Start Being Creative

Start Being Creative Songwriting guidance built from long-term practice. Tools, reflections, and resources for people who want to write songs and keep writing them.

10/02/2026

Sting says Every Breath You Take is "a very sinister and ugly song." He's called it "about surveillance. About jealousy. About control."

It's been played at weddings. Memorial services. People have it tattooed on their bodies as a symbol of love.

He wrote it alone at Ian Fleming's desk in Jamaica at the end of his marriage — watching from a distance, unable to let go. ✍️

The most powerful songs say one thing on the surface and mean something completely different underneath. That gap is where the emotion lives.

The surface of the song is not the song.

In honor of Dolly Parton.The name Jolene came from an 8-year-old redheaded girl. The story came from a bank teller with ...
10/01/2026

In honor of Dolly Parton.

The name Jolene came from an 8-year-old redheaded girl. The story came from a bank teller with a crush on her husband. Dolly called it "a running joke between us." ✍️

The surface of the song is vulnerability. The truth underneath it is strength.

That gap — between what the song appears to say and what it actually means — that's where the great ones live.

Rest easy Dolly. You knew exactly what you were doing.

09/30/2026

Stella Lefty is a controversial figure right now. People have a lot of opinions.

But here's the one thing nobody can argue with — the work ethic.

Before Boston hit the Billboard Hot 100 she told The Line of Best Fit — "My only relationship was me and my phone. I was writing every single day about everything and posting it every single day." ✍️

Not when she felt inspired. Not when the conditions were right. Every single day.

She discovered what a songwriter was in college. From that moment she treated it like a practice — showing up whether she felt like it or not.

That's not a talent. That's a decision.

Show up. Write the song. Do it again tomorrow.

09/27/2026

Max Martin has more number one hits than John Lennon. More than Elvis. Second only to Paul McCartney of all time.

He has one non-negotiable rule — "Writing the melody first gives more freedom. Lyrics are meant to serve the melody."

Melody first. Always. ✍️

Because the melody is what gets stuck in the head at 2am. What makes a stranger sing along before they know the words. The lyric tells them what the song is about. The melody makes them feel it.

A lyric in service of a great melody is almost always stronger than a lyric written first and forced into a melodic shape afterward.

Melody is not decoration. Melody is the song.

09/25/2026

Alanis Morissette's label was afraid of Jagged Little Pill. Radio stations refused to play You Oughta Know. Too angry. Too raw. Too honest.

She said — "I'm 19 and I'm intense."

She wrote the whole album like a journal entry — "My agenda was to be self-expressed and to be as authentic as I possibly could. And I wouldn't stop until that happened." She thought maybe 10 people would hear it. ✍️

Jagged Little Pill sold 33 million copies. It broke ceilings for Taylor Swift, Lorde, and Olivia Rodrigo.

The lesson is — authenticity isn't a style. It's a decision. Write it for yourself first. The world catches up.

09/24/2026

Sam Cooke heard Blowin' in the Wind and told his friend J.W. Alexander — "That was a white boy who wrote that. I'm ashamed I didn't write something like it myself."

Months later he was turned away from a Holiday Inn in Shreveport, Louisiana despite having a reservation. He refused to leave. His wife said they'd kill him. He said — "They're not going to kill me. I'm Sam Cooke." Police were called. He was arrested.

He went home and wrote A Change Is Gonna Come. Then he was afraid of it. Performed it publicly only once. It was released as a single two weeks after he was shot to death. ✍️

President Obama quoted it the night he was elected.

The song that scares you is almost always the one worth writing.

09/23/2026

Taylor Swift said — "I'd open up my grandmother's closet and she had beautiful dresses from the 60s. I wish I'd asked her where she wore every single one of them."

Then she wrote this line — "I should've kept every grocery store receipt, 'cause every scrap of you would be taken from me."

A grocery store receipt. That's the whole song. ✍️

Not — I miss her deeply. Not — grief is impossible to carry. A grocery store receipt. Specific enough to feel true. Ordinary enough that the listener has their own version of it.

The detail that seems too small is almost always the one that carries the most weight.

Find the smallest true thing. Write that.

09/22/2026

Kacey Musgraves wrote Rainbow without ever using the word depression.

Instead she showed someone staring at the shower wall. Forgetting what the outside looks like. Sheltering from a storm that had been going on so long they couldn't remember when it started.

She wrote in her liner notes — "There are certain junctures that you can't just think your way through. You have to feel." ✍️

That's the whole philosophy behind show don't tell. When you tell the listener what to feel — you're thinking at them. When you show them — you open a door they have to walk through themselves.

Don't tell them what to feel. Show them where to look. The feeling will find them on its own.

09/20/2026

This one's for the theater kids.

Stephen Sondheim said — "Content dictates form. And less is more — as long as less is enough."

He wasn't talking about facts. He was talking about truth.

Most beginning songwriters treat their songs like court testimony. Stay close to the facts. Report what happened. Don't change anything.

But a song can follow every fact exactly as it happened and land like a police report. And a song can compress the timeline, invent the detail, move the location — and be more honest than any documentary account ever could be. ✍️

You are not a court reporter. You are an artist.

Your only obligation is to the emotional truth of the experience. The feeling underneath the facts. That's what the song is for.

09/19/2026

In Happier Than Ever, Billie Eilish starts as a whisper. By the end she's screaming. And it's the same song.

Two completely different emotional temperatures. One central truth. The whisper is what she's learned to say out loud. The explosion is what she's been holding back.

Rolling Stone reported she was letting go of the version of herself who tucked away her own emotions to make others feel better. ✍️

That's emotional clarity. Not one feeling — every feeling pointing at the same truth.

Before you finish your next song — ask yourself. Is every emotion in this song pointing at the same thing? If the answer is no — you have two songs, not one.

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