---
title: 'The Best Songwriting Advice You''ll Ever Hear'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=TzREOVlKJzQ'
video_id: 'TzREOVlKJzQ'
date: 2026-07-31
duration_sec: 594
---

# The Best Songwriting Advice You'll Ever Hear

> Source: [The Best Songwriting Advice You'll Ever Hear](https://youtube.com/watch?v=TzREOVlKJzQ)

## Summary

This video offers practical songwriting strategies inspired by Paul Simon's advice to 'start with something true.' The presenter breaks down how to apply this principle through self-reflection and by drawing from real events, helping songwriters overcome writer's block and stay motivated.

### Key Points

- **The Songwriter's Block Problem** [00:01] — Songwriters often face questions like where to start and what to write about; this challenge never goes away, so strategies are needed.
- **Paul Simon's Simple Advice** [00:15] — Paul Simon suggests starting with something true; if you start with something false, you're always covering your tracks.
- **What Is True to You?** [00:58] — Reflect on what is true to you personally; this self-inquiry can lead to profound insights and reveal big themes worth exploring.
- **Choosing Important Themes** [01:41] — The key is to ask what feels big and important enough to justify the time and effort of writing a song.
- **Universal Themes Connect** [02:47] — Universal themes like love, death, relationships, family, and purpose resonate because everyone grapples with them.
- **Emotional Connection Sustains Writing** [03:13] — Writing about topics you care about gives you a better chance of finishing the song, as the material feels personal and non-academic.
- **Truth as Facts and Events** [05:27] — Another interpretation of 'true' is factual truth: using news, current events, or historical stories as songwriting material.
- **Why Resonance Beats Random Prompts** [06:59] — Random prompts can create a disconnect, while starting with something that resonates keeps you engaged and able to reach the end of the song.
- **Historical Events as Song Material** [07:40] — Examples like Bob Dylan's 'Hurricane' and Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' show how history can form the basis of a song.
- **Avoid Wasting Creative Energy** [08:50] — The 'crime' of covering tracks is wasting creative energy on things that don't resonate; creative energy is finite, so choose ideas that spark enthusiasm.

### Conclusion

Paul Simon's advice to 'start with something true' offers a timeless framework for songwriters. By grounding your writing in personal truth or factual events, you create material you care about and stay motivated throughout the creative process.

## Transcript

problems that songwriters face and you may have experienced it as a series of questions as you're sitting down to write a new song. Where do I start? How do I begin? And the big one, what should I write about? And since this problem
never goes away, it's important that we develop some strategies to tackle it. And songwriting legend Paul Simon has what I feel is one of the simplest and most elegant ways of addressing this problem. It's very helpful to start with
something that's true. If you start with something that's false, you're always covering your tracks. Something simple and true that has a lot of possibilities So in this video, I want to show you some really practical ways of taking
that advice and putting it into action with your own songwriting. So that songwriting into a daily habit will no longer be a problem. longer be a problem. >> [music]
something true, I want to take that word true and play with it in a few different ways. The first way we can frame the word true is to consider what is true to you, the songwriter. And asking ourselves this question can often lead
to some profound insights and reflections. And writing down some of these insights and reflections will ultimately lead to some big themes emerging, some big ideas. And these are generally the kind of ideas we want to
of ideas we really want to sink our teeth into when we're working on a new song because they feel important, they feel worthy of our time and attention. about, what we're really asking ourselves is what feels big enough,
important enough to be worth the time and the effort. This ongoing concern we have, this little voice in our head that pops up trivial? Are you sure that's actually worth your time?"
community members. I want to become confident, consistent, and honest in my songwriting. My goal is to create music that truly reflects my emotions and experience, especially around anxiety, isolation, and self-growth, and connect
with others who feel the same way. Long-term, I want to develop my own sound and eventually release music I'm proud of. hear a lot from members of our community, and you may have a variation
of that rolling around in your head as you sit down to write. And you can feel songwriting process. We're looking for honesty and authenticity and searching for something to say that others will
connect with and resonate with, not dismiss as trivial. So, taking the word true, then considering what is true to you, kick-starts this self-reflection process that ultimately leads to these big themes that we care about: love,
big themes that we care about: love, death, relationships, family, purpose. ones that we all care about because we all grapple with them. They're part of the human condition, and we often refer to these as universal themes. And we
know universal themes work because everybody cares about those themes. that takes care of the idea of connecting with listeners. But the other huge advantage of this method is that it
allows you to generate material that you are emotionally connected with. Starting with something true gets us thinking about what we care about now, in this moment. Writing about those things actually gives us a much better chance
of sustaining the songwriting process through the whole song form, because idea. We care about it. It's not theoretical, it's not academic. And when we care about something, we're more motivated to finish it. And I've created
a free PDF called 23 Ways to Start With Something True, which is essentially a list of prompts and different ways to start the songwriting process, focusing interested in getting that, you'll find the link below.
So, just before I started making this video, I tried this method out. I sat down for a couple of minutes and just asked myself, "What is true for me? I'm makes me anxious, makes me feel powerless. Stories of conflict and
instability and technological change." The older I get, the more complex everything feels. More responsibilities, more worries, more decisions to be made, accumulating. Nothing is fixed. Everything changes and
is changing all the time. Resistance to the change only makes it worse. childhood home is sold, parents are families. Each of us once lived under the same roof. Now we connect
updates. Without a doubt, I'm becoming my It is both delightful and terrifying to see my children mirroring my behaviors and personality traits. So, that was just a few reflections on
what I was thinking and feeling in that moment. What was true for me in that that process, even though I only did it for 2 minutes, was that A, it felt great to say some of those things out loud. And B,
I looked back over those ideas and I thought to myself, "Those are some big ideas. Those are some ideas that I want to tackle, wrestle with." And as a songwriter, the way I generally wrestle with these big ideas is through
songwriting. >> [music] look at it in an entirely different way. Because the word true could also be
framed to mean truth or facts, events that have happened. And again, if you're begin, this is such a fun game to play. Because or current events. And I know you might be thinking the news is tragic and full
of depressing narratives. But amongst all of that over dramatization, are stories of amazing people doing amazing things. And one of the ways I've found of staying creative and not being sucked into the negative news cycle is
by actually going to some different kinds of websites. One of them being And if we just scroll down through the headlines, "Woodland walks cut anxiety, study finds." Now, even that phrase,
"woodland walks," sounds like a title. So, I'm going to extract that and put that to the side. Now, aside from just scanning headlines, you may choose to actually click in and read some of these documents. And you
will find no end of inspiration in some of these stories. But, I find it so interesting just scanning the headlines and reflecting on what that means to me Having poetry in a public space transports us, even if we don't
understand it. I love that phrase, "even if we don't understand it." That's the kind of phrase I would write down, reflect upon, maybe do some writing about, and see what emerges. "Five ways to turn eco-anxiety into something
eco-anxiety is. So, that's something to explore another time. important. You're not just picking something at random. You're looking for attention, peaks your interest. And this is why I sometimes prefer this
method to random prompts, because random prompts are incredibly effective at getting things going, getting you to think differently about something. But, the problem with random prompts is that they're random. And this can lead to a
disconnect as we move through the writing process. It can lead to a a feeling of I don't really care about what I'm writing about. When we start something that resonates with us, it generally allows us to get to the end of
the song because we care about getting to the end of the song. We care about exploring the ideas and the themes within the song enough to keep going through those middle sections. So, looking at the news is a great way of
finding current events, timely topics, but we can just as easily take this idea and look at it through a historical lens. The Hurricane by Bob Dylan was about Rubin Hurricane Carter's wrongful conviction for triple murder. I Don't
Like Mondays Boomtown Rats a girl school shooting motivated by her dislike of Mondays. We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel is essentially a rapid-fire Billy Joel is essentially a rapid-fire timeline of headlines from 1949 to 1989.
These songs and many, many more are taking historical events and using them as the basis for the entire song. So, we know it's effective. We know it works. thinking like an investigative journalist is a really satisfying way to
lot about what true might mean, but let's just quickly talk about that other something that's false, you're always covering your tracks. And I love that Paul Simon uses that phrase because it feels heavy. It feels
The phrase covering your tracks dates back to the 1800s possibly before. It's generally used to refer to criminal activity and people literally covering their tracks as they escape the scene of a crime. And I love this metaphor
because when you think about what the crime might be that we commit when resonate with us, things that aren't true, things that don't mean enough for us to really care about. The crime is a waste of time and creative energy.
when sitting down to write a song because creative energy is not infinite. day and I want to use that creative energy to really say something that I
care about. Ultimately, developing a new song takes time and patience, but in my experience, it's a lot easier to keep going if the original idea sparked enthusiasm and excitement. And we owe it to ourselves to go searching for great
ideas. We owe it to ourselves as songwriters to find things that we want to write about that really means something to us. And perhaps that task is best summarized by the simple instruction, start with something true.
Happy songwriting. Bye.