Leading with Lyrics: How turning life experiences into art made me a songwriter.
I remember leaning my head on the window in the back of my mother's car, watching the rain fall and feeling a very nostalgic sense of comfort and peace. The songs she played always felt like a hug from an old friend. I remember "I Couldn't Love You More" by Sade filling the car with such tranquility that would lead to my love for what I've learned to be classic soul music. Music that encourages, eases the mind, and speaks to a personal experience. Whether talking about love, loss, faith, or revelation, the music pulled me in, but the lyrics held me there. That's it, that's what I want to do. Pull the listener in with the music, but let the lyrics hold them there. Songs that I resonate with always had lyrics that spoke to an experience I can identify with or desire to identify with. "Ex-Factor" by Lauryn Hill, "Closer" by Goapele, "Holy" by Donnie McClurkin, and so many more songs impacted the way I listen to and create music.
Before writing songs healed me, poetry did. As an 11-year-old, it was me and my composition book against the world. Each page filled with words that carried a certain rhythm. The emotions that I couldn't express through simple conversation had a place to exist poetically. It's like wrapping your thoughts in a bow. Anger, sadness, joy, confusion, all of it had a place to live outside of my mind. This went on until I was 16. Then I found GarageBand and started making music for fun. Once I created something I liked, I wrote to it. This took my love for writing to another level. The years that I spent portraying my emotions and experiences in poetry became the training that I believe strengthened my songwriting.
Anytime I wanted to write a song, I reached into the parts of my mind that were hidden behind what was "priority." Those daily thoughts that keep us "productive" tend to shadow the parts of us that crave attention. So in my songs they go. It takes vulnerability to allow such parts of yourself to be on public display, but imagine those who need a song that speaks to the parts of life they can't quite make sense of and convey. Imagine the creativity that could endlessly flow from the mind that endlessly harbors memories from all you've experienced. Taking a picture with your pen and putting those emotions on a beat is poetry in motion. This is how I have been and will continue to be a songwriter.
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