When Is A Song Done?

It's a good question, though one that many of us ask sheepishly, hearing the rhetoric in the words as they leave our mouths. With an answer that varies by song and by person, it can seem pointless to even ask. But those are often the best questions to mull over, and in fact, I believe the conclusion is less subjective than it first appears. That's another way of saying I'm about to give you my two cents, as someone who has written both for the major music industry and for myself as an artist, and who has felt the indecision in calling a song done more times than I care to count.

A song is only as done as I can define what 'done' means. If my goal is to pitch the song in the Nashville country music market, then finished may ultimately mean it sounds like something publishers and artists in that market would be able to sell. Since we don't all come out of the gate being able to write with this accuracy and consistency, most of the songs we write will be steps along the way to that ultimate goal. If I'm a Performing Artist, 'done' may mean it fulfills a need in my live show for a particular mood or emotional moment. If I'm a Signature Songwriter, which is the name I use to describe writers whose songs are uniquely theirs in sound and spirit, and whose songs lose something significant when covered by others, 'done' can mean an essential expression of themselves that will be beloved by their most dedicated super-fans for years to come. For Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, author of How to Write One Song, 'done' might mean completed in a day, as simple as that. The measure by which a song is done depends entirely on our use for the song, with the 'why' of a song still a bit of a monkey on our back.

Now I know some artists and songwriters are famous for saying a song took them 18 years to write, waiting for just the right chord or word or 3rd verse to bring the work of art to completion. These stories inspire me, and also intimidate me, imagining that like a pebble in my shoe, the songs that remain so close to done will continue to frustrate me for another two decades. But this struggle of the artist, this discontent between 'taste' and what is actually manifesting in our songs in real time, is the nature of an artistic life. It's part of what drives us mad, and part of what drives us to wake up and create something once more. I know no other way around it but to live alongside it. And this is where the 'why' we make music and the 'goals' we have for our music are different. One is in the heart, and one is in the world. Both are part of a lifestyle of creating original music if our desire is to share that music for feedback or for profit.

So when is a song done? Very simply, it's done when you say it's done. If you need to have a publisher invested in the song to call it finished, then it's not done until it gets you closer to that goal. It may not be this song that gets you there, only one that gets you closer. If you need to have a growing audience invested in the song to call it finished, then 'done' could be performing it live to get a gauge on how likable the song is, or recording a rough demo to see if it makes the cut onto your next EP. In all these cases, our estimation of what is done relies on our ability to see where we're going with it all. Without a destination, we're blown on the wind of every piece of feedback that stumbles onto our doorstep. As I always say, the feedback we get on a song often tells more about the person giving the feedback than the intent of the artist. If you don't know your intent, nobody else is going to know it for you. The same is true for the measure of when you can put a song down.

I've called songs done when I was tired of working on them. I've called them done when they provided me with a connection to another writer or industry contact I didn't have before. I've put them to bed when they felt complete, only to see them wake up again with the dawn of a new project. In the end, I return to the 'good-enough' mentality when time and resources like money to record are limited, which they always are. And when I recognize that I'm focusing more energy on rewriting and rewriting these undone songs, it's a good reminder to divert that energy toward starting something new. Because in the end, we're not after a stack of finished songs. We're after the life that keeps making them.

Stay creative,