SongDoor is open from June 15 to November 15 this year if you want to open this songwriting contest. From the website:

SongDoor is an annual worldwide songwriting competition that’s open to amateurs and professionals, ages 16 and older.

We are here to help you do two things: first, get your music heard by industry pros who have influence and connections. Second, to help you be a better songwriter. We give you 3 FREE songwriting tools ($220 worth) just for entering. No other competition does that because no other competition cares about their writers like we do. Here’s the proof.

We also have the lowest entry fee ($10), by far. That’s about a third of most other contests. It’s been $10 since we started in 2006. Our judges are Grammy®/Emmy/Dove award winners, million-selling writers and music icons. We want to put your best work in front of them and launch a few careers.

Our winners and finalists have gone on to big things. Andrea Speaks (frequent finalist) has cuts under consideration for The Blacklist , Narcos, and others. Juliette Reilly now has 175k subscribers on her YT channel. Debra Gussin (2012) is working with Brian Bell (Weezer) to write songs for The Relationship. We could go on … point is, we’d like to add you to the list.

Good luck to you if you enter and may the Muse be with you…

One of my all-time favourites and right up there as one of my favourite Billy Joel songs. American Songwriter recently went behind the song Scenes from an Italian Restaurant off The Stranger album.

The song is a 3-in-1 mash up that simply works. After reviewing the background of the song, the article looks to Billy’s recounting of the lyric:

“When we were in high school, there were the people we thought who were so cool,” he continued. “I thought, ‘Man, I wish I was that guy. He had the perfect pompadour. He always had great clothes, the coolest shoes. He always went out with the coolest girl, and he was always the most popular guy. Then, I saw him at the 10-year union, and this guy was like a caved in ashtray…”

…

In piecing together the story, Joel questioned if the songwriting was “too preachy” in tone and soon came up with the “bottle of white” intro, which didn’t feel like a song in and of itself. “It’s a prelude to something,” he noted. He then took a cue from The Beatles’ iconic Abbey Road record, referencing “Golden Slumbers” from side two, specifically. Particular chords and other bits and pieces slowly came together to eventually culminate in one of Joel’s most enduring classics, produced by Phil Ramone.

Kudos to American Songwriter for reviewing this gem and for linking to a 1994 Billy Joel Masterclass given at Princeton that is embedded below that discusses this song. May the Muse stay with Billy, Brenda and Eddie, and you and me in our Italian Restaurant…

Vera Coupal of Regina, a 95 year-old woman living in long-term care, turned to songwriting in her nineties and has written 57 songs. She had her song recorded at the facility with a producer, Ryan Hicks, taking his portable studio to her home to record on-site. The CBC reported the story here.

And you can listen to Vera and Ryan in their own voices (with the song) here.

May the Muse stay with Vera…

Bob Boilen of All Songs Considered on NPR had a recent interview with Evan Stephens Hall of the band Pinegrove. The band just released its latest album Marigold and had a wonderful experiment before the album’s release – they released the lyrics and guitar tabs in advance of any of their fans actually hearing the album. As a result, many of their fans interpreted the lyrics and tabs and created their own songs. A wonderful experiment!

You can hear the experiment and fan’s interpretations here on the All Songs Considered site or find it with your favourite podcast app.  May the Muse be with you (as it was with these fans)…

Sheryl Crow recently performed at a fantastic Tiny Desk concert and afterward participated in a wonderful interview by Ann Powers, music critic at NPR.  You can find that audio interview and article here.

Ms. Powers covers a particularly poignant part of the interview, in which Ms. Crow is discussing the craft of songwriting today, as follows:

Mentioning a report she’d heard on NPR about how social media has reduced the average attention span, she said “while the kids are all writing fast food — which is super cool ’cause it tastes great, super filling — we’re sort of still writing salmon. We’re the songwriters that are here to tax your attention span.”

I like that – let’s all tax our attention spans and listen to some substantial songs out there (including Sheryl’s new album Threads).

May the Muse continue to be with Sheryl…

Android Pit posted a nice collection of apps for songwriters a couple of days ago. I’ll be checking them out and if you do too, please post below (or if you have some other suggestions).

Luke Saunders from Happymag.tv has compiled some interesting tidbits of songwriting in this online article.

My favourite one (of many) was from Leonard Cohen:

Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

Read some other great songwriting thoughts from Nick Cave and Tom Waits are also in the article.

May the Muse be with you…

Nick Lowe is featured in this Variety article after being honoured with the American Association of Independent Music’s Icon Award. A fascinating read from the Cruel to Be Kind songwriter/producer: a remembrance of Johnny Cash, working with Elvis Costello and the history of What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding…As for that song, Mr. Lowe opines: “The song is a standard. Whenever I hear people do it now it’s almost like I had nothing to do with it!”

May the Muse stay with you sir…

Here’s the tune, for what it’s worth:

May the Muse, the natural one, be with you…