The Greatest Songwriter You've Probably Never Heard Of

[00:02] and LeAnn Rimes all have in common? Well, they've all had huge number one hits written by the song whisperer. And this songwriter with a career spanning more than 40 years and still going strong has written nine number one

[00:15] songs, 33 Billboard top 10 songs, is the first songwriter in the history of Billboard to have seven hits on the singles chart at the same time by different artists, and she has received a staggering 17 Academy Award

[00:29] nominations for best original song. The song whisperer is of course Diane with her name, you are most certainly familiar with her catalog of hits and the many films that she's had her songs featured in. And I've been aware of

[00:42] recently, for whatever reason, I've become mildly obsessed listening to interview after interview, taking endless notes, watching her new documentary Relentless twice. And I did

[00:54] all of this because as a songwriter, I really want to know how someone like her successful over such a long period of time thinks about songwriting. So, I'm bit differently to my usual format. I'm going to share with you the notes and

[01:09] wisdom that I've collected through all of these interviews with Diane Warren. And ultimately, I'll be giving you a compilation of what I feel are her biggest reflections, her best pieces of advice, and the principles that have

[01:22] Diane Warren shows us, possibly more than any other songwriter in history, is that you can have an amazing successful career in songwriting. Not as the person singing the songs or playing the songs or running around on stage or going on

[01:36] but as the person sitting day after day painstakingly crafting lyrics and music. And for the songwriters out there who just want to be songwriters, who don't want to be performers, Diane Warren shows the way.

[01:54] up. I watched her interview with Larry King. She did one with Billy Corgan. She did one hosted by Spotify. She was on there's a new documentary that's all about her life as a songwriter. And in

[02:07] all of these interviews, they all want to know about her attitude, her philosophy, her approach to songwriting. And every time she gives the same answer. My process is I show up and do the work. I just show up. I don't

[02:22] analyze what I do. I just go to work and I work. I have no clue how I do it. I just show up. This phrase show up is just classic Diane Warren. It's uncomplicated. She wants to keep things simple, but it also

[02:36] reveals she has a tremendous appetite for the work that is involved in writing songs and writing songs at the level that she writes them. And far from being just a throwaway line, I think this phrase showing up really reveals a

[02:49] mindset that Diane Warren carries with her all the time. And it really reveals how she feels about songwriting as something you do rather than think about. She really embraces the physical act of writing songs and

[03:03] the question came in one of the fresh? I work every day. I get inspired every day. I come up with ideas. It's like an Olympic athlete. If you want to be in the Olympics, you better practice.

[03:16] And you have to practice every day and you have to put in the time and you have to put in the work. It's that simple. What makes anybody great is hard work and talent and you can't have one without the other. Talent without work

[03:28] doesn't mean crap. Hard work without talent doesn't mean crap. the Olympic athlete Diane Warren sees herself as someone who is really striving for excellence. Her songwriting is not just a hobby. It's not just

[03:41] then. She is looking for excellence in her work. She is thinking about high performance. And she clearly believes in this equation of talent plus hard work because it seems she's made it her life's mission to work harder than

[03:55] anybody else. I'm always writing, constantly. This isn't a job. This is my constantly. This isn't a job. This is my life. You can't retire from your life.

[04:08] guitar and he was taking me to a guitar teacher. The guitar teacher wanted me to learn scales and he told my dad not to bring me back because I had no future in scales. I wanted to make up my own songs. That's when I started getting the

[04:22] bug to write. This story resonated so strongly with me because I was at university studying music and I was also practicing scales playing guitar and so I was learning all the modes and all the different scales

[04:35] and all the different positions, but something always happened when I was practicing these scales. I inevitably hit a wrong note and suddenly the wrong note caught my attention and usually caught

[04:48] "Oh, that's interesting. That sounds kind of cool." And I inevitably veered off track and started playing around with that wrong note. And that's when I realized that I was actually far more in love with the idea of making music and

[05:02] writing music and putting together interesting combinations of notes than I to solo. So, this insight from Diane Warren, I think is incredibly important to talk about because music is so big. There are so many things you could do

[05:16] with music. It's really important that we as musicians and songwriters find what we love about music and really double down on those areas. Really hone our craft, specifically trying to get better at those things. And so once

[05:31] songwriting, she started presenting herself and her songs at local songwriter showcases. And she talks about going to these showcases and presenting her new songs. And the panel of people she was presenting to, much

[05:45] older than her, much more experienced, would give her this feedback. And in her what you're talking about. These are great songs." And yet, next week, she'd understood how important that feedback was. She understood how important this

[06:00] process of receiving feedback and then iterating on a song was. My dad would take me to publishers when I was 16 or 17. And then I made Dad get me a studied everything. Who wrote everything? Who produced it?

[06:14] herself as a 16, 17-year-old, you picture this young woman who was just so immensely curious about the whole songwriting industry. But you also get a

[06:26] sense that she had a real belief in herself and her abilities. It's so hard because no one is believing in you. You're climbing this uphill battle, so great. I'm going to make it. That Muhammad Ali kind of thing. You just

[06:40] need one believer, don't you? And that one believer has to start out being you. so consistently uncomfortable being asked about their process. And of

[06:54] course, it's the question every interviewer asks. It's the question we want to know the answer to. We want to know how the songwriter behind one of the most impressive catalogs in history really thinks about songwriting. Do you

[07:06] don't know. It's really intimate. Writing is a really intimate thing for And that line comes from the documentary where clearly the producers are pushing and trying to get something more. But that line in itself is interesting.

[07:21] That word intimate is interesting, and it reveals a lot about her process because Diane Warren has spent her whole career writing solo. She doesn't co-write. All of her hits have only one songwriter credited with the song, and

[07:34] it's her. In an industry where you increasingly get four or five different writers credited on a track, Diane Warren has always been the sole creator her hits. It's about the passion of one person,

[07:48] not a committee. A committee is what you think. What you think? No, it's what you think. What you think? No, it's what you feel. And what does one person feel? A quick pause to let you know about our brand new 7-Day Songwriter Course. It is

[08:03] free to join. You can join at any time. And the course is structured around clear, easy-to-follow prompts delivered daily to your inbox. So, if you're accountability and structure to get your next song finished, this course is

[08:18] for free sign-up at the top of the description.

[08:30] see some of Diane Warren's process. And this is far more telling than what she says. One of the most amazing things we get to see is where she writes. We get a glimpse inside what she refers to as her disgusting little room. So, this

[08:44] disgusting little room that Diane has written in for decades is affectionately known as the cave. And her friends and colleagues describe this room as filthy and disgusting, but it's not until you really see inside it in the documentary

[08:57] that you realize how amazing a space it is. It is cluttered. It is filthy. It is disorganized. It is littered with demo tapes because she still records her ideas on tapes. I don't know if it's superstition.

[09:11] I'm just comfortable in here. Now, Diane Warren's net worth is estimated at $100 million. Her publishing company, Real Songs, and her music catalog, which she owns, is estimated at a value of $500 million.

[09:24] She can afford a nice room with nice instruments. She can afford whatever she And yet, this is where she feels comfortable. This is where she does her work. And I I this is such a sobering reminder to all of us songwriters that

[09:38] the ability to write great songs has nothing to do with a nice room, new equipment, fast computers, expensive instruments. It is so much simpler than that. It really just requires that we as songwriters turn up and give ourselves

[09:53] ourselves that when I get this new piece that's when I'll be able to really do my best work. And Diane Warren shows that it's just not true.

[10:10] to her childhood home and points to an old shed in the backyard. I was banished to the shed because I would play the same song over and over again. That's how I write. Keep playing it over and over till the song feels

[10:22] right. And it would drive my parents crazy. process that she seemed to have developed at a young age. This process of playing the idea over and over, really putting the idea on the loop,

[10:35] getting inside it, getting into the details of it. And many of you might around a chord progression or cycling around a melody, trying to get a handle this that it kind of feels a bit like a meditation. You fall into a bit of a

[10:49] trance as you loop around this idea over and over and it's an amazing feeling because it allows you to block out all the external noise. And this seems to be something that Diane Warren really latched onto

[11:02] early and then doubled down on as she developed her songwriting career. But it also alludes to a discipline that Warren reveals in another interview where she really talks about staying with a song, not moving on to another song, but

[11:15] staying with the song she's working on until she cracks it. So does this make her a perfectionist? Well, she does get asked what makes the perfect song. And with all of her craft and her experience, her answer is still

[11:28] frustratingly elusive. You don't put it into words, you feel it. The perfect lyric, the perfect melody, it makes you feel something. So, this idea of looping something over and over, endlessly playing with it,

[11:42] it seems like what she's really looking for is the moment where it feels right, for is the moment where it feels right, rather than sounds right. trained musician is I don't know what's not correct. So, I do all kinds of stuff

[11:57] that doesn't make sense. You can tell that Diane Warren wears her lack of formal training kind of like a badge of honor, but more pragmatically, songwriting with a spirit of creativity

[12:09] and experimentation, and doesn't feel the burden of getting the right chords or the right notes in place. Instead, she has developed over many years these razor-sharp instincts, and this comes really from being a lifelong student of

[12:23] music. I grew up in a time which was pretty much the golden era of pop music, '60s and '70s. I got to hear everything, and I really listened. I really took it all in. That was school to me. So, for Diane Warren, active listening

[12:38] is a big part of this equation, and again, this is another reminder that we as songwriters, we need to be listening to great music. If we want to create great music, we need to listen to great music.

[12:54] generally?" As in, where do you start? I like to have a concept of something I want to write, something that's going to compel me to write it. It might just be a title or a set of chords, but I don't ever

[13:07] write a lyric first and write music to it. I've never done that. Diane Warren reveals here a really important technique, which is finding something to start the process, finding a little idea or a concept or a title,

[13:21] but not developing that too fully before inviting the other elements in. But still, there's always that question of where do ideas come from? Well, Diane Warren gives us a very clear example of how one of her biggest songs came about.

[13:36] The song I Don't Want to Miss a Thing was part of the film Armageddon and became a huge hit for Aerosmith. And she tells a story of sitting on a couch, watching TV late one night. And she was watching a interview with Barbra

[13:49] talking about their marriage and how much they love each other. And James Brolin apparently says, "I don't want to go to sleep at night because I'll miss you." Very romantic. And in that moment, Diane Warren says,

[14:03] "Wow, all right, there's a song there. And I remember writing down the title I So, she's always on. She's always thinking like a songwriter. She's always collecting little fragments or hunting for little snippets.

[14:17] And this again is such a great habit for any songwriter to develop. famous songwriters, you often hear them get asked the question, "What are some

[14:30] generally, the songwriter thinks about it and gives an example of a song that really inspired them when they were younger, or perhaps the song that they written. But Diane Warren's answer is very

[14:42] different. Do you have any songs you love that you wish you'd written? I'm going to answer this question the way I've always answered this question. Because I wasn't meant to write them. They're songs I love, but those weren't

[14:55] my songs. I'm meant to write the ones I write. This is such a great answer because it acknowledges something we all need to remember, that we all have stories to tell. We all have things we want to

[15:07] us, to our lived experience. And I think she writes songs and how she has continued to write songs over such a long period of time. She has such a faith and confidence in her ability to

[15:20] take an idea and shape it into song form. I haven't had a problem with self-confidence in my work. Even when I didn't have any reason to believe in myself, I did. But you have to do it because everything's against you.

[15:37] something, I love it because then I do it. As soon as they say I can't do it, The title of her documentary is Relentless. The custom bracelet on her wrist has the word Relentless in graved in it. This word seems to define

[15:52] everything about who she is and how she behaves. And in the documentary, they interview a lot of her childhood friends who tell some great stories about what she was like as a young woman. And there's this one story in particular

[16:04] when they were younger and going to lots of parties. And Diane was always would turn up to the house where the party was being hosted, and Diane would immediately go to the bathroom, sit in the bathtub, and start playing guitar

[16:18] room with the best acoustics. This became such a regular occurrence that at some point the joke gets made, she knows every bathroom in every LA Valley home. So this endless search for new song

[16:30] embedded at a young age. And this concept of being relentless almost feels like the fuel that has propelled her career over the last four But that doesn't always make her easy to work with. There's a fantastic moment in

[16:45] the documentary where Cher is being interviewed talking about her biggest song, If I Could Turn Back Time, which Diane Warren wrote. Diane Warren wrote. And Cher was not a fan of the song when

[16:57] Diane Warren first pitched it to her. In fact, it sounds like Diane Warren had to do a lot of convincing to get Cher to even consider singing it. She hated it, and I had to hold her leg down in the studio, like literally. She

[17:10] was in the studio doing another song of mine, and I said, "Cher, you have to do that song. I hate it." I got on my knees, I held her leg down, I said, "I'm not letting you go until you say you're going to try it."

[17:24] And as she tells the story, she eventually gave in. She tried it. biggest hit. But this is the kind of situation Diane Warren has always found herself in. She's always been pitching her songs to well-known artists. "I

[17:38] always knew I didn't want to be behind the microphone. I always knew I just wanted to write." And this requires a certain personality trait that not everyone has. There are many songwriters out there who have some incredible

[17:50] out there who have some incredible talent and are incredibly creative, but they don't necessarily have the hustle to really put themselves out there. Well, Diane Warren has the hustle, and she hasn't just had the hustle for a

[18:02] short period of time. She's had the hustle for decades. She has somehow found a way to maintain the energy and the desire to keep putting herself out there, to keep approaching new artists with her songs. She approached Jay-Z

[18:14] with the song I Was Here, then recorded and released in 2011. Paloma Faith recorded and released Only Love Can Hurt Like This, a huge hit back in 2014. So, Diane Warren from an early age believed that she was writing great

[18:28] going to be the one to sing them. So, she forged a career approaching artists, how great they were, sometimes convincing them how great they were, and holding their leg in the studio until they tried recording it. But this is

[18:43] what it takes if you're in a position like Diane Warren's. This is what it takes to get other people to want to record your material. It takes this hustle. It takes this attitude that the songs are worth recording. The songs

[18:57] because she's been at it for more than 40 years, Warren has naturally seen many changes in the music industry. And unsurprisingly, she has some thoughts on this. "I work with a lot of young artists, and I'll be like, 'Oh, why

[19:11] great song." Oh, the TikTok numbers aren't high. Oh, the data. You know, the data that matters is does it make the hair on your arm stand up? Does it make you feel something?

[19:24] And I don't think this is Diane Warren having a go at social media as much as really matters when you're writing a song. Does it make you feel something?

[19:39] write a great love song. Across all the interviews and in all the discussions about her work and her life, there seems to be one detail that the interviewers love getting fixated on. And this is the topic of love or the

[19:52] lack of love. Because what they really want to know is how does Diane Warren create such a big catalog of predominantly love songs whilst at the same time publicly and repeatedly declaring that she doesn't want to be in

[20:06] a relationship and she's never been in love. And she generally shrugs it off whilst also acknowledging it's a bit weird. I mean, I've never been in love. I know, it's weird. Maybe my songs are my partner. How about that? Yeah, the

[20:19] songs. I mean, have you ever heard a songwriter talk about how much they love songwriting like Diane Warren does? But the thing that most people get hung up on is how can you write all these love

[20:32] songs authentically, meaningfully? How can you write them in a way that moves millions of people if you don't really experience love? And even though she love, when you hear her interviewed, you still

[20:46] get the sense that Diane Warren feels deeply. She is a deeply feeling individual. She's deeply empathetic. And this is reinforced when she starts talking about her love of animals and shows you her rescue ranch where she has

[20:59] many different kinds of animals all coexisting, all who have been rescued and brought back to health by Diane Warren and her team. And the only moment in the documentary that is truly tragic, the moment where you see her genuinely

[21:12] upset, is when her beloved cat, affectionately known as Mouse, passes So, of course Diane Warren knows what it feels like to love and to lose, like all But, it seems that when she's writing her songs, she has the ability to take

[21:26] these feelings of love and loss and channel them specifically into stories though she doesn't experience them I know what it's like to have a broken heart. I know what it's like to feel

[21:39] pain. When my songs don't become hits, it breaks my heart. There are a million it breaks my heart. There are a million ways to break a heart. I can relate.

[21:51] staggering 17 Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song. So, clearly something about Diane Warren's way of writing songs makes her talk show interview, she was asked to clarify comment she made about comparing

[22:06] her way of writing to method acting. You describe songwriting and compare it to method acting. How so? Well, because I become the character in the song. I wouldn't want to write about myself because I'm really boring.

[22:18] But, when I'm writing a song, I really become that character. Or if I'm writing that's going to tie the movie emotionally. self-deprecating humor that Warren is known for. But, it also reveals why she

[22:32] loves writing songs. Because as I've said before, she never wanted to sing perform them. She never wanted to go on tour. She wanted to be the credit, the name on the song. What she really cares about is the craft of songwriting.

[22:46] And then it's her job to try and give the song a life out into the world. And one of the best chances of that song doing well is in a movie. But, there is also then the life of the song beyond the movie. Best case scenario is when

[23:00] the song fits the movie perfectly, then flies away and has another life of its This best-case scenario has happened several times for Warren. She talks about 'Til It Happens to You becoming an anti-bullying song. Stand Up for

[23:13] Something now gets used as a stand up for cancer anthem. And with the song I'll Fight, Warren tells this beautiful story. I got a letter from a woman in a special victims unit, and she says she blares that song to inspire her to fight

[23:26] for victims. I mean, it's pretty cool. And this roller coaster that Diane Warren rides with every song, writing it, pitching it, trying to get it placed in a film, hoping it has a life beyond the film.

[23:39] downs, and even though she is relentless, Diane Warren still suffers the setbacks and the heartache of things not going well. Which brings us back to those 17 Academy Award nominations, which is a huge honor and an incredible

[23:54] achievement. But, she does now hold the record for being the most nominated she feel about that? How does she deal with that? I am always grateful to be here. It's not easy to get nominated for

[24:06] an Academy Award. It's tough. They only choose five songs out of hundreds of there's lots of song categories. At the Oscar, there is one song category. If I'm chosen to be one of those songs, I've already won.

[24:20] Despite not yet winning for Best Original Song, happily in 2022, Diane Warren became the first songwriter to receive an honorary Oscar for her So, if you haven't ever heard Diane Warren interviewed, I really encourage

[24:35] you to do so. Watch the documentary, listen to the passion in her voice and the drive and the commitment to songwriting and music making. And rare individual. You're looking at someone who has sustained a professional

[24:48] songwriting career for over 40 years. Yet, she looks as determined and as driven and as focused on success as she's ever been. And this, more than anything else she has said or done, makes her a true inspiration. Happy

[25:02] songwriting. Bye.