Let me explain…
I’m not listening to recordings. I’m listening to the song I’m working on, playing it over and over in my head, dozens of times a day.
All day long I sing the song through and listen for the weakest part. I work on the weak part as I do dishes, shop for dinner, walk the beach. I audition line after line in my head. I write pages of options in my notebook. Finally something pops and I put it in the song and start singing through it again.
The line that popped has raised the bar and impacted the meaning and narrative of the song. With these new parameters fresh in my mind, I sing it through again and hunt for the next weak link. I do it over and over, sick to death of the fucking thing and yet moved to tears by the layers as they reveal themselves, line by line, marching forward through the unknown country of a new song.
Finally, after hundreds of iterations, we reach the end. There are no more improvements I can make. Everything is as sharp and concise and as rich as my talent has capacity for. Someone better could make it better, but I can’t. Sometimes it flows out of me in a few minutes or hours but often it doesn’t, and even when it does I still have to sing it in my head a hundred times to make sure.
I keep going through the song — now often out loud — to listen for awkward gaps, for slight changes in tense or pick up syllables that could make it sing better or hit closer to home.
Only after many sing-throughs without changes can I relax and feel the song is done. I’m tired from singing it but later I’ll be anxious about it and hum it through again to make sure.
This is my listening rotation, my own personal ecstasy and hellish doom-loop all in one.
Hopefully by this point the song is alive, like a person or the kind of memory evoked by perfume or charcoal smoke. If the song is alive it will breathe and grow. It will change as it gets played on guitar, as it gets built up in production and through many vocal takes and harmonies and counter-melody hooks.
But for the most part it’s done. I’m happy and exhausted — and ready for the next one to arrive. #singersongwriter