Martin Sutton:
Authenticity is everything. You can write a love song, you can write a million love songs, but if you're not feeling the love, nobody will believe any one of those songs. And yet, if you are really feeling a love song and you sing a very, very simple message, then everybody on the planet will believe you.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.
All right. I'm excited to be here today with the one and only Martin Sutton. Martin is a celebrity British songwriter, record producer, mixer, and a songwriting coach and mentor. He's written for artists worldwide, including LeAnn Rimes, Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys, just to name a few. And right now he has the last few years been building a mentorship program for songwriting, for helping musicians. Really dig into what is arguably the number one most important thing that dictates your success as a musician, which is your art and your songwriting itself. So really excited to be able to connect with him today and be able to share some of the lessons he's learned from being able to write number one hit songs with so many different artists. So thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.

Martin Sutton:
Absolute pleasure to be here. And just for clarity, because I know there are fact-checkers out there, but I also like complete transparency. The Celine Dion thing, that was mixing orchestration credits. I'm still trying to get that cut with Celine, but she's in my list of credits for people I've worked with along the way. So all of the rest of them, yeah.

Michael Walker:
Wow. Regardless, super, super impressive and thanks for the clarification. Yeah, we must have just pulled that as a list of credits since you did work on the project. Cool. Your heart will go on and on. So awesome. Gosh, we were just catching up backstage and it's been an incredible few years in terms of ... For better or for worse with the pandemic at the time of recording this, we went through this transformation where there was a necessity to take things that we had been doing in person or live and bring it into the online world.
And I know for you particularly, you did so much in the form of mentorship for songwriters and doing live retreats and now you've been able to turn all that experience and wisdom that you had through the connections that you had made with the people in person and be able to turn it into digital courses and education and mentorship for people online. Maybe you could start by just sharing, in all of your experience now, both with the digital world and the in-person world, what do you really see as the role of songwriting? When an artist is getting started in their career and they're looking at how can I take my passion and turn it into an actual career or something that I can do and specifically how that relates to songwriting, what are some of the misconceptions or mistakes that you see artists struggling with when they first come?

Martin Sutton:
Brilliant. Let me unpack it. There's a few different questions there. The first thing about songwriting, the role of songwriting, is it's arguably the most crucial role in the music business because you can have the best singer in the world depending on your taste, your Celine, your Rihanna, your Miley, whoever it is that you love listening to, but without a great song they're just good voices. Great voices even. But it's the song that really shows the voice and it's the voice that really dictates the furthering success of the song.
But there was a dear friend of mine called Ralph Murphy who's now passed but he was a real pivotal character in ASCAP in America. And he used to describe the music business as an upside down pyramid. And he said you've got your merchandise, you've got your record sales, you've got your touring, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You've got a streaming. And he said, and right at the bottom, the whole thing is balancing on a great song. The biggest misconception I would say that people have about songwriting is that it's just about expressing yourself and everything else will take care of itself. I have so many people saying to me, "Yeah, but you can't teach songwriting. The true songwriters just express themselves."
Absolutely. Every song that I write, I express myself. There's got to be authenticity in there. There's got to be heart. There's got to be truth. There's got to be that portion of real down to earth heart driven truth in every song that I write, but that's not enough. You've got to be able then to take it in a form that makes sense to you, but it then makes sense to everybody else that listens to it or as many people around the world that listen to it and makes sense to them so they can relate to it. And when they relate to it, they'll listen all the way through it. And if they love it because they relate to it so well, then it will become a soundtrack to their lives. It will become part of that soundtrack.
You've probably got one, Michael, haven't you? A soundtrack, a playlist of the songs that have been pivotal in your life. Those milestones songs. When I got married, when I had my first child, when I met someone, when I lost someone. And you don't get those songs by accident. Occasionally there'll be a song that comes out and everybody goes, wow, that's great, and you don't need to do much to it. The biggest misconception in songwriting is that one of, I'll just write what I feel and let everything else fall where it does, and I'll just leave the rest up to chance. You have to craft. You have to not settle on it because so many songwriters, they know exactly what's going on in the song, but they forget to tell other people. And if you want someone to love your song, then you've got to enable them to be able to love it.
If you're in a relationship or you are in a potential relationship with someone, you can't just stand there looking at someone thinking to yourself, "Well, I know how awesome I am, so surely they must know as well." You've got to start showing them your character. You've got to start saying things that have some kind of impact on their emotional state that cause an emotional response in them. And then if you do that enough of the time, they will fall in love with you. And a song is like animate being, in my opinion. The more you indulge your song and the more it pulls you in, then the more you're able to engage with it and fall in love with it. And when people fall in love with songs, they'll do all of the work for you.
They will tell everybody how amazing that song is. They'll phone up their friends and say, "Oh my God, have you heard that great song by ..." They'll be the ones that do so much of your marketing for you because it's a great song. So that for me is the key thing. It's about writing from you, but for other people. The caveat to this ... And forgive me banging on about it, Michael. But the caveat to this is that if you are creating art for art's sake and you really don't care what people think of your song, great. That's fine. I applaud you. I salute you. Put it under the bed, leave it on a hard drive, do whatever you do with it. But the moment an artist hangs a painting on a wall, he's seeking some kind of reaction. A desired reaction. He might want people to hate it. Might want people to be appalled by his painting. That's still a desired reaction that he wants from it.
He might want, or she might want to, or they might want to have people love the painting. But the moment you hang it on a wall, if it's a painting or if it's a song, you play it to someone, then you need to start considering the people that you're playing it to. And I've had so many people, particularly when we put ads out saying, "Hey, this is what we do." Just going, "Oh, this is all formulate bullshit." No it's not. It's just understanding how people think, how people feel and enabling them to love our songs. Enabling our songs to start talking to the people and showing them their character. So I hope that makes sense.

Michael Walker:
Totally makes sense. Man, that's super powerful. It sounds like what you're saying is that ... First of all, I want to just note that the idea of making music completely for yourself, while there's certain expression to that and healing from it, maybe if it's processing stuff and you don't necessarily have to share it with other people, it seems like our relationships with other people and the community that we build and the connections that we build with other people is what gives meaning to our life and it's what makes music so special. It brings people together and it creates community. It sounds like one of the things you're saying is that that's the approach to take is that it's about sharing your truth, but also it's about connecting with people and being able to express that in a way that they can understand. The analogy that came to mind-

Martin Sutton:
And ...

Michael Walker:
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Martin Sutton:
Yeah. It's so right. You can love yourself and everybody should love themselves, but isn't love so much more powerful when you give it to someone else too? And the same with songs. Sharon Vaughn, one of our mentors, she's a Nashville Hall of Fame songwriter. Had multiple, multiple hits with huge artists. She has a song that saved somebody's life. A woman was driving along the freeway and she'd lost her husband and was looking for an embankment to finish it all. And Sharon's song came on the radio. The woman heard the song, the lyric resonated, the song resonated with her so much that she pulled over into a lay-by, she cried for an hour, and then she turned around and went back home. And she met Sharon and her co-writer on a cruise, which was a songwriter's cruise, and told Sharon and her co-writer this, and they were like, wow.
A year later, she came back on the same cruise, and while Sharon and her co-writer sang the song acoustically at the rear end of the boat, the captain had opened the back of the boat and the woman scattered her husband's ashes and petals. This is a song that ... Sharon didn't know the woman when she wrote the song. She wrote the song. And as Sharon says, "When we send our songs out there, we don't own them anymore. We're giving them, we're gifting them to people." And this song saved this woman's life. Saved her life. She then came back the following year as well with her new husband, and she was a bereavement counselor. So she went on to save other people's lives. Now, how many other things can you do without meeting someone you can have that impact on them? And why deny people that joy, that freedom, that life that we give them with our music? Why would you even want to consider doing that? In some cases it's arrogance where you go, well, if they don't get it's their problem. Maybe so, but wouldn't it be so much better if they did get it?

Michael Walker:
All right. Let's take a quick break from the podcast so I can tell you about a free special offer that we're doing right now exclusively for our podcast listeners. So if you get a ton of value from the show, but you want to take your music career to the next level, connect with a community of driven musicians and connect with the music mentors directly that we have on this podcast, or if you just want to know the best way to market your music and grow an audience right now, then this is going to be perfect for you. Right now we're offering a free two-week trial to our music mentor coaching program. And if you sign up in the show notes below, you're going to get access to our entire music mentor content vault for free. The vault's organized into four different content pillars. The first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and last but not least, the business.
When you sign up, you unlock our best in-depth masterclass from a network of world-class musicians and industry experts on the most cutting edge strategies right now for growing your music business. On top of that, you'll get access to our weekly live masterminds where our highest level of Modern Musician coaches teach you exactly what they're doing to make an income and an impact with their music. Then once a month, we're going to have our Music Mentor Spotlight series, and that's where we're going to bring on some of the world's biggest and best artist coaches and successful musicians to teach you what's working right now. And one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top level music mentors. So a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast are there live interacting with you personally. So imagine being able to connect with them directly.
On top of all that, you'll get access to our private Music Mentor community. And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of Music Mentor and maybe the most valuable is that you're going to have this community where you can network with other artists and link up and collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career. So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now. You can sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing contents, connect with the community, and sign up for the live masterclass that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our podcast, supporting the show, so don't miss it out. Go sign up for free now and let's get back to our interview.
Holy cow. What a powerful story. Yeah. And it does seem like music has sort of this unique ability to be able to transmit emotion. To be able to almost communicate in a language that transcends traditional language and to be able to save someone's life that you've never met across the world. Holy cow. One of the analogies that comes to mind ... Because it sounds like really what you're describing here is not recommending that people ... I don't know. That they sacrifice their integrity or their authenticity or write something that's not true for them in order to try to appease the masses or try to ... It sounds like what you're saying is you want to connect your truth, but be able to express it in the way that resonates with the most people. And what comes to mind is that, it's almost like being able to speak the language or speak a language that someone else speaks.
Even if you had the most beautiful poem and it brought you to tears ... It was just the most magical poem that maybe could potentially save someone's life, but then you were saying it in a different language then you might be in tears, but the person you're trying to speak to, they wouldn't get it. It wouldn't resonate. They wouldn't understand it. And so it seems like what you're talking about is you're providing material to help people communicate the language of songwriting that allows them to take their truth and be able to present it in a way that actually resonates with as many people as possible.

Martin Sutton:
It is a language. And there are certain psychological devices, if you will, that we can use when we are talking to people. And talking to people in a conversation or through a song. Now, for example ... And there are literally dozens of these devices that we teach in our courses. But the usage of silence. Now, if somebody is delivering a monologue about something and they become really deliberate with their message and they leave those slightly awkward silences in there, what that does when we are listening to something like that, it pulls us in. We don't back away. When there are those spaces, we're waiting for those spaces to be filled and we lean into the orator. That's what we do when people are having a conversation. Just using silence in a song in terms of, I don't mean no music, I mean in terms of being quiet for a while where people might expect a lyric melody to be, just by having the confidence to leave space there actually makes people lean into our song as long as it's not too long and not too short. The perfect length makes people lean into our song and engage with it more.
Now, that's nothing to do with music, that's to do with psychology. If we repeat something ... We know that there's the old adage that repetition is a songwriter's best friend. And I've had people say to me, "Yeah, well that's pop, isn't it?" It's like, well, how about da, da, da, dum, da, da, da, dum. Sequential repetition that is. So the same sequence of notes in a different place in the key, but it's repetition. Now, why is repetition so powerful? If we want to learn a language, we don't just read a book once and read the vocabulary of that language once. Read a few of the novels of that book. Say all of the words once, and then we've suddenly got it and we can suddenly say, well, that's Portuguese nailed then. What we do is we say it over and over and over again. This is how we learn any subject. We learn by repetition.
So by that token, if we want somebody to walk away at the end of our song being able to sing it and maybe wake up with it in their head ... Wouldn't that be a lovely thing? Where they wake up listening to our song in their head. Then we have to teach them it. It's our duty to teach them. We can't just hope that they're going to remember it. And one of the ways that we teach them our song is through repetition. We find the hook in the song and we repeat it. Now, I know a lot of people that are listening to this may go, well, obviously you repeat a hook, but this is about understanding the psychology of a listener of a piece of music. When to use silence, when to use repetition, when to use a different placement within the bar, when to change the phrasing up, when to use a different form of syncopation, when to sing high, when to sing low, why it's important that we sing high and low and take them on a rollercoaster instead of just a flat road. And when it's okay to take them on a flat road.
There is no formula for it. You can't say, well, each song should have these elements in this order. That's bollocks. What it should actually have is something that is sympathetic to the message that you are trying to create. You should have prosody in the song, which is where the musical theme matches the lyrical theme. Or if it's the opposite to the lyrical theme where you have a sad lyric, but a happy melody. You know why and you've deliberately done the opposite of prosody. So all of these things are used when they are there to compliment and be sympathetic to the message of the song, the theme of the song. Is it a big celebratory song? In which case it would be pretty useful to use these things. Is it a club song where people are going to be dancing? They don't want a deep message. So simplicity is key because they just want something they can point at their friend and laugh and go hey, you're dancing over there. Something really, really basic because they don't want to be going in the club and going, isn't life just amazing when you're thinking about the darkest things on the planet and isn't the planet in a terrible state? They don't want that when they're having a great time.
So it's understanding people. It's understanding where music and people meet. And so I always describe songwriting as maths and love. It's understanding the science behind music, but understanding that it's there to deliver a message of some kind that originate in your heart. And you're so right, authenticity is everything. You can write a love song, you can write a million love songs, but if you are not feeling the love, nobody will believe any one of those songs. And yet, if you are really feeling a love song and you sing a very, very simple message, then everybody on the planet will believe you.
Just look at Dolly Parton, I will Always Love You. And it's a heartbreaker. It's just beautiful because it was real. It's what she wrote for Porter Wagner. She's leaving the show. And that's the power of authenticity. And so many people overlook that. We're not looking to create clones of this song or that artist. Everything that is important to me is about enabling other people to be the best themselves that they can be and the truest to themselves as well. And that's why when I reach out and read books and I watch videos that are about metaphysics and Buddhism and psychology, it's because I want to be a better me and I need the help of other people, and I'm here to pass what I know of in my area of specialty to other people as well. I find it absolutely fascinating. And I can talk for weeks as you've just realized.

Michael Walker:
It's so good. It's so good. I can dictate how well a conversation is going by the amount of times I get goosebumps as I'm listening, and I've gotten goosebumps several times as you've been speaking. So I think that means that there's a lot of truth in there.

Martin Sutton:
Thank you.

Michael Walker:
What I love about what you're sharing is that I think it can be a challenge sometimes for musicians to know how to balance wanting to have commercial success while also wanting to be true to themselves. And it sounds like really the core message here is that you can do both and that it's like starting with a big ice block that is you, but then you can chip away at the ice block to create an even more compelling, beautiful image or version, but it's all you and it's all there. And it's just about chipping that away to be able to communicate that.

Martin Sutton:
The irony is, Michael, that the people that chase the money first have the hardest job getting it. And at the beginning of my career in earnest in the music business, I'd quit my job to be in the music business full-time and I'd started off pretty green about everything. And I got a load of briefs coming in. I managed to make friends and get briefs of major artists that were looking for songs. And I failed on every one of them because I was just thinking, I'm going to write this song for Tina Turner, I'm going to write this song for ... And there was no authenticity there and I was just trying to write what I thought people wanted to hear. I reached a point, maybe accidentally, where I just started writing songs that really resonated with me, that had that authenticity in it, and I stopped chasing the dollar and started doing what I absolutely loved. But I still was using the techniques that I also knew would work. Things that I had learned in years and years and years, decades ... Now, three decades I've been doing it. But things that I've learned along the way where you go, I love that technique. That would really help in this song. Oh, I love that melodic ... That little contour of the melody there. I'll use that contour in this song.
All of these things that you pick up along the way and you use them to craft something that you love to bits. And the irony of the music business is that if you do it for the right reasons, the money will far more likely follow. If you do it for the right reasons. That doesn't mean that, again, that you just do whatever you want and you leave it in the lap of the gods. You have to work at it. It's not easy. You have to craft your song and rewrite and not be afraid to rewrite it as many times as it takes. Pharrell, rewriting Happy, something like 13 times I think it was. But he made something ridiculous, like 20 million bucks off the song.
But you've got to be prepared to put in the work to do it, but focus on the art. Focus on the craft of it, and the rest will follow. My only goal when I go into a co-write these days, or any writing session ... If I'm writing by myself or if I'm in a co-write with someone, my only goal is to write a song that I'm proud of. And I'll tell you why. Because pretty much every session that I've ever had where at the end of the session I've said, "I don't care what happens to this song, I'm always going to be proud of it," it's ended up being picked up by a major label artist. It's nuts. And the ones where I thought, "Oh yeah, this ticks all of the boxes," absolute nothing. And it remains true to this day. My biggest successes have been the ones where I've been choking up or dancing around the studio or feeling 10 foot tall and bulletproof, getting the feels for what I've created and thinking, oh my God, my great grandkids are going to love this in a hundred years time. That is what's important to me. And guess what? Those are the ones that are successful for me.
So I'm sticking with that. None of the advice that I give or anybody else in the academy ... I'm not holding a gun to anyone's head, but I can tell you that it's worked for me. Don't chase a dollar, pursue the art, pursue your curiosity of it, and make it the very, very best it can be and watch what happens.

Michael Walker:
Super powerful. I love that. One question I would love to get your perspective on. Like you mentioned over three decades of experience, you're working with songwriters on a variety of different experience levels from complete beginners to people who are multi-platinum, number one hit songwriters. So I'd love to hear from your perspective if you could personify these two different songwriters. On one hand you have someone who's a totally green, starting out fresh and embodies all of the mistakes that you see artists struggling with when it comes to songwriting versus the number one hit songwriters and the people who are really fully embodying their craft and are really plugged in. I'd love to hear just a little bit about what do you think are the major things that you notice as reoccurring patterns or archetypes with those two different types of songwriters? For someone who's starting out completely fresh when it comes to, if you're listening to their song, what are a few common mistakes or things that you think that would come up naturally versus if you're sitting down listening to a song from someone who is at the top of their ... What stands out?

Martin Sutton:
I think I can sum this up in one four letter word, which is care. I and all of the many, many hit songwriters that we have as coaches in the academy and all of my friends that are hit songwriters outside of the academy that I've worked with, it's that duty of care for the song. I used to use an expression, serve the song. Everything you should do should serve the song, and not your ego. So you don't just go, oh yeah, I'm pretty awesome. That should be fine. It's like, no, you look at the song and you serve the song. I've changed it recently to honor the song. Honor it. Get down on your bloody knees and honor that song. Build it up until it's the very, very best it can be. And that only happens if you care enough about it. Not about yourself, about the song.
Like I say, for me, they're living beings. That's how they feel to me. It's like they have character, they have life, they feel real to me. And this is like honoring them with the biggest love that you can possibly find. And I know that sounds very soft and fluffy, but every hit songwriter that I've worked with, we will sit there and we will write, we'll talk about the idea, we'll care about the idea. We'll then put the rough shape of the song down, and then we'll care enough to go in and then make it better, and then better and better.
You mentioned a block of ice earlier. I often talk about creating a song as a like a sculpture. You start with a block of stone. And instead of seeking perfection straight away, trying to carve one perfect eye ... It's like trying to get the first line of your song perfect before you can move on. Just knock the rough shape out first, but then care enough to say, well, yeah, it's the dimensions of a person, but okay, let's get some limbs on it now. Now let's go in and get some fingers and elbows and some facial features. Now let's go in and get the lips and the ear lobes and the fingernails. Now let's get the skin tone and the eyelashes. And you just keep going in, keep going in, keep going in. Standing back, coming back to it another day, looking at it and going, yeah, let me just have a look at this and just polishing one little bit here or there and making it the best.
And honestly, I think the biggest disparity between newcomers, emerging songwriters, and people that have been doing it a long time is the amount of care that's given to it. And in defense, sometimes it's impatience. A new songwriter might go, "Oh, this is great. I love it." But it's here. They're like, I can't see my hand. Where's my hand? Because they're so close to it, they can't be objective about it, or they may not want to be because they're so pleased because they've made this little music baby, but they don't realize that it's an ugly baby. I'm a bad person. I'm going straight to hell for that one.
But people don't realize. They can't be objective about it. So the care is one thing. But I will say this, that being an emerging, a new songwriter does not mean that you can't do what somebody with 30 years in the business can do. It doesn't mean that at all. It's not something that is some kind of secret alchemy, and it's not a magic formula. What it is, it's the combination of the right feelings at the right time and an expression at the right time, and empathy with each other in a room or empathy with a listener and care, like I say. I've written songs with some of the biggest songwriters in the world, and some of them have been assholes and been horrible to work with. That's not why I'm in it.
And the songs that the songs have been nothing. I've felt nothing at the end of the session. Nothing. But conversely, I've been in writing sessions ... Slight tangent here, but we hold these songwriting retreats in Spain where I rent an entire village and fill it with 30 songwriters. And the coaches actually write with the students for a whole day. So every student gets to write with a coach for a whole day. But we're not there giving lessons as coaches. We're just doing our best to write a hit song. Some of my favorite songs and the songs I'm most proud of have been written with complete newbies on the retreat. Because with the right attitude that they have, and that attitude of care, the attitude of patience, the attitude of empathy and desire, passion to write something fantastic, that can take you way further than years of experience can. Much, much further. Too many embittered songwriters that have been in the game too long and don't care anymore.
But I love the new songwriters that are passionate about what they're doing. And songs that have literally had me and the other coaches in tears at the retreats because they've worked. These newbies have come in with ideas. They've come in with the perfect attitude and willing to have the conversation first and find out what we're all feeling before we jump into a song and all of those things that go to make up a great song. So honestly, I've written some of my favorite songs with complete newbies, and I would never put them on a different level to established hit songwriters because as in any walk of life, you get some gorgeous people and you get some assholes. And they both occur at both ends of the spectrum. But I'd much rather have a gorgeous beginner at songwriting than somebody that's not so pleasant that's a hit songwriter, frankly.

Michael Walker:
Oh man. There's so much good stuff in there. And I think it's a really encouraging message for songwriters to be able to understand that it's not necessarily that they need to be a number one multi-platinum songwriter in order to be successful. That you can start right where you're at and that the differentiator is, like you said, it's caring. And I want to speak to that real quick too, because that idea of caring, I hope that lands with people and they understand that idea, it's not just like a airy fairy, oh ... It's not a ambiguous ... There's a real tangible caring. And what it reminds me of is ... This broke my heart open in the best way. Last week I attended a mastermind group with one of my mentors, and he brought in a guy named Dean Graziosi, who was a good friend of his. And he's in the middle of doing a launch with Tony Robbins, and they're just breaking down this millions and millions of people who had registered for this launch and their systems.
Everyone was asking questions about how it works. And there's a moment where he just paused and he said, "All this stuff we're talking about this marketing, geeky, techy stuff is really cool and I geek out about this, I love this. But the number one thing, the number one reason for Tony's success and for the growth of these launches is that is the amount of caring. It's the amount of caring that Tony puts into this and we put it as this." And he said ... It was almost like an offhand comment, but he said something like, "No matter how much you care about your community, no matter how much you care about the people around you, you have the capacity within you to care 10 times more." Gosh, there was something that just clicked with that that made me feel emotional because as it relates to Modern Musician and our music community, I care so much about the community already. And the idea that no matter how much you care, there is the capacity to be able to care 10 times more and go deeper into that heart is so powerful.
And the last part that I'll share as it relates to caring was another one of my mentors, someone named Evan Pagan, tells a tells a story about when he met Steve Jobs. And he had the opportunity to ask him a question after one of his presentations. And basically he asked Steve Jobs, "If there's one thing that you had to attribute to the success of Apple and yourself, what would it be?" And Steve Jobs paused for a second, and he cocked his head and he's like, "I think you just really have to care. I think it's caring." He talks about after he heard that for a moment, he was like really? That's it? Caring? And then as he digested it and reflected on it, he realized that that's true. That that's really the ultimate root of their success, and really almost humanity itself.
And what you talked about looping back to the beginning of the conversation around writing not just for yourself, but about doing it for other people in the community and the connection, that's what caring is. So I just wanted to honor what you just said about caring. And hopefully that lands for people, and that's something you can actually connect with, is that realization that the more you care about the art and the more that you care about providing value for other people in the form of expressing your art, the more connected you're going to be and the more success that you'll have long term.

Martin Sutton:
Yeah. It's so, so true. I remember Steve Jobs saying that. He said, "I just wanted to leave a dink in the universe." Which I loved that. For me, songwriting is very much like that. I want to be able to leave behind something special that people listen to in a 100, 200, 500 years time. They can listen to it and feel like they know me. And particularly my relatives, my ancestors. Ancestors? Is it the other way around? Whatever it is that goes later. But yeah. I really want to be able to do something that I'm proud of, but deliver something that leaves the world a better place. And you don't just do that by chipping a few bits out of a block of stone. You make the Venus de Milo if you can. And it's a simple concept. It's a really simple concept, but a lot of people care more about themselves and about the success than they do about the art. Get the art right first. You've got to look after yourself, and you do have to love yourself and care about yourself, but you've got to get the art right first, and then everything else will fall into place far, far easier and far, far quicker if you get the art right first. It's got to have enough of you in it, but able to reach out to other people, as I mentioned earlier.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Love it. One final question I would love to run by you is as it relates to songwriting with other people and co-writing songs. Because it seems like when you look at most of the top songs nowadays and throughout time, that it's rare that it was just one person. It happens, but it seems like much, much more often, especially nowadays, it's really a collaborative effort between multiple different songwriters coming together to create something new. So I'd love to hear you speak a little bit to that. To the art of co-writing. And for anyone here who maybe doesn't have a ton of experience with co-writing, where do they get started with developing that community?

Martin Sutton:
Okay. The first thing to do is learn how not to be a dick. I've always said co-writing is like 85% ... This is my arbitrary numbers that I've assigned to it. But 85% social interaction and 15% music. It's how you are with each other. I love collaboration. I still write songs by myself. I still had songs released that I've written by myself. Very proud of them. But I love collaborating. I love co-writing with people for so many reasons. It's made me a better writer because I've learnt things about songwriting that I didn't even know existed. I've learnt techniques and I've developed ability in other genres that I previously didn't have, and I probably wouldn't have had had I not worked with somebody that was an expert in that genre. So it's enabled me to really diversify with my skillset of writing.
But I love the experience, Michael. When someone says, "Okay, what's the first thing you do in a collaboration? What comes first, the lyrics of the music?" The first thing that comes is the conversation. So if you and I were sitting in a room and we'd been assigned to write together, I would not pick up a guitar. I would discourage anybody else from picking up a guitar or keyboard or start singing stuff or going through their list of ideas. And I would just go, "Let's have a cup of tea and get some cookies out. How are you doing? What's going on in your life?" And talk about life stuff. Because I guarantee that I, you, anybody can talk to a complete stranger for 20 minutes and at some point, if you ask enough questions instead of just talking about yourself, if you ask enough questions of each other, then at some point you will go, "Wow, that happened to you too? Oh wow. Wasn't that either awful or amazing?" Or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you both have a simultaneous emotional response to something. You're talking about getting the goosebumps earlier. That moment where you go, oh, you're feeling that too right? That thing.
And that's what I crave. That's what I search along for in a collaboration where you have that moment and you go, "Oh, yes. Oh, you're feeling that too? Oh, I'm feeling it too." And you get this ... Right now, we've got a theme. And then start, like I say, just knocking a few bits out of the bit of stone and not putting too much pressure on yourself or each other to write a hit song. Forget that. Forget that. Just try and work out what it is that you want to say first.
One of the things that I've said for years about songwriting, people overcomplicate it. It's two things. The first thing is knowing what you want to say, and the second thing is saying that but with music. That's it. So work out what the hell you want to say and then work out between you how you're going to say it with music. It's as simple as that and no, this is not dumbing it down. What it's doing is simplifying the process to make your songs accessible by other people. I could talk about collaboration for weeks and weeks and weeks, but the key points are never say no. Always try and say yes and when an idea comes up. First of all, you don't have the right to be an executive decision maker in a collaboration. Nobody does. Because there is no right or wrong. Everything is just a maybe. Well, let's see. It could be. What about? Why not? They're all questions. Nobody knows what's right or wrong in a song.
So it's yes, and it could be this. Even if you don't particularly like what someone suggested, yeah, let's put it down because it doesn't mean you have to make a decision there and then. People rush in, they're impatient. Chill out. You can decide in a couple of weeks time if you've got that long about whether that line could be bettered or not. So yes and, respect each other. Hold each other's ability with the highest regard even if you don't know that person. Even if they're a complete beginner, hold their ability and their contribution to the session with the highest regard. Because if you don't, they may clam up, be quiet and not deliver the line that could be your next number one single. Okay. So you allow everything through. You allow everything out of yourself. You unzip your chest and just go, here I am. Here's all my stuff. And the sooner you show your vulnerability in a collaboration, guess what? Everybody else in a room does too.
It's like if you're in a group of people ... And this is just an analogy. If you're in a group of 10 people and you go, "You know what? I really suffer from anxiety from time to time." Do you know the amount of people that had never said anything about it before in that room that will go, "Oh, thank God, me too." 40% of the population suffers from anxiety but 40% don't talk about it. So the sooner you show your vulnerability and your openness and your honesty in a collaboration, the sooner everybody else goes, oh yeah, me too. You've suddenly broken down all of those barriers and the should I say this or not, all of that kind of stuff.
So be vulnerable, be open, be honest, be patient. Listen to people, but listen with the intent to understand, not with the intention of replying. So many people will just ... They'll wait patiently and then they'll go, oh yeah, thanks very much, and blah, blah. But it's like, listen, with the intention of understanding what someone's really driving at. Take time. There's no rush. Take time to really listen to people's ideas and respect everybody. And yes and. And you know what? Be positive at all times. And if you go in and you're a great hang and you're good at having a conversation with people and you're open and you're pleasant, then it's going to be a good collaboration. Will you write a hit song? No idea. But it'll be a damn good day and the chances are those people will say, "Let's do this again." Or they may say, "Oh, I've got my hit songwriter friend Joe Q Public over there, you should work with him. You two would get on great." And suddenly you're building your network just by not being a dick. By being a decent person and having an open, honest conversation with people. That's where the gold is. In the honestly.
I told you we do the retreats where it's all about collaboration, but we've just launched our song camps, but they're with a difference. They're the write like a pro song camps. It's a one-day online thing. But they're guided by the coaches, which means that we give them live briefs at the beginning of the day but we go into the session. The coach will go into the writing session during the day, make sure everybody is playing nicely, but also give them guidance on their song, give them feedback at the end of the session as well on their song and we pitch the song as well.
But the whole point of this is to encourage more people around the world to collaborate with each other because the benefits of collaboration aren't just, well, we finished a song. It's the fact that you will learn more skills, you will develop better relationships with people, your social skills will improve, your listening skills will improve. So I believe it's made me a better person collaborating with other people, but also you'll build a network of people in the music business. And that's very similar to you with the Songwriting Academy. We're building this global community of decent people that are passionate about writing great songs. So that's the goal of it really. To really get people to embrace collaboration and work brilliantly together and get great results at the end of it too. So I'm super stoked about that because that's really what I'm passionate about.

Michael Walker:
So cool. Which official study documented this? There's probably been a few studies now, but it's something that's always stuck with me, is that when people are interviewed about whether they're fulfilled or happy or they're anxious or depressed, and you just look at these different indicators of someone's general life fulfillment, that consistently the thing that ranks the top, the very top of the list more than anything else ... It's not how much money they're making. Up to a certain point money really becomes not a big factor at all. It's not necessarily how successful they are or famous they are. But the number one thing that dictated whether someone was happy and fulfilled was their relationships and their community. And so much of what you're saying, it sounds like is speaking to that. That co-writing, it's about really the relationships and the community and connecting. And that ultimately that that's the part of what gives life its juice, is being able to enjoy having relationships and conversations and this creative expression together. And what a cool opportunity that you've created the space that you've created to empower people to allow them to connect with each other. Super cool.
So to get ready to wrap things up for today, one, I just want to thank you again for taking the time to be here. I love having conversations like this. It's three decades plus in the making, and so I feel like everything you're saying is just oozing with songwriting wisdom. I think the beginner, maybe the person who hasn't achieved mastery is always like, oh, here's a hack or a technique. And those things are true and they're cool, but the masters, they always come back to the heart and the root, and they have this grounded nature to them. So I hugely appreciate you bringing that. And I wanted to ask if you could share a little bit more details about ... You talked briefly about really what you do with Songwriting Academy and the community that you've built around co-writing and songwriting. Maybe you could share for anyone that's listening this right now who has resonated with the conversation and they're interested in digging into their own craft and learning how to write songs better, how to co-write with other. Could you share a few of the different resources that you have available for songwriters to be able to hone their craft?

Martin Sutton:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We've been eight years in the making with the Songwriting Academy. It started off as just an idea I scratched on the back of a napkin thing and it turned into this global network of connected people, as you were saying. And in those eight years, we've amassed a lot of resources and we've amassed an amazing team of coaches as well. What we pride ourselves on is treating people as individuals. There are numerous universities, colleges, et cetera, that will have a fixed syllabus for songwriting or a fixed syllabus for production or whatever it may be. But what I've noticed in the decades I've been doing at this is that I've never met two people who were at exactly the same point in their career and need the same advice at the same time. There are things that I can show people at the same time and they'll all go, "Oh, that's pretty cool." But in terms of ongoing learning and betterment, it's important that everybody is recognized as an individual.
So some people will come to the academy and they have never written a song before, but they've always wanted to. It's always been their heart's desire. One woman that came to us some years ago was a two times breast cancer survivor. She'd always loved music and she'd always put it to one side. And after two very life-affirming situations in her time, she said, "I didn't want to put it off any longer." And she joined us and three months later, the first song that she'd written was being performed on the stage of the West End Theater in London by a huge jazz singer called Liane Carroll. And it was surreal for her and beautiful for me. It was absolute tear-jerking moment for me because she had achieved it. She'd realized what she was put here to do, and she told me as much. She said, "I've realized what I want to do for the rest of my life now."
So some people will come in with that dream of writing their very first song. Some people have sold a million records and they want to pursue a new path of the music business. So our job is to look at people as individuals, look at where they're at right now and where they want to be. And by having that thing called conversation and actually interacting with people and saying, "What is it that you want?" And then we can start to map out a path for them to say, "Okay, these are the steps that you want to take." Now, there is no fixed path because the music business is a crazy one where different opportunities will swing across your path at time to time and knock you completely in another direction. You go, okay, this is cool.
But our job is to try and keep people as laser focused as possible on what their goal is and shift and move them through. So we do that by one-to-one mentoring, by giving song appraisals. The mentors and the coaches are ... We've got the most successful music faculty on the face of the planet. We've sold over a billion records between us. We've got Grammy winners, Emmy winners, Ivor Novello winners, you name it. And right through from producers to songwriters to music business experts, social media experts, mindset coaches, right across the board. And they're all still currently active in the music business, which is super important. So we're guiding people on their journeys with the very best coach. But along the way, we've also managed to film over 500 hours of masterclasses, seminars, webinars, coaching programs, you name it.
So we've got that as a huge resource for people to jump into. We still do a lot of live workshops. Every week we have a live workshop. So we've got subscription models where people at a very low rate can just join us and get a weekly live workshop that they can attend. And in the same month as having four of those, they can have two networking events that we put on as well where they meet other people and they have options then to if they want to get additional mentoring and appraisals on their songs, then they can do that.
We've essentially got a team of people that can advise people in every capacity. And students can now dive in at a very, very affordable base level, right up to doing an elite program with us for a year with constant, constant guidance as well as focused days just on them and their career. So it's a wide array of resources that we've got, and everything is based ... Just like on songwriting, it's based on care. We give a shit. We care about people succeeding and the mentors go above and beyond what they do to help people get to where they want to be. It's a remarkable thing. I get quite emotional talking about it because I never knew this was coming when I first wrote the idea down on the back of a napkin.

Michael Walker:
That's so cool, man. What an awesome resource and community to be able to plug into. So based on the fact that, like you mentioned, everyone's at a different place and their life and their songwriting path, so there might not necessarily be a one size fits all solution. But if someone's listening to this or watching this right now and they want to get started or take the next step, would you recommend that they just go to your website and go from there? Or do you have a starting point that you recommend that everyone gets started there? Or what would you recommend there?

Martin Sutton:
Yeah. I'd recommend going to the website, which is thesongwritingacademy.co.uk. I'm sure you'll drop the link somewhere. So go to The Songwriting Academy website. You can contact us. If you just literally just email help@thesongwritingacademy.co.uk, I've got an amazing team of staff as well that that love what they do, and they'll be able to guide people on ... In fact, we've got this whole new array of courses that are kicking off in February of this year, '23, that we're bringing in. So we've got a whole bunch of stuff that isn't on the site yet, but is literally prepped and ready to go.
But I just want to say one last thing, if I may. Not about the academy, just more about people. I've seen so many people that come into it in the early years of their life that come into it, maybe after they've had kids and done the job thing for a while, and they come back to themselves. And even people that come back to it in their 70s. We're coaching people in their 70s right now and a 17 year old. We've got one person who's, I think 76 or 77, and loving what we do, and they're doing really great work.
If you have a passion for music and you believe that it's what you were put here to do, don't put it off. Last year I wrote a song with one of the coaches in the academy. An amazing songwriter called Andrew Rollins, who's had nine songs on the Nashville TV series and he's an Emmy Award winner. And I was thinking about my kids one day when I saw an Instagram reel of Jay Shetty talking about the Buddha when he said, "Someone asked the Buddha, what's the biggest mistake people make? And the Buddha replied, the biggest mistake, you think you have time." And this caused such an incredible emotional response in me that I sat at the piano and started writing something for my kids. I got to a certain point, I thought, I would really love to bring Andrew in on this because he'll add something to the song. So we wrote the song together. And even then we had a moment where we weren't quite sure about something. And so my partner, who's also a great singer and songwriter, we asked her and she said, "Oh, maybe it's this in the second verse." We went, that's it. So she was then involved in the song as well. Every time I've played that song, people have wept. Not because it's a sad song, but because it's a song of hope. And I have never put things off in my life.
My dad died when I was 25, and he didn't get to achieve his dreams and that stuck with me. It's like, I know that we don't have the time that we think we have. And I want to encourage everybody to make the most of what they believe is their purpose in being here. That's the foundation of everything that the academy stands for. The song has such an effect. I played it at the retreat. One of the coaches that was on stage with me at the time who had written Celine Dion's latest hit song was in floods of tears. The other coach who's just written one of Drake's recent, just disappeared after the gig. After we'd done this little mini concert for everybody, he disappeared. And I caught up with him the next morning. I said, "Are you okay?" And he goes, "Yeah." He said, "After you sang that song," he said, "I had to go and phone my son."
That's why we do what we do. That's why we do it. And I encourage everybody, whether it's with the academy or not, if you love music and you think you were put here to do it, no matter what age ... Age has no bearing on it whatsoever. Nothing has any. Culture, genre ... Nothing has any bearing on it. If it's in your heart, just bloody do it. Just do it.

Michael Walker:
Holy cow, man. Getting me emotional as I listen to this. Such a powerful message. Thank you for sharing that and embodying that, both as a songwriter and in the community that you're building and what you're empowering artists to. Very, very cool. So thank you again for taking the time to be here and be able to share some of the lessons that you've learned. To be able to share your heart. And for anyone that's listening to this or watching this right now who is interested in exploring more, we're definitely going to put the links to everything in the show notes so you can click on that, go to the website. And I would highly encourage you to, if you resonated with any of this, to go check it out. Because I really do think that songwriting is really at the core of the value that you provide as a musician. And any of the marketing stuff that you learn, which I think is incredibly important, it's really just about bringing this core, bringing this heart, bringing this message, and sending it to people. And so you need to have that core, you need to have that heart. And I think it's one of the most valuable investments of time and energy that you can make in your music and in your craft. So Martin, thanks so much for taking the time to be here and looking forward to talking again soon.

Martin Sutton:
Thanks so much, man. I loved it.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music career to the next level. The time to be a Modern Musician is now and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.