PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Songwriting Rewriting

Do you rewrite your songs?

I'm curious to see how many actually do this. And if you do, do you do it just once or multiple times and in part, or the whole thing?

I tend to rewrite my songs, mostly in part. Keeping the good things and rewriting the things that don't work as well. This ties in closely with collaboration because a collaborator is a natural rewriter of the song. They see things differently and therefore can take your lines and rewrite them to improve them. But if you write without a collaborator, it's up to you to play the part of being your own worst critic. And, of course, rewriting your own lines and melodies is not a piece of cake. It's kinda like writing with a set of blinders on. It's hard to get out of that mindset that created the original song to see it from a different POV.

One situation that may make it easier is where you have written something that you felt was sheer brilliance. However, when you return to it the next day with fresher ears, you wonder what the heck you were thinking. I wish I had $10 for every time that happened to me. I have notebooks and computer files filled with those kinds of things. What you thought was good, isn't good, and it's probably even worse than that. That's a good time to scrap the bad parts and work on finding something that actually fits and works better.

One of my rules for writing is: Nothing is sacred. Anything that is written, can be deleted, edited, moved, or improved upon. It doesn't matter if I wrote it or a collaborator. If it's there, it can be changed to make the song better. I make this clear to my co-writers too and usually at the beginning of the write once we decide to work together. If I really, really like a specific lyric line, I will press to keep it, but it may be edited to one degree or another in the process. But in most cases, nothing is off limits or out of bounds. In my writing, I think I have pressed for keeping a particular line only a few times and on one that I recall, that line was the one that was mentioned by several folks who heard the song and took the time to comment. So sometimes it's worth trying to keep a line.

Quite often, and I have heard this said from other writers here in this forum as well as in songwriting circles, that the final version of the song that got recorded, sounded nothing like that first draft. I know from my own adventures in writing and co-writing that this is often the case. I recall one song with a co-writer that was bounced back and forth 7 or 8 times...with each of us making one or more changes per bounce...and then repeating that process some time later when we revisited that same song because we didn't feel it was quite finished. That song had somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 bounces and re-writes occurred at each bounce. Did that finally make the song finished? Not exactly... but then again, who ever really thinks a song is done?

Way too many writers seem to think that they can write so good, that the first draft of a song is the final, "it don't get any better than this", version and asking them to consider rewriting the song is akin to telling them their kids are ugly and their breath stinks. I have felt that way when I was first starting writing songs, so I do understand the feelings many folks have for their creations. Now, I look at my songs as simply the next, or most recent step in the journey, and the learning process.

As writers, and musicians, we should all be continuously working on our craft to improve our skills. No one wants to remain an infant.... babies learn to walk, talk, and do things better. So should we, as songwriters, strive to become better. And one of the ways we can accomplish this task, is to rewrite our songs.