writer’s block – see the sidebar on this SOCAN article
• Jessica’s bonus pet peeve: Putting the em-PHAS-sis on the wrong syl-LAB-le, and Neel getting a hard time about this on his songwriting challenge answer