What it is like writing a song about somebody else’s life
Commissioned songs are the hardest thing we do, and the reason is not musical. It is that you have to get a stranger right.
Written by Admin
When somebody orders a song, they send over a form and a few paragraphs. From that we have to write something that a person who was actually there will recognise.
It is the hardest work we do and it almost never fails for musical reasons.
The thing that makes it work
Detail. Specific, slightly odd, unglamorous detail.
People filling in the form tend to write we were very much in love and she was always smiling. Both are true and neither can be put in a song, because they are true of everyone.
What can be put in a song:
- the chair she always sat in sideways
- the way he said your name when he was annoyed
- the bus you both missed on purpose
A detail nobody else could have written is the only thing that makes a listener believe you were there.
The conversation that makes the difference
So the useful part is not the form. It is the follow-up, where somebody asks what did the kitchen smell like and the person on the other end goes quiet for a second and then tells you something they had forgotten they knew.
That sentence is usually the song.
What we cannot do
Be honest about this part:
- We cannot write something that will fix a relationship.
- We cannot make a song mean something to somebody who has already decided it will not.
- We cannot guess the detail. If it is not given to us, it is not in there.
And what happens at the end
The finished thing goes to one person, and we usually never hear it played. That takes some getting used to — everything else we make is public, and this one disappears into somebody's actual life.
If you are thinking about it, the page that explains how it works is here, and a person reads every enquiry.
- custom song
- process
