“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.“

I love this quote.

Apparently, Hunter S. Thompson first said it about TV and journalism.

But, in a classic game of internet telephone, it got changed to reflect the music business.

And after fourteen years working in this industry, I can’t disagree.

The business of songwriting is rough.

You'll likely spend years working in the darkness before your songs ever get any real recognition.

Fortunately, there’s a way around the heartache and despair that comes from bearing your soul while remaining invisible.

The thing is, you can come at this business from one of two angles:

You can adopt the mindset of a songwriter working in the music business.

Or you can adopt the mindset of the artist.

These sound similar, but they lead down radically different roads.

The music business runs on a clock.

It wants new. Young. Beautiful.

Experience isn’t always an asset. Sometimes it’s a liability.

The more you know, the more you see behind the smoke and mirrors, the more the magic fades.

But the artist…

The artist has no age limit.

Picasso didn’t peak at thirty-three.

Leonard Cohen barely broke ground until his forties. And he kept releasing music into his eighties.

The work deepens because the person deepens.

And the person deepens by doing the work. Not for days, but for decades.

Embracing age gives you a reason to keep going:

• You care less about what others think.

• You become more capable of vulnerability.

• You’ve had more time to get to know yourself.

And people can feel that underneath your words.

People want to sense that you’re a little bruised. Because they are too.

They want to believe you’re not just wearing the mask of wisdom but that you’ve walked the path and you’ve earned it.

You’ve earned it by staying true to your creative calling even when it breaks you.

Because you love the act of creating.

And the truth is, if you’re not doing this for love, you’re doing it for the wrong reason.

With love, the timeline stops being a threat.

I mean, why would you want it to end? Why would you want to peak?

You’re doing what you love every day.

And you’re becoming more and more capable of moving others with your work.

Moving yourself too.

That shallow trench Hunter S. Thompson was talking about, it only kills the ones chasing the clock.

The artist isn’t concerned with these things at all.

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I woke up early last Friday.

Stumbled downstairs, poured some coffee.

Switched on my little red bluetooth speaker.

After a full week of producing demos for other artists, I couldn't wait to listen back to the last song I wrote for myself.

I grabbed my phone and opened my handy dandy voice memo app.

But alas… there was no recording of my recent song.

That’s when I remembered, there was that one line in the bridge I couldn’t quite get last week.

“Hmm, this calls for another cup of coffee,” I thought.

An hour and a half later, I was still mumbling the same nonsense over the bridge melody. Searching for the best five words.

But nothing I was saying felt right.

Luckily I’d been there before.

I knew what my move would be:

Write down exactly what I meant to say, in plain English.

Next, record a quick voice memo and put the song away for another few days.

One listen with fresh ears and I’d know whether the line works (and if the song is even worth keeping).

It might be garbage, it might be gold.

But the truth is I won’t know unless I embrace the uncertainty of not knowing yet.

Which begs the question.

Why is not knowing so hard to sit with?

For me it’s not just songs.

It’s everything that has to do with my art.

The writing, the production, the mix, the content.

I’m always looking for certainty before I make a decision.

Asking people what they think.

Triple checking for clicks and pops in the vocal track.

Before I finish a mix, I send it to my mastering engineer to double check.

Because I need someone else to tell me it’s done.

But he always says the same thing.

Sounds good. Send it.

It’s not like he’s hearing something I’m not.

It’s just that he’s not zoomed in the way I am. Hyper-fixated on the tiny details no one’s ever gonna notice.

That’s what the coffee-and-bridge block that morning was really about.

I wasn’t stuck on the line.

I was looking for a shortcut around the uncertainty and discomfort instead of just living in it for a while.

Fast forward five days and I’m listening back to that voice memo.

And guess what?

I think the song is worth keeping.

And there are definitely lines I’ll need to rewrite. But the one line in the bridge that makes the cut is the one I wrote down in plain English.

The one I wrote down as a placeholder to give the song some time to breathe.

It goes to show we can’t judge our art as we’re making it.

It needs that time tucked in a drawer, so we can see it again with fresh eyes.

And as for uncertainty, that’s price of admission.

Not getting comfortable with the answer.

Getting comfortable with the waiting (as Tom Petty said, that’s the hardest part).

Because that’s what it takes to know for certain.

The uncertainty isn’t in the way of your work.

It’s how your best work gets finished.

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A great piece of music should take you on a journey.

Whether it’s Beethoven’s 3rd or a three minute pop song, when it’s done right, music lets you lose yourself in the moment.

It takes you out of time.

One of the main ways it does this is with dynamics.

A track builds through waves of tension and release until the ecstasy of the final chorus.

Most people think about dynamics as a melody and production thing… a laid-back verse into a sky-scraping chorus.

But to make your song great, your lyrics should build along with your music.

Unfortunately, most songwriters think the opposite.

They think they need to start with their biggest, boldest lines.

Because of course, that has to be the best way to grab the listener’s attention.

But that only confuses the listener, and a confused listener tunes you out.

“You want to be a writer
But you don’t know how or when
Find a quiet place
Use a humble pen”

- Paul Simon

When you open a song with your most poetic lines, you’re asking a lot from the audience right off the bat.

They don’t know enough yet.

You barely have your foot in the door.

They’re still wondering what the song’s about, who’s talking, what’s at stake.

In fact, it’s better for the audience AND your lyric if you wait to unveil your best lines.

When you start small, with a simple image or a conversation, you let the listener identify with the character in your song.

And once they’ve identified with that character, those big lines hit way harder.

Here’s why…

If you’re doing your job right, the listener isn’t just passively enjoying your song.

They’re following your lead and building a world in real time.

That takes mental bandwidth.

Hand them an abstract image in line one and you’re asking them to do two things at once: build the world of the song AND decode a metaphor.

Most people can’t do both, so they default to the easier one.

You need to build your world first.

Let them walk around in it for a verse and a chorus.

Once your world exists, you can shine a spotlight on whatever you want.

Okay great, but how do you actually do this?

You show before you tell.

Start with a tangible for line one.

Just one thing that’s objectively true:

• A broken down car on the side of the road.

• An old love letter you found in your junk drawer.

• A midnight phone call that you know you shouldn’t pick up…

Let your story unfold naturally.

You’re not being simple for the sake of it.

You’re giving the listener something to stand on.

If you keep verse one literal, and focus on your big idea in the chorus, then you’ll have a great foundation for those poetic lines in your second verse and bridge.

You can start interpreting the scene instead of just showing it.

And if you do this right, your chorus will hit harder each time.

That’s what I mean by lyrical dynamics.

What you say in your second verse and bridge will show your chorus lyric in a whole new light.

Save your best, most poetic lines for the second half of your song.

Let each chorus become bigger than the previous.

When it’s done right, it feels like magic.

And all the listener knows is you just made them lose track of time.

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I was meditating the other morning,

giving the French press some extra time to brew…

When it hit me.

I might never get what I set out for.

I might never write chart topping hits or have a massive impact on the music industry.

And I’m okay with that.

Not because I feel like I’ve done enough.

Sure, I’ve had songs on the radio. I have over 100 million streams as a writer/producer. My music has been placed in film and TV. I’ve even had songs chart overseas.

Those are all things I wanted.

But that’s not all I set out to do.

Eight years ago, I had bigger dreams.

I moved from New Jersey to LA chasing them. Finally ending up in Nashville.

When it comes to music, a part of me has always been attached to an outcome.

That big song that changes your life forever.

Sitting there, breathing, I realized I may never get that.

But I don’t need it.

That’s the thought that surprised me.

I’ve been holding on to the possibility for so long.

Every session, every co-write, every song I’ve put out under my own name, every cut I’ve had for someone else…

I was always betting on the big one.

The one that gets you into rooms with the biggest artists and producers in the world.

I never imagined a future where I wouldn’t eventually achieve that dream.

Now, I’m not saying wanting that is wrong.

Wanting more is what drives you to keep working after years of disappointment.

But somewhere along the way, that wanting turned into needing.

And to need something makes you a slave to that thing.

You can want something and still be free. Needing something is a different story.

I can’t make a hit happen.

I can’t make a song go viral.

Those things were never mine to control.

But what can I do?

• I can write the best song I’m capable of writing.

• I can say yes to an opportunity that might move the needle.

• I can show up every morning and lay my pen at the feet of the muse.

Those things are mine to control.

And the only real choice I have is what I do with them.

I think about how I once pushed myself to write a song a day for 100 days.

By day 97 I was completely spent.

There was no part of me that wanted to write a song.

So I set a timer for twenty minutes and tried something I never thought would work.

Before I knew it, time disappeared. Timer be damned.

One hour later I’d written one of my favorite songs up to that point.

That's what surrender looks like in practice.

It’s not giving up, but continuing to work without needing to know how it ends.

If I’m doing the work I’m meant to be doing, there’s nothing else I need.

The hits, the impact, the Grammys and the gold records…

those things would all be swell.

But they’re not the prize.

The prize is getting to sit down with my guitar and a cup of black coffee before the sun comes up and try once more to turn air into magic.

It's a co-write with a total stranger that turns into a decade-long friendship.

It's a couple I've never met asking me to play my song for their first dance.

Those are the moments that make all of this mean something.

So when I say I’m okay if the big one never comes, I don’t mean I’m okay with losing.

I mean there was never anything to lose in the first place.

And just like that… 20 minutes was up.

Meditation over, I opened my eyes.

Got up from the couch and poured my coffee.

Same living room. Same stack of books on the coffee table.

Nothing had changed.

Except now I knew something I didn’t know 20 minutes before.

I might never get what I set out for.

And that’s fine.

Because I already got what I came for.

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Sunday morning 3am.

Body tired, mind… wired.

I was thinking in circles.

Everything I hadn’t done.

• Songs unfinished.

• Emails unanswered.

• Production demos and deadlines.

• The next release, the one after that.

Two hours later my brain finally gave up and let me sleep.

Next thing I knew it was 7:15.

I stumbled to the French press and grabbed my journal.

Wrote down everything that was weighing on me.

My brain must have been working overtime while I was asleep, because the answers just came.

And underneath it all was the same overlooked fact.

I get to work with music.

Every day, with people I respect, I get to do the thing I was made to do.

Somewhere under the obligations and the deadlines I’d stopped seeing that as a gift and started seeing it as a job. As something I owed people.

But I was given something.

A deep love for music and words.

An ability to turn emotion into sound.

Something I’d been developing for years.

That’s a gift.

And you don’t say thank you for a gift by keeping score of what it gives you.

You say thank you by giving it away.

I’m done treating this like a race.

Not because the urgency isn’t there.

The world doesn’t stop spinning…

That’s why I’ve released a song every four to six weeks for almost two years straight.

But right now, if I keep that pace, I know what happens next.

I start forcing songs out before they're ready, just to hit a deadline I set for myself.

And a gift forced out the door isn’t much of a gift.

There’s always enough time.

Enough time to make my music.

Enough time to help others finish theirs.

If it feeds you, it’s a gift.

And the only way to say thank you for a gift is to give it away completely.

No scorecard.

No performance for anyone watching.

Just, “here you go.”

This is what I was given.

I’m giving it back.

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It’s been almost two years since I started sharing my own songs again.

From fall 2024 to summer 2026, I’ve released a new single every four to six weeks.

I told myself I’d do this for at least two years… figuring that would be enough time to find a few fans and trigger some sweet Spotify algo magic.

As of right now, I’m prepping releases to close out the two years.

But to be honest, I’m losing steam.

I’m not sure I even like the song I’m currently working on.

Not because it’s bad. I know it’s not.

It might be better than anything I’ve put out in months.

But that’s the thing, I have no clue.

I’m too focused on getting it out the door to feel anything.

Something in me wants to slow down.

Something else is scared that if I do, I’ll lose whatever I’ve built.

Why the four to six week deadline?

That’s the cadence they tell you to follow to stay visible and feed the algorithm in your favor.

So I wrote the songs, marked my calendar, and committed.

For almost two years, I’ve kept that promise.

But at some point the deadline stopped serving the songs and started running the show.

Instead of asking myself: “is this the best I can do.”

I’ve found myself asking: “is this done enough to hit the date.”

And those two questions produce drastically different works of art.

I’m not saying I want to stop.

I’m not saying the last two years are anything I wouldn’t do again.

I’m proud of the work I’ve done so far.

But I want to keep it that way.

And I can feel the difference between a song I finished because it was ready and a song I finished because the calendar said so.

I believe the audience can feel that too.

But there’s something else.

I’m a songwriter.

Sure, I’m also a producer. I get hired for it and I’m good at it.

I’ve been writing and producing for the same number of years.

But if you asked me which one I am beneath the surface, it’s songwriter.

And these past two years, I haven’t been immersed in the writing the way I used to be.

I used to:

• Read about songwriting every morning.

• Listen to songwriting podcasts at the gym.

• Finish songs in the shower before my day even got started…

But somewhere in between all the releases, that fell away.

I stopped giving the writing room to breathe.

I started treating the release calendar as the thing that proves I’m serious.

But I haven’t felt this off my game in years.

So I’m making a deal with myself.

I’m going to slow down the releases when I need to.

Give the songs room to be finished because they’re ready, not because a date on the calendar says so.

Take that time to get back to the writing itself.

But the other end of the bargain is this:

I have to start promoting the songs that are already out on a more consistent basis.

Because that’s one part of the path I haven’t fully explored.

I’ve got songs in the pipeline I really care about.

I don’t want to rush their production just to hit a deadline.

I’d rather give them the time they need instead of just shooting them off into some four-to-six-week churn.

So I need to learn to promote my work.

Getting comfortable with that now means I'll know exactly what to do with the songs once they're ready.

Two years is nothing in the span of a life spent making music.

I’m not doing this for a season.

I’m an artist, and I plan on being one until the day I die.

For six years before this, I sat on the sidelines:

• producing for other people

• promoting other people’s voices

• keeping my own songs on the hard drive.

Simply getting back on the field is something I’m proud of.

But if I’m going to be out here for the rest of my life, there’s no reason not to slow down long enough to make sure I’m doing it right.

I’m not stopping.

And I’m not afraid of showing up too late.

A four-to-six-week deadline was never what proved I was serious.

What proves I’m serious is years and years of releasing music, no matter what the timeline looks like.

There’s always room for better.

I’ve got time to take it.

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I didn’t write a single word for the past two weeks.

• No lyrics.

• No newsletter.

• Not even a throwaway note in my phone.

I was visiting friends and family, half-working on making demos, mostly just being present with people I care about.

And somewhere along the coast of New England, it stopped.

That constant buzzing in the back of my mind.

It just stopped.

I looked up and saw the replay of my life over the past year.

• Write a song.

• Race to finish the production.

• Send it out to the world, post about it once or twice.

• Then hurry up because it’s almost time to release the next one.

All while writing this newsletter, keeping up with content, session work, building a business…

I hadn’t stepped back once to see what was working and what wasn’t.

Ten days off didn’t just reset me,

It let me see my life through fresh eyes.

I could finally stop working for my goals and start working on my goals.

Sorting through everything I’d been too busy to face head on:

• What actually lit me up.

• What I’d been doing just because of convention.

• What things will actually make me fulfilled in the long run.

You have to make room for clarity like that.

The subconscious doesn’t clock in when you tell it to.

It works in the background, on its own schedule, when you’ve stopped interrupting it with made-up deadlines.

I didn’t come back from this trip with a new song.

I came back with something better:

A clearer sense of what’s worth making, for me.

I’d been treating consistency as the whole game.

• Show up every day.

• Share a song every six weeks.

• Keep the machine running at all costs.

But creative work is more like tending a garden than building a machine.

You don’t force it into existence.

• You show up,

• You water it, pull a few weeds.

• You trust what you can’t yet see.

Then one day you look up and you’re standing in the middle of a field of wildflowers beside the highway…

Now don’t get me wrong, showing up matters.

And I’m gonna keep doing it.

But somewhere along the way, “showing up” turned into “producing at all costs.”

Those aren’t the same thing.

I was so close to the work that I couldn’t see it clearly.

Stepping back gave me space.

And that space gave me perspective.

I could finally see the world I’d been building instead of just the next thing on the horizon.

I could ask a bigger question than, “what’s the next thing?”

I could ask how this next thing helps to build the story of my life.

The story I want to tell by the end of it.

None of that is visible with your face pressed up against the glass.

You have to step back if you want to see the whole path.

Rest isn’t a break from your work. It’s part of it.

But how many of us actually put this into practice before the work makes us take a break?

You don’t have to earn rest by burning out first.

You can choose it on purpose, before the grind grinds you down.

And when you do, don’t just wait to feel refreshed…

Pay attention to what surfaces when the dust settles.

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Still on the road this week, seeing family and friends. Topped off the trip seeing Paul Simon at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens.

Watching him, I was reminded about creative constraints. Which prompted me to dig this one out of the vault — one of the first newsletters I ever wrote.

I couldn’t help but laugh when I realized it includes a line from Paul Simon himself about writing “backwards.” Made me want to reshare it.

Here are three creative constraints for writing songs faster.

In a world where artists are expected to create nonstop, speed is a superpower.

When I started my songwriting journey it would take me weeks to finish one song.

Now I can write one between breakfast and lunch (and still have time for a pre-lunch work out).

I do this by embracing creative constraints.

Unfortunately, most writers waste years writing songs without ever setting constraints for themselves.

Why?

They don’t understand the power of limitation.

Creative constraints are boundaries you set for yourself. They help you get more work done by giving you less to work with.

The greatest writers of all time did this.

Robert Frost likened writing free verse (poetry without a regular meter) to playing tennis without a net.

You might think this would crush your creative spark.

But constraints actually make you more creative.

Because when you limit your options, you’re forced to stretch yourself to come up with something unique. Something that fits within the guidelines you’ve set.

Not only that… you get to choose the constraints you work with.

You can even invent your own.

In this newsletter, I’d like to share three of the most helpful constraints I’ve found so you can use them to write more songs in less time.

Here are 3 time tested creative constraints to help you do that.

Perfect Rhyme

Rhymes are considered “perfect” when they end with matching vowel and consonant sounds, like smash and crash.

“Imperfect” or “slant” rhymes have matching vowel sounds with different consonants at the end, like smash and craft.

Perfect rhyme helps you write fast by giving you fewer options to work with.

The one trick to using perfect rhyme:

Avoid clichés like a cat avoids a bath (which pretty much rules out the word love).

Are you starting to see how this can boost creativity?

Using perfect rhyme makes you stretch to find new and better words.

Try it for yourself:

Write your next song using 80% perfect rhyme.

Notice how the perfect rhyme feels in comparison to the imperfect rhyme.

Start With The Title

Starting a song without a title is like driving around town on an empty stomach looking for something to eat.

Bad decisions at every turn.

When you start with a title, you know where you’re going.

Now all you have to do is let the lyrics lead you there.

You can even write backwards from the title. As Paul Simon says:

Whatever way you choose, this makes your songs more clear.

And when your songs are more clear, they have a better chance of connecting with your audience.

Writing more songs in less time AND building a better connection with your audience...

These constraints are starting to look pretty good.

Structure Each Section’s Melody Using AABA

This one took me years to learn.

We know about song form. But great songwriters go deeper.

They see the hidden structure inside every section.

The chorus melody has a structure. So does the verse melody.

The most efficient one I’ve found is AABA:

• Do something once

• Now repeat that thing

• Now do something different

• Now go back to the first thing one last time

This is a quick way to create a feeling of completion for the listener.

It also eliminates the question, “do we need a pre chorus?”

No, we don’t.

The song feels great just like this:

• Verse 1 - AABA

• Chorus 1 - AABA

• Verse 2 - AABA

• Chorus 2 - AABA

• Break (repeat the title and/or ad-lib melodies over the same chords).

• Chorus 3 - AABA

Assuming your chorus doesn’t change, this lets you write a 12 line song.

Now the only question is, how long does it take you to write 12 lines?

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I’ve been on the road this week, no time to write something new.

So instead of forcing it, I’m resurfacing one of my favorite essays: Sondheim’s four rules for songwriting.

Still worth the read, even if you caught it the first time.

Stephen Sondheim didn’t just write lyrics, he built worlds out of words.

His musicals stretched the limits of what songs could do.

Every line was precise, deliberate, and alive with clarity.

In Finishing the Hat, his book on the craft, he shared his four deceptively simple principles for songwriting:

• Content dictates form

• Less is more

• God is in the details

• All in the service of clarity (without which nothing else matters)

Taken together, these principles reveal why his work feels both surprising and inevitable.

Let’s break them down and see how they can sharpen your own songs.

Content Dictates Form (Start With the Emotion)

What you’re saying determines how you say it.

In other words: start with the emotion, then shape the form around it.

Let the lyric’s feeling decide the pacing, rhyme scheme, and melody.

This is how artists like Radiohead or Paul Simon write songs that feel unrestrained yet natural.

They don’t force their ideas into preset molds. The content bends the form.

Another songwriter who did this naturally was John Lennon.

When he had a lyric that lasted longer than the measure of music he was writing, he simply added a measure or two.

The content is what you have to say.

The form is simply the packaging you put it in.

Try this: Instead of squeezing your words into the music, let the music expand to hold your words.

Less Is More (Say Less, Mean More)

Every songwriter knows the game:

So much to say, and only three minutes to say it.

The solution?

Always say less than necessary.

Sondheim believed in giving the audience just the primary colors, trusting them to paint the rest.

Suggestion is often stronger than explanation.

Don’t try to say it all.

Let the audience fill in the details with their own lives.

This makes the song more personal to them.

And when the song is more personal to your audience, you win.

Think of a line like Paul Simon’s:

“Hello darkness, my old friend.”

Four simple words. Behind them lies a history of heartache.

Try this: Cut every unnecessary word from your lyric. Feel the weight lift.

God Is in the Details (Make it Sound Specific)

The specific is the universal.

Listeners will always paint their own picture.

But if you feed them only vague words, that picture will be pale and lifeless.

You have to be willing to get dirty.

Dig with your hands. Show us the dirt under your fingernails.

Details make a song more believable.

Try this: Swap a vague word or two for a concrete image. Feel your lyric come alive.

All in the Service of Clarity (Cut Through the Noise)

Every road leads here.

A song is one moment, one primary feeling, captured in sound.

If the listener can’t tell what you mean, nothing else matters.

• The clever rhyme won’t save you.

• The dazzling imagery won’t save you.

• The unexpected chord change won’t save you.

Clarity is what moves people.

And here’s the main takeaway:

When you focus on clarity, the other principles fall into place.

The content shapes the form. The words get leaner. The details sharpen.

Clarity isn’t about dumbing it down.

It’s about cutting through the noise so the heart of the song sings out.

Sondheim’s rules remind us that songwriting is a fine art because they balance imagination with discipline.

The daring comes from honoring the truth of your content.

The transformation comes from shaping it clearly enough to move someone else.

And remember:

Clarity moves people. Everything else serves that.

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For six years, the only songs I shared were sung by someone else.

Co-written, mostly. For other artists to sing.

Nothing went out under my own name.

I told myself that was okay.

I was burned out on chasing attention. Tired of playing shows, putting myself out there, feeling vulnerable…

Anyway, my songs were reaching more people than I ever had on my own.

Wasn’t that the point?

But there were nights I’d lie awake and feel this burning in the pit of my stomach.

I’d stare at the ceiling wondering why I gave up on myself.

How I was giving in to fear.

Counting the time I had squandered by not sharing my own songs.

I love writing for other artists. I still do. Being a creative behind the song is its own kind of dream, and I’m not done chasing it.

That was never the problem.

The problem was that I let it become the only thing. I poured everything into other people’s records because somewhere along the way I’d decided my own voice wasn’t good enough to carry one. Not as good as the artists I was writing for. Not “pop” enough to be relevant.

So I told myself the behind-the-scenes work was the whole dream. That way I never had to risk the rest of me.

But it wasn’t a strategy. It was fear wearing a more practical coat.

So I dealt with the occasional dark night of the soul…

Until that feeling went away.

That’s when I started to really worry.

Had I ignored my dream so long that it stopped calling?

It sounds ridiculous, because I’m sure that’s the part where most people shrug it off and let it go. But I couldn’t do that.

So I started releasing my own songs.

Not as some grand reinvention.

Just one song, then another.

Putting them out under my own name again.

And to my surprise, they performed pretty well. Way better than I expected.

Which brought a fear I didn’t see coming: now I had to follow each song with something just as good, or better.

That pressure hasn’t let up.

I’m releasing on a schedule I set for myself, and half the time I’m scrambling to get the next song finished before my own deadline.

And each time, some part of me is still afraid that I won’t be able to do it again.

But here’s what I didn’t expect.

Releasing my own work didn’t cost me the other work. It fed it.

The more I write for myself, the better I am in the room with everyone else.

The two were never competing for the same space in my life. I’d just convinced myself they were so I’d have a reason to skip the scarier one.

I still take the sessions. I still want the cuts.

None of that changed.

What changed is that I stopped waiting for permission to also be the artist.

I stopped chasing the version of the industry where you grind and angle and hope someone hands you the golden ticket.

I just started sharing the work — the songs, this newsletter — and letting the opportunities find me instead of the other way around.

Because no one is making me do this.

There’s no label waiting on the next song. No deadline anyone handed me.

The schedule I’m scrambling against is one I invented. I could stop tomorrow and the only person who’d notice is me.

For years, that was exactly the loophole.

No one was asking me to be an artist, so I never had to be one. I could pour myself into other people’s records and call the rest of it impractical.

The absence of pressure was my permission to never try.

Now I’m the one applying the pressure.

And the rush I feel to finish the next song is the whole thing turned right side up.

You don’t scramble to follow up work you don’t care about. The deadline only exists because I’m finally doing the work I always wanted to do.

I'm not behind the scenes anymore. I'm not in front of them either.

I'm just in it.

I used to lie awake afraid the dream had gone quiet. Now it won’t shut up. I’ll take it.

You don’t have to quit the thing that’s working to start the thing that’s yours.

You just have to stop using one as the excuse to never risk the other.

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Most days I write whether I feel like it or not.

Not because I’m disciplined.

Because I figured out a long time ago what happens when I don’t.

I go a few days without writing and I feel restless. Like something in my life is off balance and I can’t say what.

When I start writing again it goes away.

Everything feels okay.

That’s why I can’t call it discipline.

Because you don’t need discipline to eat or sleep or breathe.

We treat making things like a luxury.

Something you earn after the real work is done.

But I think that’s backwards.

Making things isn’t the reward for a working life.

It’s part of what keeps your life working.

Food and sleep keep the body alive.

This keeps the rest of you alive.

But there’s a second part to this, and it’s the part most people skip.

That part is sharing your work.

When you share something true, you’re saying: this is what life feels like for me.

And every so often, someone says it back.

“Me too.”

That me too does something the work alone can’t do.

It reminds us we’re not the only one.

The work does its job the moment you make it and let it out.

Everything after that is a different conversation.

The likes, the streams, the views…

They measure how far it traveled.

Not whether it worked.

A song can do its job for you and still only get nine plays.

The trap is letting the numbers become the point.

Because the moment they do, you start writing for the numbers and not for you.

And the thing that was keeping you sane turns into another job you’re trying to win.

I’ve done that.

We all do that…

But it’s a bad trade.

You hand over the one thing that was yours for a metric anyone can move.

So I try and keep the two separate.

What the work does for me and whether I share it, I get to keep.

What it does in public was never mine to begin with.

So make your thing.

Whatever it is.

Not because the world is asking for it.

Make it because of what happens if you don’t.

Let it reach whoever it reaches.

One person is enough.

One person is the whole point.

And when the numbers come, or don’t, remember they were never the reason.

You didn’t make it to be counted.

You made it to feel like yourself again.

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A question I’ve been living with this week:

How do you turn a listener into a follower?

People find my songs.

Some save them, play them on repeat (thanks mom and dad), a good number even stick around for whatever comes next.

That part’s working.

But a listener and a follower aren’t the same thing.

A listener likes a song.

A follower bets on the person who made it.

Only one of these things compounds over time.

So I’ve been trying to figure out what actually earns that interest.

It’s not the next song being good.

Plenty of artists write good songs and nobody waits around for the next one.

A follower isn’t waiting on a song.

A follower is waiting on you as an artist.

They’ve decided they want to know where you’re going.

So I started asking what my songs actually tell someone about where I’m going.

Here’s what I noticed.

Almost everything I write ends up being about love in some way.

That’s how I learned to write songs. That’s what I thought would resonate most with other people.

So I internalized that as the assignment — the most song-worthy subject.

Meanwhile, the things I think about most:

• Regret

• Purpose

• Spirituality

• What a life is supposed to add up to

I work that stuff out on my own (sometimes I even write a newsletter about it)…

But those things almost never make it into a song.

It’s not that I’m trying to hide those parts of myself.

It’s that I’ve only ever let one set of questions into the music.

I never thought the other stuff would be interesting to anyone.

But think about the artists you’d actually call yourself a fan of.

The ones whose next thing you’ll listen to no matter what it is.

You’re not following them for a love song.

You’re following them because you’ve gotten curious about how they see the world.

You’re following them because they reflect a piece of you back to yourself.

Let’s look at one of the all time greats: Paul Simon.

The hooks were there, of course.

The records still sound incredible decades later.

But that’s not the whole reason people follow him.

They follow him because every album feels like checking back in with the same searching, curious mind.

The subject changes. The sound changes.

The questions keep getting deeper.

But you always know you’re spending time with the same person.

That’s what people attach to.

Not a genre. Not a sound. A mind.

And here’s why that matters more now than it used to.

Anyone can make a song that sounds good.

The tools are everywhere. A great-sounding track isn’t rare anymore.

What sets you apart is the mind behind the music.

The particular way you see the world.

That’s the one thing no one can copy.

Which means every time I keep a real question out of a song — every time I default to the assignment — I’m leaving out the only thing that was ever going to make someone follow me in the first place.

But I'm not giving up love songs.

A love song can carry more than a relationship. The best ones always have.

On the surface, Graceland is about a breakup.

Underneath, it’s about regret, aging, and trying to forgive yourself.

That’s why people have stayed with it for forty years.

The relationship was just the doorway.

What made them stay was the mind on the other side of it.

That’s the part I’ve been keeping out. Not the love, the rest of me.

For a long time I thought the way to build an audience was a better song.

A cleaner production. One more release.

It was never that.

The song was only ever the doorway.

The thing people follow is whoever’s standing behind it.

So I’m done writing only the assignment.

I’m letting the rest of me through.

That’s the one thing no one else can make.

And it’s the only thing worth following.

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There’s a folder on my hard drive I avoided for years.

Songs with my name on them.

My voice.

Written in the cracks between other people’s projects.

Left there to gather dust.

I spent 6 years in LA writing for other artists.

Good work, but always someone else’s name on it.

Somewhere in there, my own songs went silent.

Not in one defining moment.

I just kept choosing the other thing, over and over, until the choosing stopped being a choice.

When I finally opened that folder again, the fear that hit me wasn’t the one you’d expect.

Not, “Am I too old for this?”

But, “Have I been gone too long to find my way back?”

But this fear isn’t mine alone.

And it isn’t really about music.

Almost everyone carries some version of it.

It just looks different depending on the life.

• The degree you never used.

• The novel that stalled at chapter two.

• The instrument that’s lived in its case for ten years.

Different story. Same fear.

And it always says the same thing:

You waited too long. That version of you is gone.

But that’s a story, not a fact.

The fear gets one thing right:

Yes, that version of you is gone. The one who never gave up on the dream.

The one who didn’t spend years chasing someone else’s.

That person is not coming back.

Fine. Let them go.

That part’s true. But it doesn’t matter.

Because the second thing the fear tells you is a lie:

That the window closed when that version of you vanished.

There was never a window.

Nobody appointed a committee to decide whether you’re allowed to start now.

There’s no cutoff stamped on the thing you want to make.

The deadline you’re terrified of missing… you invented it.

We all do.

Then we spend years afraid of a line we drew ourselves.

The only thing that determines whether it’s too late is if you do the thing or not.

That’s the only test.

When I moved to Nashville, I was scared it was too late.

I had already spent 6 years in LA. I felt like my time was running out.

But I went anyway.

It wasn’t courage. It was stubbornness.

I refused to let the story win.

The work doesn’t care about your age.

The blank page doesn’t know how long you’ve been gone.

It only asks one question:

are you going to show up, or not?

Don’t try to make up the time.

You can’t.

Don’t try to get back to where you’d be if you’d never stopped… that person doesn’t exist, and chasing them is just fear in a time machine.

Do the smallest version of the thing today.

• Open the folder.

• Write one bad line.

• Pick up the instrument for ten minutes and don’t worry if you’re any good.

That’s it.

Not a grand return.

Just proof, in your own hands, that the work is still there for you.

You haven’t been gone too long.

You’re still here.

The work is still here.

You’ve just been listening to the wrong voice.

The only thing that ever makes it too late is deciding it already is.

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I entered the music industry at the wrong time.

Or maybe I entered it exactly when I was supposed to.

Maybe it just took me this long to figure out what I’m here to do.

I spent years writing songs and chasing things the industry told me mattered.

The smash hit.

That top 40 validation.

The approval of people whose approval changes with the wind.

And somewhere in all of that, I lost touch with the reason I started.

The way a fire goes out when nobody’s tending it.

The music at the top stopped being great.

And when you’re surrounded by people reaching for likes instead of reaching for greatness, you start to absorb their target without realizing it.

But it wasn’t just that.

It started to feel like great songs didn’t matter to anyone anymore.

Like the world had moved on and left the fine art of songwriting behind.

And if nobody cares about the depth and the craft of a song, what’s the point of the obsession?

What’s the point of losing sleep over one line?

So somewhere along the way, I stopped believing it was worth doing.

I lost faith in the importance of the song itself.

But then I’d go back and listen to the greats

Songs written fifty years ago by people who had no idea what Spotify was, who never thought about a playlist pitch or a three-second hook or what was trending on TikTok.

They just wrote the best songs they possibly could.

The thing is, some of those songs have billions of streams on Spotify.

Not because of an influencer campaign or the algorithm.

Because a great song doesn’t expire.

The world never stopped needing great songs.

The mainstream just stopped delivering them.

And that gap — that enormous, widening gap between what’s at the top of the charts and what people actually hunger for — that’s not a reason to give up.

That’s a reason to keep going.

So here’s the one plan worth having.

Keep your head down.

Remain obsessed with your craft.

Write the best song you possibly can.

Then write another one.

Share it with your world.

Not for external validation or industry accolades.

Not because the timing is right or the market is ready.

Because great songs matter.

They always have.

And the songwriter who still believes that,

The songwriter who still loses sleep over a line,

The songwriter whose only aspiration is to create something truly great,

That songwriter has something increasingly rare.

Maybe nothing happens for a long time.

Maybe you look up from your desk one day and something did.

Either way, you spent your time doing what you were made to do.

You made something worth making.

And to me, that’s always been the point.

The point was never the mountain.

The point was always the song.

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It’s Saturday morning.

My newsletter is due tomorrow.

I don’t have anything yet.

This is not the part you dream of when you start building a creative practice.

The weeks when nothing shows up on its own.

When you sit down not because you’re inspired but because Sunday is tomorrow and oh shit I forgot to write my newsletter.

So you sit down anyway.

And somewhere in the middle of that, the thing usually finds you.

But then you remember.

That’s the whole job.

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This week marks one full year of Shaping Song.

I couldn't think of a better way to mark the occasion than by revisiting one of the earliest pieces I wrote. I hope it’s helpful.

Thank you for being a part of this.

If your goal is to write memorable songs, you need to shape them in a memorable way.

You need to learn song structure.

Assuming that’s your goal, let’s discuss how to do that.

Learning to shape a song benefits your work in 3 ways:

1. it makes your writing more clear

2. it makes your songs easier to finish

3. it makes your work accessible to a wider audience

As a result, you’ll work faster and your songs will resonate with more people.

Unfortunately, most songwriters don’t embrace this process because they think it will suffocate their artistic nature.

You cannot write consistently great songs without a process.

When most songwriters start writing songs, they’re simply singing into the void without any idea where they’re going…

• Their message isn’t clear

• Their songs have no direction

• They’re left wondering why no one cares

The good news is you can avoid this trap by following a better plan.

Here’s how, step by step:

Step 1: Start With A Compelling Title

A mentor of mine once told me:

Starting a song without a title is like driving around town on an empty stomach looking for something to eat.

Bad decisions at every turn.

When you start with a title, you know where you’re going.

When you know where you’re going, you can write a lyric to get you there.

Side Note: A great idea for a song is not the same as a title.

Here’s the difference:

Idea:

“The places we come from define us and make us who we are.”

Title:

The House That Built Me (Tom Douglas & Alan Shamblin).

Idea:

“You left me in Vermont, winter sucks without you and I’m trying to make sense of it.”

Title:

Stick Season (Noah Kahan).

Some places you’ll find great titles and ideas:

• Books

• Movies

• Quotations

• Conversations

• Songs that you love

• Actual life experiences

Keep your antenna up, your eyes peeled, and your ears open.

Soon you’ll have more song titles than you know what to do with.

Step 2: Map Out Your Song

Next, draw a quick map of how your lyric will progress.

This map can be in your head or on paper. Doesn’t matter which.

The important thing is to make sure each section of your song can be summed up in one clear sentence.

To do that, you need to know basic song form.

95% of the time, your song will look like this:

• Verse 1 - Pre Chorus (optional)

• Chorus

• Verse 2 - Pre Chorus (optional)

• Chorus

• Bridge (if needed)

• Chorus

You’ll have plenty of time to test variations on form as you go.

And if you really want to master songwriting you can learn the popular song forms of the past like AABA, Ballad, Rondo, etc.

But you don’t need to know how electricity works to use a light switch.

This is the song form we’re used to hearing today.

Okay, now it’s time to draw your map.

First:

take your title and put it in the space where each Chorus will be.

That’s your target.

Next:

Write one clear sentence for each verse that sets you up for the big idea of the Chorus.

The Pre-Chorus is a musical decision. If you want one, feel free to build on the same idea you wrote down for the preceding verse.

Pro Tip:

The trick is for each Verse to point to the Chorus in a slightly different way.

This allows the repeated words of the Chorus to take on a new meaning each time.

That’s what separates a good lyric from a great one.

We’ll leave the bridge alone for now.

Step 3: Write Your First Draft

Here comes the part people call magic.

And I won’t tell you it’s not.

You’re going to turn your blueprint into something that sounds like a song.

You do this by expanding the idea you wrote for each section and putting those words to music.

Some helpful tricks for this step:

• Think of this as a first draft (this quiets your inner critic).

• It’s ideal when each line reveals something new as the song builds.

• Try writing your Chorus first, then write your verses to lead you there.

This is the inspiration stage and should feel like play rather than work.

Sometimes the music and words will just flow. Sometimes it will feel like nothing you do is any good.

The important thing is to keep writing regardless of how you feel.

You can’t know how good something is in the moment of creation.

You have to give it time to breathe and come back to it with fresh ears.

To Bridge, Or Not To Bridge?

Bridges are much less common than they used to be.

Songs these days average between 2:30 to 3:00 minutes. When bridges happen, they’re usually 1 to 2 lines tops.

That being said, you can certainly write one if you want to.

Two questions to ask when making this decision:

1. Is there something I want to say that hasn’t been said yet?

2. Does the music need a departure before landing on the 3rd chorus?

Bridge Writing Cheat Code:

If you have a Pre-Chorus after Verse 1, you can skip it after Verse 2 and bring it back as your Bridge into the final Chorus.

Bridge or no bridge, when your draft is done make a quick recording of it (even if it’s just on your phone).

Step 4: Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite.

Writing is rewriting.

This is where songwriting craft comes in.

After taking time away from your song, go to a place where you can focus and listen back to the recording you made.

As you listen, read your lyric.

Take notes on the lines you want to improve.

Some things to listen for:

• Predictable melodies

• Cliché rhymes and phrases

• Anything that’s not 100% clear

Trust your gut reaction. If something doesn’t feel right, it isn’t.

Now fix the broken parts and re-record your new version.

Repeat this step as many times as you need, giving your work time to breathe in between each listen.

Do this until you have something you love…

Or something you don’t hate…

Or at least until you have something you don’t know how to make better.

Now, congratulate yourself.

You just made art out of thin air.

You just wrote a song.

One Final Takeaway: Practice Finishing

This is the most important part of all.

I wasted years writing half-baked songs because I didn’t think they were good enough yet.

But you need to learn how to finish a song.

If you don’t learn how to finish a song, you won’t know how to catch the good ones.

If you don’t know how to catch the good, they’ll swim away and some other (less talented but harder working) songwriter will catch them.

And you don’t want that.

This is the number 1 way to develop your craft.

This skill alone will make you 10X better at all the other steps.

Do this and over time you won’t have to rewrite as much. You’ll be catching the majority of your song in the first draft.

Consider this a short cut to greatness.

And remember:

as long as you finish your first draft, you’re good.

You don’t have to rewrite every song.

If you listen back with fresh ears and you don’t like it, move on.

But you can only move on if you actually finished that first draft.

I don’t make the rules.

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If you want to write a great song,

you need to learn to write great metaphors.

Metaphor is the lifeblood of a heart-wrenching lyric.

It turns ordinary lines into emotion packed gut punches.

It lets you say something deep while maintaining your poetic mystery.

Unfortunately, most songwriters never master this skill.

There are 3 main reasons for this:

1. They misunderstand what metaphor actually is.

2. They skip the brainstorming phase and rush straight to the writing.

3. They play it safe using clichés instead of seeking out conflicting connections.

But if you take the time to understand the process, making metaphors is a breeze.

Let’s break it down.

First, What Is A Metaphor?

A metaphor compares two different things by stating that one is the other.

“My heart’s a stereo.”

“Your body is a wonderland.”

When it comes to powerful lyrics, metaphor is king.

Not to be confused with it’s cautious step-cousin simile, who suggests we use the words “like” or “as” to soften the blow:

“My heart’s like a stereo...”

“Your body is like a wonderland.”

Similes are cool. But metaphors hit way harder.

They’re more impactful and immersive.

They make the listener feel something deeper without knowing why.

How to Write a Powerful Metaphor in 3 Steps

Step 1: Identify the Emotional Core of Your Idea

Start with the feeling you’re trying to express.

Let’s say your song is about loneliness.

Ask yourself, “What does loneliness feel like?”

List as many characteristics as you can:

• Dark

• Silent

• Heavy

• Empty

• Invisible

Anything goes during this stage.

Don’t filter yourself. This list is just for you.

Whatever your intuition says is probably the right thing.

Use a thesaurus if you want. Tools like Google and Pinterest work too.

Step 2: Ask What Else Has Those Characteristics

Now look at your list and ask: What else feels like that?

Metaphor lives at the intersection of two unrelated things that feel similar.

Your goal here is to find surprising connections.

For example:

• A desert highway.

• An empty house on Main Street.

• The words we never had the chance to say.

Take your time with this phase.

Write down anything that fits, the more unexpected the better.

These are the seeds that will grow into your song garden.

These are metaphors waiting to bring your lyric to life.

Step 3: Put It All Together in a Line

Now take your favorite phrases and build your lyric around them.

Using the list above, we can start like this:

• “Your heart’s a desert highway.”

• “Her kiss was an empty house on Main Street.”

• “Our love was just three words we never had the chance to say.”

Depressing, right?

That’s because metaphor amplifies emotion.

Again, the trick is to zoom out and stay open to surprising connections.

You’re in the right territory when you start to surprise and delight yourself.

Use Conflict for Maximum Impact

Contrast creates surprise.

The most compelling metaphors connect things that seem to have nothing in common.

Let’s take two words:

Hercules and computer.

No obvious connection, right?

Not so fast...

Look closer and we see they do have one thing in common:

Power.

Now take that shared trait and follow it to new possibilities.

Ask yourself, “what else has power?”

Here’s a few options:

• A tornado

• A revolution

• Darth Vader

• The light bulb

• The atomic bomb

• Beethoven’s 5th Symphony

The list goes on…

When we connect these things in fun and interesting ways, we’re swimming in powerful metaphors:

• Darth Vader tornadoed through the Death Star.

• The light bulb was a revolution of science and efficiency.

• The atomic bomb of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony changed music forever.

We got here in 2 simple steps:

1. Find the connecting characteristic

2. Follow that thread to out of the box outcomes.

Experiment With Different Types of Metaphor

You can also experiment with different types of metaphor.

In his book, “Writing Better Lyrics,” Pat Pattison describes 3 main types:

1. Expressed Identity Metaphor

These express an identity between two nouns.

• “x is y” (rain is a gift)

• “The y of x” (the gift of rain)

• “x’s y” (rain’s gift)

2. Qualifying Metaphor

These use adjectives to describe nouns:

• quiet stars

• restless wind

• wandering flame

And adverbs to describe verbs:

• To fall slowly

• To love blindly

• To leave softly

3. Verbal Metaphor

These use verbs out of their ordinary context.

• Thunder rolls

• He swallowed his pride

• Midnight surrenders to the dawn

Each type lets you stretch language in a different way.

Experiment with them all. And most importantly, have fun!

TL;DR: Making Metaphor In Two Questions

Metaphor is the secret sauce of songwriting.

It helps your lyrics:

• resonate on a deeper level

• say more than one thing at a time

• stick in the listener’s mind after the song is over

So next time you’re stuck on a lyric, ask these 2 questions:

What does my idea feel like?

What else has those feelings?

Then let your imagination do the rest.

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Before I left for LA, I got some advice I wasn’t ready to hear.

It was during a meeting with an A&R guy I knew at Universal Music.

We were sitting across from each other in his office in New York. He leaned back at his desk, I sunk into the oversized leather couch.

A speaker in each corner behind his head.

We listened to the songs I’d brought him. My own music, and the pop songs I’d been writing.

“I like your personal stuff better,” he said.

“Don’t lose that when you go out there.”

I thanked him and caught the train back to Penn Station.

Then I moved to LA and spent six years doing exactly what he told me not to do.

I wasn’t trying to learn the hard way.

I thought if I could just crack the code of what was popular — learn the formulas, write the hooks, fit myself inside the commercial box — the hits would happen on their own.

What I didn’t understand:

You can get really good at someone else’s thing…

But getting good at the wrong thing is still the wrong thing.

There will always be someone who can do that thing better, someone it was actually made for.

The only place no one can touch you is in the world only you can build.

There's a reason the artists with a clear sense of who they are rarely watch what their competitors are doing.

They don't need to.

When you know what you're building and why, the noise falls away.

It's the ones who aren't sure of their own thing who can't stop looking sideways.

The artist that actually endures isn’t the one that chased the moment.

It’s the one that ignored it.

Think about the artists you love most. The ones you keep coming back to.

Chances are they weren’t trying to sound like anyone else.

They were so committed to their own world — their own references, obsessions, influences — that the world had no choice but to meet them there.

That specificity is the whole strategy.

I spent years trying to emulate music I didn’t even like listening to.

It left me questioning whether I was meant to make music at all.

When I finally started writing the songs I actually wanted to hear — that sense of purpose came back.

The work started feeling like mine again.

You don’t need to chase what’s popular.

You don’t need to write songs to please the algorithm.

The only songs you need to write are the songs only you can write.

Build your world.

Write about what you love.

Make the music only you can make.

The right people won’t just like it.

They’ll feel like they finally found something they didn’t know they were looking for.

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It’s a rainy Tuesday night.

I’m making dinner and listening to a business podcast.

Nothing about music or songwriting craft.

Not even something a little bit related to my creative work.

And then it hits me… that old familiar guilt.

Shouldn’t you be learning about your craft?

For years, I carried that voice around like a stone in my pocket.

Every book I read about something other than music, every YouTube rabbit hole about investing or psychology or the history of ancient Rome…

Each one felt like a betrayal of my better self.

A confession that I wasn’t serious enough.

That I was dividing my energy when I should have been laser-focused on becoming the songwriter and producer I wanted to be.

The identity I held was narrow:

Musician. Songwriter. Producer.

These were the lanes I was supposed to live in.

Everything else was a distraction.

What I didn’t understand then, and what I’m only starting to understand now, is that I wasn’t dividing my energy.

I was becoming an actual artist.

All those “distractions” weren’t pulling me away from my work.

They were shaping the person doing the work.

The books, the curiosities, the detours down back roads that had nothing to do with music…

They were building a wider view of the world.

And a wider view of the world is what makes for richer, more resonant art.

The narrow identity wasn’t protecting my craft, it was smothering it.

I used to roll my eyes at the word artist, at least the way the music industry uses it.

I was a musician.

I had worked my entire life to become one.

I had a specific skill set and I worked in a specific medium.

But something has been slowly chipping away at that resistance.

Partly it’s letting myself follow my curiosity, wherever it leads.

Partly it’s watching the world change so fast it makes any one skill feel fragile.

And partly it’s the recognition that the things I was most ashamed of (the wide-ranging interests, the tendency to get obsessed with things other than music) were never weaknesses.

They were the whole point.

The artist identity holds all of it.

The songwriter, the producer, the reader, the thinker, the entrepreneur…

It’s not some vague version of what I once was.

It’s a more honest one.

There’s also something practical here.

The tools are changing. The industry is changing.

The world is already a drastically different place than it was five years ago.

Whatever it means to be a writer or a producer is going to keep shifting in ways none of us can fully predict.

A narrow identity is brittle in that environment.

It’s built around what you do… and what you do can change overnight.

But to be an artist — that’s about how you see.

How you make sense of things.

How you move through the world with curiosity and attention and the willingness to shape something out of what you find (or what you don’t).

That doesn’t become obsolete.

That’s the identity that bends without breaking.

So if you’ve ever felt guilty for being interested in too many things:

That breadth isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.

The business books, the cooking classes, the YouTube videos on how to live your life on purpose…

Those things aren’t keeping you from becoming who you’re supposed to be.

They are who you’re supposed to be.

And here’s why that matters right now:

The most durable identity a creative person can hold isn’t tied to a tool, a platform, or a genre.

It’s not musician or writer or designer or filmmaker.

Those identities are built around what you do.

And what you do can be disrupted, automated, or made irrelevant before you even see it coming.

The artist identity is different.

It’s built around how you see.

It survives the disruption because it was never about the medium in the first place.

You don’t have to pick one lane.

You just have to find the thread that runs through all of them.

For me, that thread is simple:

I want to make art that inspires people.

The medium keeps changing.

The thread remains.

That's the real case for calling yourself an artist.

It’s the only identity that can hold everything you are, and everything you might become.

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I’ve been waking up at 4am this week.

Just me, my french press coffee, and a song before the sun comes up.

Romantic, yes.

But that doesn’t mean it’s been fruitful.

The truth is I’ve been trying to crack the same 8 line chorus for two weeks.

No luck.

The past three days I didn’t add a single line.

A younger version of me would have been frustrated.

I probably would have tried to force something sub par.

But these days, I just feel grateful to be able to do this at all.

It’s taken me so long to get to the place where I can write the songs I know I’m capable of writing.

And that’s a feat in and of itself.

So many people give up on themselves before they’ve had a chance to do their best work.

And if you’re a late bloomer like me, your best work probably won’t come until much later than you thought.

Which begs the question:

Is there a deadline for making great art?

I look at it like this…

If you make someone cry with something you write, will they stop their tears to ask you how old you were when you wrote it?

It sounds silly when you put it like that.

Yet so many of us are afraid we missed the boat.

Myself included.

But I think there’s a deeper question that makes the first question irrelevant:

Who cares?

It doesn’t matter what time of life you finally answer your calling.

What matters is that you answer it.

I spent six years trying to write cookie-cutter pop songs in Hollywood.

Trying to be something I was not.

I felt like a square peg in a round hole.

And the worst part:

I thought I was answering my calling.

But after years of sidelining my own songs to help others write theirs, I felt empty and defeated.

I realized I had fallen for the idea of being a pop songwriter.

The reality of it was something different.

So I moved to Nashville and started making the music I wanted to make.

Started sharing my own songs again.

And yes, for a while I beat myself up for having wasted so much time.

For chasing money and validation over artistry and fulfillment.

Then one day I realized…

Those six years are an integral part of my story.

And that story is still being written.

I wasn’t starting over from nothing, I was starting over from a place of power and experience.

So here I am again.

4am, a strong cup of coffee, staring at a blank page…

And loving every second of it.

Because I finally feel like I’m writing my own story again.

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