Here’s a quote from Sam Bayer’s Low Notes, April 13, 2006:
And I’m arrogant enough to want to write a great song, every time out. Again, the odds of doing that are infinitesimal, but I never claimed to be rational.
So last year, this whole pile of neuroses finally caught up with me. In the first three months, I wrote three of the best songs I’ve ever written: “Are You Ready?”, “Nantucket”, and “The Land of Misfit Toys”. I’m thrilled with these songs. I play them a lot. I get lots of compliments on them. And I’ve barely written a damn thing since. After all, how am I going to improve on those? I wrote two more ordinary songs last year, two songs this year. The songs this year may even be pretty good. But they’re not as good as “The Land of Misfit Toys”.
Honest truth: those three songs are no longer in the top five. Handyman’s Waltz. Your Side of the Bed. Five Dwarf Day. I’m Not a Modest Man. The Songs that Write Me. Bad Song. Walk Right In. Wrote all those since. And there are a few others that are at least as good as those three I wrote back then. In fact, I wrote those words above and followed them with the observation that I’d written two songs already in 2006, which were pretty good, but nothing to compare to those three. And the next two songs I wrote were “Five Dwarf Day” and “I’m Not a Modest Man”.
Here’s the thing: you get better. You may not have any idea how you’re going to get better, but that’s what getting better is about. You can’t understand how to get better until you do.
Many years ago, when I was a student, I had a professor, a brilliant man, giant of his field. I remember I’d ask him questions and he’d always have the answer – not just an answer, but an answer that was carefully thought out, that tied together the various crude strands of my question. And I’d look at him and think to myself, “How do you do that?” And several years later, someone who worked for me asked me a similar question, and I gave her a similar answer, and she asked me, “How do you do that?” And the answer is: it’s a combination of what the questioner can conceive of and how long ago the answerer asked, and answered, the same question for him or herself.
I used to think, like many artists, that songwriting was a gift from heaven, a mysterious, unanalyzable whole that would crumble in my hands if I attempted to dissect it. But that was just fear – fear of taking it seriously, fear of treating it as the skill, the craft, that it is. Every genius masters the basics – and sometimes, a genius masters them so well that the craft is indistinguishable from genius itself. And so I’ve studied. I’ve put my songs under a microscope, pared them down to their essences, let other people pare them down for me. I’ve set challenges and exercises for myself. And at every point, I’ve found another little nugget around the corner – one I couldn’t have seen until I reached that corner. Knowledge builds on knowledge. Lessons exploit the lessons that came before. And so, we slowly climb up the scaffolding of skill, building it as we go along.
I don’t know how good at this I’m capable of being. I somehow doubt that I can achieve the transcendence of the professionals I worship, like Randy Newman or Bruce Springsteen or Elvis Costello or early Rickie Lee Jones, or the folks in Fountains of Wayne. But every so often I write something that makes me look back and say, “damn, I’ve gotten good at this”. And I’m not sure I’m done getting better.
I still want to write a great song every time out. And it’s not as preposterous as it sounds.