How A Song Is Born

"Crimes" from Born At The Disco

Welcome to my first bonus exclusive song material post!

I write songs a few different ways, but the one that tends to result in the songs I end up liking the most are the ones that arrive almost fully formed. When this happens, it absolutely feels like some weird witchcraft that I have very little to do with on a conscious level. I have no idea how it happens, it just does. I sit down with a guitar or keyboard, I play chords and open my mouth and stuff comes out. Most of the time when I do this, it results in a lot of words and musical fragments that I try to mine for things I like lyrically, melodically or musically. I listen for things that jump out at me as something I might want to or am compelled to write a song around. And then I work and work and work on it and eventually I have a song. But occasionally, the whole song kind of writes itself almost entirely all at once. This song was one of those times.

This is a recording of how/when I wrote the song “Crimes” from Born At The Disco (this is unedited so please understand/forgive the very wrong notes I sometimes sing when I’m writing lol). What’s crazy to me though is I remember sitting down at this keyboard and starting to play and having no idea any of this shit was going to come out of my mouth. This voice memo is from July 4, 2018.