Brian, Diversions? You're telling me! I can't remember for sure but I guess my comment (Passion? Emotion? Great songwriting? Leonard Cohen was around 50 when he wrote this. Jeff Buckley was around 27 when he recorded it) probably was a reply to your statement that a guy over 40 couldn't write with passion and emotion that would move younger people.

I still think he can. I think the ability to write a song that moves people, to touch them with passion and emotion, has nothing to do with the age of the composer. I think it has everything to do with his skill as a writer and passion for the subject as well as the passion and delivery of the performer.

But I could be wrong and you could be right. I'll always allow for that.

Now I agree completely about writing what you know. That is an essential component of any good writing. In some ways that favors the older writer, since he's probably seen more of life than the younger writer.

I also agree you can't fake passion or fool the audience. And you should never try. I should never try to write a song like Alanis Morissette's angry chick revenge song because its style and point of view, for whatever reason, doesn't interest me at all. To write a song for her target audience just because it exists is ridiculous. Again, I agree with you: write what you know and what you feel a passion about.

So I see little that we disagree about.

Except that Morissette song. It just didn't move me. But millions were moved and disagree with me. Only shows I wouldn't always know a hit song if came up to me on the street, shook my hand and introduced herself.

But I knew Coldplay's Viva la Vida was a hit the first time I heard it!






Write from your heart, not what you think others want to hear.

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