Songtown Citizen Post by Stephen Hatfield The Two Sided Coin of Damaged Goods I write this primarily for writers early in their journey. Normally we try to avoid damaged goods. Wed rather buy new, or if used, in great shape. You never know what your getting when you buy damaged. So its just easier to avoid them. Think of yourselves as goods. Youre a songwriter but youre also a product. If you want to cowrite, you sell yourself to co-writers. You try to sell yourself to publishers, artists, venues (if youre a performing songwriter) and the like. Do they want to invest in damaged goods? Would you if you were in their place? Heres a short story to make my point. I got into songwriting in the mid nineties through a music school/camp in Nashville. After a couple of years I caught the eye of one of the largest Christian publishers in town. He took me under his wing and started putting me with his writers (some of whom are now award winning writers.). He began to want to change some of my favorite lyrics. I balked. I believed mine were great lyrics. He wanted to go in a more commercial direction. I continued to balk. Long story short, he moved on to other opportunities. I wrote the song with another writer and guess what. We changed all but a line or two and wrote a whole new song anyway. I met another writer there and later wrote in an article on a blog site that we didnt click as well as some (no names were mentioned but you could tell who it was and that writer happened to subscribe to the same blog) and I got called out on it. The two sides of the coin. You have to be willing to adjust, give a little, bend, etc. if youre a writer wanting to go commercial and write what other folks want or need to write OR youre willing to do it on your own, i.e. publishers, co-writers and artists be damned, Im gonna be old blue eyes and do it my way. Gonna write and sing my songs my way or the highway (which you may succeed at). Just remember, to this day Ive never been able to repair or resurrect the relationships I soured back then. Apologies, begging for forgiveness, nothing worked. To some out there I became damaged goods. Dont make the same mistakes.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 13:00:01 +0000
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