Clay Mills: When was the last time you saw somebody that wrote, and sang, and did everything themselves, you know? It doesn't happen that way. When you co-write, say you co-write with 2 other people. Now you've got 3 people pushing that song out into the world. When you write by yourself. You're in your room trying to push that song out by yourself. So co-writing, it opens doors in the industry. Every publisher will tell you: I find my new writers because they're writing with the writers I already have, and they tell me about this writer and I go: oh my gosh, those are good songs they're writing. I got to sign this person! So, it really doesn't matter what you want to do, being a better co-writer is going to help you. I personally hook up members that they'll write me and say: Hey, I'm looking for a great lyricist for this kind of thing, and I'll hook them up when I can too. So yeah, it's not that hard. It's just a matter of jumping in the pool and be willing to make a few mistakes early on.

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 a 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 Clay Mills. So, Clay is a 16-time ASCAP hit songwriter, 2-time Grammy nominee. He's had over 150 major artist cuts, penned 5 number one hits, 6 top five singles, 12 top 40 singles, and he's even been inducted into the Mississippi songwriters hall of fame in 2022. Pretty amazing. He's written hits for artists like Darius Rucker, Diamond Rio, Kimberly Locke, and in addition to doing this for himself personally and really providing huge value to these artists with their songs, he's also really been an amazing advocate for songwriters rights. He co-founded SongTown.com, which helps songwriters come together and work on their craft and collectively nurture what it is that we're doing with this creative ability to generate songs together as a community. So that's kinda a long winded way of saying he is the real deal as it relates to songwriting and I'm really excited to have him on the podcast today to share some of the lessons that he's learned around: how do you tap into who you are to be able to create songs that resonate with you and resonate with the wider audience. So Clay, thank-you for taking the time to be here today.

Clay Mills: Yeah, man, it's great. I haven't seen you in a couple of years, or actually probably since before COVID. So it's great to catch up with you again and be a part of this community today.

Michael: Absolutely. I'm excited to have you here. I think since the last time we talked your setup has upgraded. It's gone to the next level. The DSLR setup looks great. You were just jamming out on your piano beforehand. Who knows, maybe the next time we do this, maybe 5 years from now we'll be able to actually play piano in sync with each other and perform do stuff at the same time. That’d be pretty cool.

Clay Mills: That would be great for writing. I do so much writing on zoom and where one person plays and then the other person plays. It would be great to be able to play together.

Michael: Yeah. It seems like we're approaching technology where that might be possible. What is it, right now you need special software, but it's not quite there yet. What is the current status of that for using a tool for songwriting? What's like the industry standard if you want to do some co-writing sessions?

Clay: Honestly, we're just writing on standard Zoom. There's no special deal going on. If you're a recording studio, I know they have technology so someone can be remote and be recording live, but really for songwriters, we’re zooming it all the way right now. 

Michael: Yeah, it does seem like Zoom is the industry standard for all kind of video conferencing, but yeah, who knows, maybe at some point we'll be able to have live in-sync productions like that'd be pretty cool. All right, Clay to kick things off, I'd love to hear a little bit about your story of creating SongTown, and as it relates to become a songwriter, how did you go from where we all start out, which is basically from scratch from nothing, to being able to network and connect with some of these multi platinum artists.

Clay: Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about that at the end of this year because I just did a podcast on our SongTown podcast about what it's going to take to cut through the noise in 2024. I think a lot of times as writers and artists, we look at successful people and we go: Oh, I've got to do what they're doing, and we forget that they've been doing it for a while and they've got tools that we don't all have when we're starting out, they've got the money, they've got the connections. So I just went back and looked at my own career and talked to some of my friends about what it was that helped them break through as artists and writers. I asked Mark Bright, he's a producer, produces Shakira, he's produced Carrie Underwood, just a ton of big acts. He was my first publisher. I said: why did you sign me? I didn't have any hits, I just sent you my home demo tape, and he said it was because you had something unique to say. You were different than everything else out there. Now that wasn't to say that I was completely out of the genre. What I did would work within the genre, but I had my own unique voice. I brought my own style to it. That publishing deal lasted a few years. I did not have any hits. Mark Brighton, he knew I was talented, but I had a long way to go. So my second publisher, after EMI promptly dropped me, I called him the other day and said the same thing: why did you sign me? He said the same thing to me. He was like, you had something different that none of my other writers had. And so I started talking to some friends of mine who were successful artists/successful writers, and we really all came to this conclusion that you've got to develop your own voice, especially going into the new year in 2024. With AI, which can be a useful tool, there's a danger that people are falling into that so much of music is sounding alike now. We can go onto YouTube and hear someone all the way across the world, and it influences us. It's harder to just be your own thing anymore. So with AI going on, and people are telling you: Oh, you don't write your own lyrics? Well, AI will write them for you. You gotta remember AI is writing the lyrics for a lot of other people now, so it's becoming more and more important, even if you use those tools, to really, if you're into songwriting, if you want to be an artist that writes your own songs, to become a killer songwriter, to develop your own voice, even if you're thinking: my skill will be prompting AI. If you don't know songwriting skills at a high level, you're not even going to know how to prompt it. You're not going to know that “I need the fifth word to rhyme it, but it doesn't need to be an accented syllable”. You'll just be totally lost when you're coming to AI. So if you want to use AI as a tool, great. But man, you can never get away from having your own voice. It is the only thing that will make you stand out in a crowd, whether you want to be an artist or whether you want to be a writer. In January and February at SongTown, we do these masterclasses where we teach writers to level-up their songwriting. I'm trying to think about who all has gone through these classes. We've had #1 pop writers like Sarah Davis. If you listen to her big hit with GAYLE, they met in SongTown. Huge song, biggest song of the year last year: ABCDEFU. They employ all the techniques that Sarah learned in our classes. It's just real important to get the fundamentals down. You can write a song and pour your heart into it, but if your technique’s off, if your fundamentals are trash, then that song's not going to do anything. Case-in-point with ABCDEFU, Gayle was posting regularly on her social media, getting her music out there. It took a special song that resonated with people. Then overnight, her socials blew up. She wasn't working and working to build great socials so that she could have a career, she had one song that resonated with millions of people, billions of listens, and that song blew up everything for her. I think a lot of times, it's important to build your social media, it's important to work through all those other steps, but at the end of the day, you've also got to have a great song. If you don't have a great song, it's not going to happen. That's what we try to do with SongTown is build tomorrow's best songwriters. Lee Starr wrote a #1 country song, we have #1 bluegrass songs, pop songs. Our writers are kicking ass and it's because they're learning to write songs the right way. And I'm not saying a formula. They're learning to write songs that are technically sound and developing their own unique style. I think if you do that…. man, that's a long winded answer

Michael: No, that was so good. I was just like: I want to let this one roll out. This is fantastic. Yeah, there's so many gold mines to what you just shared. One of the things that comes to mind is just around overall business strategy, and just how important the product is. When you have a good product, then marketing… Marketing can do so much, but there needs to be a good product behind it. The marketing, in some ways, it takes care of itself. If you have a good product, it at least will make it significantly easier to market.

Clay: Yeah, you got to have both. And people say to me all the time, they go: listen to that song that's #1 right now. It's not a great song, and yeah, that does happen, but I guarantee you that artist, it took a great song to break them. Even if you're an established artist… I can't see Taylor Swift or Beyonce putting out a couple of bad songs and keeping their career going. They have to constantly deliver quality music. So I think you gotta have both. But you're right, it makes the marketing a hell of a lot easier. Can we say that word on here? [both laughing] No, it makes it a lot easier if you have a great song.

Michael: [sarcastically] Everyone cover your ears! 

Clay: Didn't know if this was a kid's show.

Michael: You can say whatever you want. Yep. Yeah, that's fantastic. And then the other thing that you touched on that I think is extremely important right now in the age of AI, and we’re still so early on, it's been about a year, a little over a year since ChatGPT blew up, and it's come a long ways already. It's taken the world by storm. #1 company in the whole world, fastest growing company of all time.

Clay: Yeah.

Michael: You brought up such a great point around how important it is to develop your own voice. If everyone is using this tool, and we're just using the default settings that it has for it, then it's: okay, it's all literally the exact same thing.

Clay: Right.

Michael: What came to mind was this analogy of, like with any tool, let's say that you have a chainsaw. Just because you have a chainsaw, it's incredibly powerful, but you need to know how to use the thing, and you need to know what you're trying to create with it. If all you do is have a chainsaw, you can do a lot of stuff with it, but it's not until you actually have a vision of what's the outcome, what are you looking to actually create and what's essentially what's your voice, like you're describing, you can actually use that as a tool to help create that. It seems like that's something… We shouldn't neglect AI by saying: Oh, it's taking away all of the creative aspects of what we can do with it, the same way that, I don't know, using a chainsaw to carve a wood sculpture doesn't necessarily mean that it's any less valid of an outcome or the thing that you create, but it is important to develop that core voice or that point that you're looking to make.

Clay Mills: Develop your point of view, develop your style. Gosh, there's so much we could talk forever about AI. For anyone listening, don't let AI take away your ability to express yourself. There's nothing more important in this world than the human voice. Sting says: songwriting is the soul's work. AI does not have a soul yet. Maybe it will one day. So, just keep in mind that what's going to propel you as an artist,as a writer is overcoming your limitations, struggling, your story of how you… You know coaching artists, your story is hugely important. Do you want your story to be: sat down and told AI to make this song a little sad? [both laughing] Who cares? I can go on the internet and find a robot hitting a golf putt from 50 yards away, and it will make it every time. It's not about perfection. We want to see a great golfer out there overcoming his limitations and doing something incredible. So remember with music, it's got to come from the heart. If you're in it just for the money, you're not going to sustain a long career. Everyone I've ever worked with has come at it from a passion side. We walk into a writing room and we have an idea we're passionate about writing. And yeah, you can use AI as a tool, but just don't let it take away your voice. Don't let it take away what makes… It might take you a little longer to get there. Maybe today you're not a lyric writer and AI can come up with something half good? I don't know. I've yet to see it. I've played around a good bit with AI and sometimes yeah, it'll throw out a line that will spark an idea, but it's our job as creative people to express ourselves. So don't let it take away your voice.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah. I love this conversation. I think it's really important right now in the era that we're at to not lose touch with who we are. 

Clay: You know what it's done, Michael? It's raised the level of mediocrisy way up. How can I say that a little clearer? It's now made it possible for you to sit at home in your home studio and create something and upload it to Spotify and your friends will go: wow, that sounds like a hit. But it's like driving a Rolls Royce off the assembly line that doesn't have an engine in it. It looks like a hit. It sounds like a hit, but it isn't really because you haven't learned the mechanics that go inside that song yet. You haven't figured that part out. So everyone now can sit at home with plug-ins and autotune and create something that sounds like a hit, and upload it to Spotify. But there are what, 100,000 songs now a day uploaded to Spotify? So if you don't rise above that level of mediocrisy, that's now at a high level; if you don't rise even higher, then you don't have a shot. So that's my goal for songwriters in 2024. Everyone in SongTown, I'm helping them find their voice and helping them raise their game so that they can stand out above that just average noise that's out there.

Michael: That's such a well articulated way of putting that just that base level noise has risen. And that’s something to be expected.

Clay: Yeah! It’s at a pretty high level. Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. Even before AI, it was certainly easier to share and distribute and create stuff, and now you can do it just in such a leveraged way that I think you're totally right that this baseline has raised and learning how to cut through the noise and how to actually go from good to great is even more important, which makes things that you teach in the community so valuable. Having both been through, your entire life journey of becoming a songwriter and also now at this point, working with tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of artists who have been impacted by your work now, what's the biggest thing that gets in the way? What's the biggest challenge that they have as it relates to cutting through the noise and finding their voice?

Clay: I would say mistakes in songwriting… You can get away with a certain amount of mistakes, but it's like in football: If the quarterback drops back to pass and his footwork is all messed up, he's not going to throw an accurate pass. I hear so many songs. I heard a song the other day, major label, brand new artist, there's all this hype about her. I won't say who it is. Every vocal line started on the same note. Now in the chorus, it started on the same note and would go higher than the verse, but it's little things like that where you have 0 contrast in your song. Starting every vocal line on the same beat of the bar. That's another one that happens. Not having enough contrast between sections. If anybody wants to email me, Clay@SongTown.com, I'll send you my contrast checklist for melody. Any of you guys listening today, I'll send that out to you. Basically, I think, the biggest thing is people don't know enough, they haven't learned enough, that they're making mistakes that keep their song from taking off. It's like a big weight that weighs the song down. I could list so many of them. I would just say that. The other thing is not being clear. It used to be, you could be very cryptic in your lyrics, I'm thinking of early Coldplay and even before that in the 60’s where you had all the LSD. Drug songs, and who knows what Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds really meant, but today, because there is so much noise, you have to be a great communicator, and your songs have to communicate clearly what's going on musically and lyrically, and I don't think that was such a big concern for us writers in the past. That's another thing is learning clear communication.

Michael: That's super interesting. Yeah. What comes to mind as it relates to clear storytelling and really well constructed narratives and points for songs is like the country genre. It seems like at the root of a lot of country songs too. 

Clay: Or pop, too! Not so much stories in pop, but clear communication about what the singer is saying. Yeah.

Michael: Yeah, it's interesting that's become more and more important over time as well. So as relates to what you're describing, it sounds like part of what you're describing is one of the biggest challenges, the mistakes are just what you don't know, you don't know, kind of thing. When you don’t know what you don’t know, that's when it's particularly important to surround yourself with people that can give you feedback and that can help you point out those things that maybe you're not aware of that for someone who's listening to it, whos experience can just see it immediately and create that aha moment. I would love to hear your recommendations as it relates to finding the right co-writing relationships and partners and how do you start establishing those relationships and find people that are good fit for you, that you become good current partners. Where do you start with that process?

Clay: Just like I said, Gayle and Sarah Davis met in SongTown. We have a huge community of songwriters. They're constantly working together. They're supportive of each other. One of my classes I did, two of the writers met, they just had 3 #1’s in Australia. So many of our members have met, co-written, gotten songs in TV shows for Sync. It's not that hard. The thing is finding that right co-writer, and I think, really, just from my own experience, finding co-writers. Somebody said, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince. [Michael laughs] You go back to fairy tales and it's like that. You're gonna in the beginning write with some people and it won't go well, and you just got to write through that. I literally have not had a bad co-write in years. I have learned to be able to show up on any day with any writer and get the best I can out of that room. I think that's just a skill. I have a book on Amazon, if you look up my name, it's a whole book on co-writing. I'm so glad you brought that subject up because hardly anybody talks about that. I have a book on melody writing and it flies off the Amazon shelf. I have a book on co-writing and it does a 10th of the business, because nobody really wants to study how to be a good co-writer. I'm surprised you asked me that. Co-writing, I would say, it is probably the biggest skill that's going to make you happen as a writer as an artist because when was the last time you saw somebody that wrote, and sang, and did everything themselves, you know? It doesn't happen that way. When you co-write, say you co-write with 2 other people. Now you've got 3 people pushing that song out into the world. When you write by yourself. You're in your room trying to push that song out by yourself. Co-writing, it opens doors in the industry. Every publisher will tell you: I find my new writers because they're writing with the writers I already have, and they tell me about this writer and I go: oh my gosh, those are good songs they're writing. I got to sign this person! So, it really doesn't matter what you want to do, being a better co-writer is going to help you. If you find SongTown, we help out. I personally hook up members that they'll write me and say: Hey, I'm looking for a great lyricist for this kind of thing, and I'll hook them up when I can too. So yeah, it's not that hard. It's just a matter of jumping in the pool and be willing to make a few mistakes early on.

Michael: That's so valuable to hear that co-writing doesn't necessarily get the same initial excitement. People are like: Oh, co-writing, like that's the thing that they're looking for, but that's also the thing that they really need or the thing that really provides the most value. Gosh, there's so many good things that happen. You could look at what we're doing right now as a form of co-writing, in a different vertical, right? But there's something really powerful about bringing 2 people together and coming together for a shared purpose. I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but I've certainly had this experience with writing songs where I'm writing a verse or a lyric, and I get stuck on a particular phrase or word for an hour or two. If you were in a room with two other songwriters, then issues like that, just immediately, they're like: Oh, like this one sounds great, o, Oh my gosh, like that was it! That was the one! It really seems like there's this energy flow that happens when you're not just containing it all and bouncing it around your own mind, but you can actually let the energy flow freely between the other people in the room.

Clay: Yeah, and you got stuck on a line and someone else came up with a way to solve that problem, and then now you've seen how they solved it, and now that becomes part of your vocabulary, and so you're learning from your co-writers as you're writing and they're learning from you. I wrote with Tia Sillers. She's a Grammy winning lyricist. I wrote with her for about 2 years, and I learned so much just through osmosis. I later went on to write some melody and lyrics for artists like Darius Rucker. I don't think I would have been able to nail the lyric side of those co-writes with Darius if I had never written with Tia Sillers. I literally learned: Oh, that's what a good lyric writer is. So I think not only do you have the benefit of you don't get stuck as often when you're writing with other people, but I think you learn from your co-writers. I always try to surround myself with better co-writers. I hope that I can show people a trick or two, but I also want to learn something at the same time.

Michael: It seems like such a humble and a good mindset to take when it comes to entering a room with other songwriters that you're there to contribute and you're there to learn and you're open minded. The question that brings me to is: knowing that this process of co-writing and building relationships is so important, what are the things that the artist can do to be an amazing co-writer, and to set up those sessions so that they can provide the most value and that they can create a space where magic can happen.

Clay: Understand what your writing skills are. So if you're a singer and you're great at coming up with melody, you need to find a great lyricist to work with. You don't need another great melody person because you've got that covered. Maybe you want to write with a track guy that can build a track while you're doing it. If you're a track person, maybe you need to find that great vocalist to work with. It's all about building teams where your skills complement each other. If everybody in the room, if I have 3 people in a room and we're all good at one thing, then I might as well be writing it myself. There's those kind of writers that excel at one thing, and then there's people like myself that I've developed into a utility person, like a baseball player that can play any position in the infield. I'll show up one day, if I'm writing with an artist, I may need to write lyrics. Another day, I may need to write melody. Another day, I may need to do both. Another day, I might need to do the track. I've developed those skills over time. So either you're going to be a utility person, but if you're really strong at one area, be honest with yourself, and if you're strong at lyrics, but your melodies are boring, then write with a great melody person. That's your job is putting the teams together. And sync, if you're going for sync placements, then you really need to have a producer in the room, a vocalist in the room, and whatever else you need, but you got to have those 2 things in the room because at the end of the day, you've written a song, you've got to have a track with a vocalist so that you can pitch it because sync you need finished productions quickly. Yeah, it's just all about building the right teams. I think early on, you might go: okay I really enjoy writing with this person, but we don't really get great songs. My rule is: you have to have either someone you really enjoy writing with and you feel like one day you're gunna get great songs, or you've got to have somebody that you just get great songs with and it doesn't matter if you get along with them or not. I've had situations where, personally, I didn't hang out with people and didn't really care about being their best friend, but we wrote great songs together. And at the end of the day, that's really what matters. Then I've had other people where, man, I just loved hanging out with them, we got along, we weren't getting cuts, but 4 years into it, we started getting cuts, and I think that positive energy, we found a way to come up with the good songs in the end. So you either got to get along great with the person, or you got to have a great product at the end of the day. If it sucks writing with somebody and the songs suck, then hit the eject button and bail. [both laughing] That's hard. A lot of people go: how do I tell a co-writer “no”? It's your freaking career! You got one life. Are you going to tell me you're going to waste today and one day a month or one day a week writing with somebody that you don't get along with and you're not getting great songs with because you're afraid to tell them you can't write with them anymore?

Michael: Yeah that's a great lesson. The analogy that came to mind as you're describing the value of identifying your genius zones and the parts that you're really strong at, and maybe the areas of weakness or that aren't really your skillset, it was sort a like playing a piano and if everyone was really good at the exact same thing, it'd be like just playing the same note. So like the idea of if we all do the exact same thing, it'd be like just in unison playing the same note, whereas if you have people that have different skill sets, it's like it can harmonize. So when you put together, it has a lot more depth to it, or more harmony because you're not all doing the exact same thing, but when you come together, you create this chord that comes in from it. In terms of setting up a daily rhythm, or just practice…. Anything worth doing, you need to get your repetitions in. If you want to get good at shooting free throws, then you can't just go to the free throw line and shoot one basket every month. You can't just write one song every year if you're expecting to really hone that in. What would you recommend for most people as it relates to... if you're a musician, if you're a songwriter, this is at the core of what you do. Your product, it's incredibly important to get really good at it. What do you recommend as a practice and in terms of habits? How can someone really maximize their time to improve and provide value to their community and get the best out of their time?

Clay: Yeah, I have a whole thing I worked out. One time I gave a talk for somebody where there's this 80/20 principle. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but basically what it says: it doesn't matter what you're doing in life, whether you're running a business, whether you're being creative, that you get 80% of your progress from 20% of what you're doing. 80% of what you're doing is only giving you 20% progress. So the trick is to figure out what are those things that you're doing that are going to move you forward at the quicker pace. So for me, that's what I try to do, especially this time of the year when I'm thinking about my goals for next year. I'm looking in and I'm going: okay, what are the things I'm doing that I feel like over this past year have paid off, and what are the things I feel like I'm just wasting time, and I really try to each year, pare that down to where I'm focusing on things that are just going to give me the maximum progress. So I think that's like the Pirelli principle. I'm trying to remember the name it.

Michael: Pareto, maybe? Pareto principle, 80/20?

Clay: Pareto, yes, the Pareto principle. Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. Gosh, it's one of the cornerstone concepts, I think for all of us, because we all have the same amount of time in the day, but what we do with that limited time is what makes the difference.

Clay: I think the more you can not waste time, the better. I don't mean just staying busy. There was a certain point I found myself just busy all the time, but I wasn't doing something that was really gonna help me. Now I have a routine. I get up in the morning. I find, for me, I'm most creative early in the morning, so I'm coming up with song ideas. I'm sitting down at the piano. Before I do anything, I'm sitting down at the piano or guitar coming up with song ideas that I can take later that day to writing sessions and complete. So that's a pattern I've fallen into, and then I also make a habit. I used to feel like I was always…. Say you're in a dentist's office. I just was in a dentist's chair a couple days ago and there's music playing. You could go: Oh, I hate this elevator music. This is just crap. Can't they put something good on? Or, I can spend my time and go: Wow, that's a really cool snare sound on this song, or, I like what they did with the chorus. They actually went from the first chorus to a bridge and just skipped the second verse. I'm constantly looking, no matter what I'm listening to, is there something I can use? Because I don't want to spend that whole time in a dentist chair not getting anything from that experience except a drilled tooth. So I'm actually looking for things I can use in my own songwriting. Just things like that, where you're making the most out of every second of your day. Stephen King, great author, he said that he reads 5-6 hours a day, and you're going: well how do you write if you're reading that much? And he's if: I'm sitting in the doctor's office, I'm reading. If I'm in a car, I'm listening to books on tape. You have to constantly be feeding that inspiration. So I'm maximizing my time. If I can, I'm listening to music and I don't ever put up a wall and go: Oh, play something else. I'm trying to, how can I use this, and take something valuable out of this experience, because I don't want to waste 3 minutes of my life listening to a song. And I don't always find something I can use, but my brain is looking for it all the time.

Michael: Man, that is such a valuable mindset. Yeah, and I've heard that reflected in most of my mentors and people that are successful, that they have a similar mindset around curiosity being one of their main values or principles drives them, is just the sense of curiosity. Being curious and having that mindset you just shared, it requires a certain level of being humble or being open and being willing to learn. It does seem like that's just such an important life value to develop is the ability to be open minded and to learn and to grow. I think there's been a lot of science and studies that have shown around the growth mindset versus a fixed mindset.

Clay: You could really, sorry for interrupting you, but this is another danger of what we're living in. You can literally wake up any day and turn on the news and just find a barrage of negativity coming at you. It will kill your creativity! I tell my students, if you got to listen to news, do it at the end of the day. Don't let it ruin your creative day because if you go on social media on your Instagram, maybe you put up a song and people are trolling you. There's so much negativity out there that the only way to be creative and grow as an artist is going to be staying open. That's the only way. If you already know everything, if your opinion-based, or “I hate this” or “I love this” and it's all based on opinions, you're not going to grow. But if you're open, like you're saying, that's huge.

Michael: Yeah. That's a really important relationship that all of us, as humans, but especially as creators have to learn how to create a healthy relationship with social media and with the internet and news. We're wired in some ways to just pay attention to threats and risks, and so it makes sense that like the news leads with the negativity because that's what grabs our attention. So it really does require setting up some parameters and some boundaries for ourselves to make sure that we are engaging with it in a healthy way. I know I've heard about this idea of learned helplessness with news, which basically means: if you spend a lot of time watching the news, specifically things that you have 0-little control over, things that are happening far away from you and you're hearing about: wow, this person got kidnapped and died in this state way across… It's awful! It's awful that happened! But there's a certain relationship and they call it learned helplessness. When you start perceiving a lot of issues and things that are happening that you can't directly control, that serenity prayer of: having the courage to change the things you can and the serenity to accept the things that you can't and the wisdom to know the difference. Man, like that is some powerful stuff right there. And as it relates to the news, it seems like a lot of it falls into the category of things that you can't directly control in this moment. So it does seem like it's important.

Clay: Part of your job as an artist is to voice into the world what other people can't; to voice feelings. Maybe you're saying something they wish they could say to their girlfriend or their boyfriend and they can't yet. Maybe you're helping them get over loss in their life. If you feel helpless, how can you feel like you have a voice that matters? So what you're telling me that, and I never thought about that, but that learned helplessness, it just completely destroys that artist mentality of: I have something important I need to share with the world. If you don't feel like your voice matters in the world, then you're not going to create great art because you have to feel like “I have to say this”; “I have to express my voice”. That's very powerful. I never thought about that learned helplessness, but I can see that. Yeah. And then you have people, to get back to that, not only is the news media telling you're helpless, but if you can't write lyrics, let AI write the lyrics for you. You have this thing whispering in your ear, “we'll do it for you”; “we'll make it easier for you”, and so you got both sides coming at you. So to be an artist, that's why in 2024, I told all my SongTown members: we're going to develop your voice and we're going to make it strong this year because this is the year where I think artists that develop their own voice are going to see the biggest results.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah. Powerful stuff. All right. Speaking about giving people a voice and building community. I would love to use this opportunity with the live audience here.

Clay: Yup!

Michael: If anyone has any questions or any insights or thoughts that relate to the conversation we've been having around songwriting and discovering your voice, I'd love to hear from you! So if you want to come on stage, you can raise your hand.

So I'm looking here, I see Jared asked for do you have any tips on how to conduct productive virtual co-writing sessions or any hacks to make the most out of it? So maybe going deeper into what the conversation we had around what could be one of the most valuable parts of mastering the art of songwriting, which is co-writing. Yeah. Any other lessons or tips or best practices that can help people avoid maybe some of the common pitfalls?

Clay: Yeah. So it's important to listen, but the main thing, and this is the same whether you're on zoom or not, but I think a lot of songwriters starting out miss this: when I get in the room and someone in the room has an idea, and they play a little piece of melody, or they have a title, say they threw out a title and everybody loves the title. We talk about different ways that song can go before we ever start writing it. I threw out a title yesterday on our live session I did on YouTube. I wrote a song live, and I threw out a title and then I asked the audience to start throwing in lines, and lines were coming from everywhere. So then I said: okay, this is what happens when most people co-write, you're talking about one story, you're talking about another story, we've got 3 more stories out here. In a co-write, it's important that everyone gets on the same page, and whatever the idea… okay, the first verse, I hear it going like this and then the chorus and then the second verse, we could do this. And then you’re set about: you're all on the same page. And once you're all on the same page, I'm not saying it doesn't change when you get to the second verse, maybe you come up with a better idea, but at least you're all initially starting at the same starting point. Then maybe if you're writing the chorus, I might have a melody and a couple of lines of, might just spit out a few lines and they may or may not work, but if they work then maybe my co-writer goes: yeah maybe the next line could be this. But we have direction. We know where we're going. If you get in your car, it's easier to get somewhere if you know where you're going. Otherwise, you're just driving around for days. I know it's hard for a lot of songwriters think: oh I just whatever comes to me, that's what It was given to me in a gift and it's great. But no, it's not usually going to be great that way. I'm not saying it never is, but if you're co-writing, I think it's really important that people in the room be on the same page, or people on Zoom be on the same page.

Michael: Got it. Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying is that when you're co-writing, to get on the same page, it's helpful to enter and start by looking at the overall song and kinda the main structure or the main points that you're looking to make or like the outline of it before you start digging into it.

Clay: Yeah. So for instance, on this song we were writing on YouTube yesterday, I threw out a title: Here on the Other Side of Goodbye. So the title was: The Other Side of Goodbye. So people were [singing] I'm on the other side of goodbye. I just threw out a line, and then people were like throwing out all these lines. And I go: okay wait a minute, the way I'm hearing it is “here I am on the other side of goodbye”. What if the first verse is about your ex and she's on the other side of town. She's with somebody else. She's over it. That's her side of goodbye. But the chorus is: but here on my side of goodbye, it's all… and then the chorus, you describe how you feel. And so that's what I mean. Once I said that to the audience, then they're like: Oh! And the line started coming in a direction. Oh, that's a cool line. Let's use this line for the second line of the chorus. But before we all got on the same page, there was no direction and the song wasn't getting written.

Michael: That's a really helpful example. Yeah, that totally makes sense. One thing that comes to mind, even just as you describe that livestream that you did where you went live and you wrote the song together. And I'm assuming that it was with a community of songwriters that were in the audience?

Clay: Yeah. For SongTown members. Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. Super valuable. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this idea. We were talking about co-writing and it'd be interesting if artists did co-writing sessions, and maybe they live streamed it for some of their fan community where what we're doing with this podcast, we have our own version of a co-write, but then we have a live audience and you can ask questions, you can interact with it. I wonder how that would work for artists if they were doing co-writing sessions like; Hey, why don't we just both livestream this to our audiences and do our thing and we can invite, maybe some of our fans to be a part of the process or kind of witness this? What do you think about that as a strategy?

Clay: There better be a good writer on the session because otherwise, you don't want to get stopped. I know if I'm writing with pro writers, I've done that several times, in fact, on SongTown on our YouTube channel, we have done sessions where we give 3 hit writers a song title and they each write it and you see how they each write it differently. But they're pros, and they're used to coming up with stuff on the spot. So if the writers are good, then that works great. If not, there's a lot of time staring around. So I would just say make sure there's a good ringer in the group that can carry it. But yeah, I think it would be a unique way for artists to show their fans a little art. Yeah. I think that would be a new form of just letting fans get to know you. I think that's a great idea. We do a thing in SongTown where we have label artists do a class with us. We call it “Write for a Recording Artist”. So a label artist comes on Zoom, we interview them, they let us know what kind of songs they're looking for, and then the community, several hundred people, go off and write a chorus. Then we find the best ones and play that for the artist, and then the artist co-writes that song with the member who submitted it. We've actually had several singles. We've had top 10 iTunes singles come out of this class, because they got a chance to write with recording artists. That might be something we do sometime with your community: put some of our writers and some of your artists together and see what they come up with in a writing situation, because I know you guys have mentored great artists over there.

Michael: I would love that. I think it's a fantastic idea. Just in general, I think there's so much alignment in our communities. We really focus a lot on the promotion and marketing side and creating offers and creating the community around their music, but I'm not like a world expert on songwriting. I know how extremely valuable it is.

Clay: Yeah.

Michael: But yeah, I think there's a ton of alignment and it's so much talent in our community that it sounds like it would be a cool exercise.

Clay: Awesome!

Michael: Alright hey, I see we've got Voz who raised his hand to come on here live. So vase, let's bring you on here to speak.

Voz: Hello!

Michael: Hey Voz! How you doing?

Voz: I'm doing well, thank-you.

Clay: Hey Voz.

Voz: Let me see if I can get the video going. There we go. Thank-you Clay Mills and Michael. I just wanted to ask a question. I really focused on not following convention, and not following the guidelines and the rules: keep it within under 5 minutes all these other type of structure type things. I do know a little bit about writing music. I've been doing it for quite a long time, but it doesn't necessarily play to what's considered a “hit” formula. So the question is, how do you, as a creative songwriter, balance that part of your psyche and your personal artistry with the part of commercialism? It's like this pulling inside: do I just write formulaic or do I just really let it go and express myself? I know how I do it. I'm curious how you do it. Maybe even Michael could chime in on that.

Michael: Yeah. Thank-you, Voz.

Clay: Thank-you so much. That's great. I think a lot of people view: There's the commercial thing and there's the artistic thing and they can't go together; they're at odds. And I've personally never seen them at odds. If I walk into a genre of music, I look at it like when I went to Japan to visit my son who was in school over there in college. If I walked into a club in Japan and started speaking English, maybe 10% of the people in there could speak back to me well. But if I had learned Japanese and started speaking Japanese, then all of a sudden my audience got wider. So, I just look at it as language. We all have 4 minutes; say we all have 4 minutes. Michael Jackson does something different in 4 minutes than the Eagles, or Beyonce, or Justin Bieber. They're all bringing a sound that's completely different than the others to the equation, so it's about finding out how your voice fits into the public conversation, and if you're not speaking a language that anyone in the public can understand, then your voice is not fitting into that conversation. There's a certain amount of give and take, maybe, but I'm just trying to figure out how does Clay Mills fit into the conversation today. I'm not at odds with “my artistic integrity says I have to write this to be a 5 minute song”. I don't get into that because I know if I write a 15 minute song, then it's probably not going to get out anywhere in the world where people are going to care about it, so I don't even go there. Now, that being said, if I was going to write a symphony, then yeah, there's a place for that. So I'm more interested in how I can fit my artistic gifts into the conversation. I very rarely even think about those 2 sides being at odds. It’s not part of my DNA. I don't think like that. And I know we're all different, and I know some great artists that they've been rebels and they've done their own thing and they've been pissed off and that worked for them. Or there's been other… I'm not saying you have to be pissed off to be a rebel artist, [Michael and Clay laugh] but you know what I mean. We're all different. And so for me, I just never had that internal fight because I show up each day, I'm passionate about what I'm writing, and I try to write it to the best of my ability. I know what my goal is: my goal is to be in that conversation; to matter. I want to write a song, and I've been lucky to write songs that I felt like came from my heart, and millions of people have sung them around the world. I have songs that have been on radio for over 20 years that still get millions of plays. And that makes me feel good. I poured my heart and soul into that, I didn't feel like I compromised anywhere, and so I just never made that mental game. Now, when I wrote in New York early in my career, I wrote TV jingles, big sync placement, national sync placements, and that was more of: today they want this sound. They want a dance tune today. Tomorrow they want classical. Now they want a heavy metal song. And that felt like a factory, and I got out of that. For my soul, I fit better into songwriting in the record business, now it's the streaming business. I just am interested in where I fit into that conversation where I can matter the most. Sorry, long-winded.

Michael: Yeah, long-winded, but extremely valuable. Yeah, 'cause I know this is a question that I hear a lot 'cause I think a lot of us struggle with that idea, and a lot of ways, what you just presented, is a false belief that they're at odds with each other; that you can't be successful commercially and have your artistic integrity. It sounds like what you're saying is in line with what we've been talking throughout the whole conversation around discovering your voice and your words even, your songs and your music, the lyrics are like tools in a sense as well, that are meant to convey what's in your heart and your soul. That analogy that you shared with the different languages is the perfect analogy for it. Just because you learn how to communicate in the language of Japanese to communicate with everyone else, the deeper thing that you're looking to communicate doesn't necessarily change. Like, you're still trying to communicate the same thing and what's authentic and what's true to you, just doing it in a way that actually resonates that people can understand and connect with.

Clay: You're old enough, probably Michael to remember who's Santana, the guitar player is well. He was famous as just one of the world's greatest guitar players early in his career. Later in his career, he started playing on different pop albums with Rob Thomas and Lisa Loeb and people that were popular in that area. He just went in and he didn't approach it from “I'm selling out and playing this commercial music”, he went in and found a way that he could sound like Carlos Santana and put his heart and soul into what he was playing that day. And it worked and his music; his guitar playing reached a wider audience than it ever had. He didn't have to give up. He's still a tremendous artist. He didn't have to give up himself, he just figured out how he could walk into a recording session and do what he does on someone else's project. I want to figure out what I can do today, if I'm writing with an artist or if I am the artist, what can I do today that's going to matter in the conversation. That's all it is.

Michael: Fantastic. Hey, Clay. This has been a fantastic conversation. Yeah. Super valuable, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to be able to have a platform like this where I get to learn alongside all of the artists who are in our community as well. So thank-you for what you've been doing, for the global music community of songwriters. For anyone here who's watching this or listening to this who would like to connect more and maybe tap into this amazing network that you've built with SongTown, where would be the best place for them to go to dive deeper?

Clay: SongTown.com. We're just fixing to start a masterclass. You really should check it out. 6 weeks. It'll change your life. Small classes on zoom, 14 people in the class. And we have pro writers that are in that small room with you giving you feedback; giving you guidance on your songwriting. If you just Google SongTown Masterclass, you can apply for that. Like I said, limited spots. 14 in each class. We'd love to see you in that, but either way, just hit us up at SongTown.com. 

Michael: Awesome! Like always, we'll put the links in the show notes for easy access. But I personally am very interested in learning more about the masterclass. I might be one of the members that applies for one of those.

Clay: Do it! You'll get the professional discount. [both laughing]

Michael: Awesome. Cool. And I see Jared just shared it here in the chat as well. Awesome. Very cool.

Clay: Thank you, Jared.

Michael: All right, let's do a round of applause here for Clay to say thank-you for coming on to the podcast today. I'll do a final three, two, one. Yyeeaahh. And we'll close out of our livestream. And for those of you who are here in a discord on stage, this is the point where if you'd like to connect and network with other artists that are here live, we have some breakout rooms available for you on the left. So you can either join breakout room 1, 2, 3, or the room that's associated with whichever tier you are in our development suite. And yeah, thanks for being a part of this. I think this is a really fantastic conversation today. So I think it's going to provide a lot of value for all of us as creators and as artists to really hone into the core product that we're offering. So thanks again, Clay.

Clay: Yeah. Appreciate it, man. And great. Thank-you for what you're doing for the artists out there.

Michael: 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 that’s make sure you don’t miss a new episode. Secondly if you share it with your friends, on 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 take their music to the next level. The time to be a Modern Musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.