In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, 'How to Write One Song,' Wilco's Jeff Tweedy takes you inside his creative process — and tells you how to tap into your own
I can’t tell if this is a no-brainer or will come as a shock, but I recommend getting a rhyming dictionary or two or three. At the very least, keep a browser window open to some rhyming website. There’s no shame in this. It’s still going to be you and your own unique curation of language when you use these tools as tools and not as a crutch.
I’m not sure I can demystify something I feel wholly inadequate to explain. For me, the moments that make my scalp tingle a little bit are when I hear myself sing a lyric out loud for the first time. On occasion I make myself cry. Not because I’m marveling at my songwriting genius or I’m overcome with my poetic gifts. It’s a moment that feels more like I’m witnessing something better than me, or better than what I imagined I could make, being born.
So, to me, that’s ONE song. The one you’ve been working on, the one that’s the goal of writing and reading this book. You’ll know it when you have it. If that can happen to you singing to yourself, it has a pretty good chance of working for someone else. I might have to write 50 songs or almost-songs to get ONE, or sometimes I might get a string going where I feel supernaturally in touch with my abilities.
Can you do that? With practice, I bet you can! I don’t think I’m that special, and I believe that’s what can happen when you keep doing everything we’ve covered so far again and again — you stop having to work at it and it just comes to you. Early on, trial and error plays a much bigger role in how words and music come together, and I think there are always going to be moments that require some patience.
Ok, just because the description of a process sounds mundane doesn’t mean the end result will be. In fact, I probably complete more songs in this manner than any other. It occurs to me as I write this that my idea of a song might be drastically different than yours, and I might be leading you through some peculiar-feeling maze towards a rather nebulous and ill-defined goal.
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