Late night, headphones on, notebook open. This is where most songs begin — not loudly, but honestly.
I think people sometimes imagine songwriting as one clean moment. A candle, a guitar, a line arriving fully formed, and suddenly there is a song.
Sometimes it does happen like that. Not often. Most of the time, being the songwriter of my own songs feels less like catching lightning and more like staying in the room long enough for something shy to come closer.
It is private before it becomes anything else. Before there is a melody, before there is a recording, before someone presses play, there is usually just me sitting somewhere too late at night with a half-empty cup, a notebook that looks more chaotic than romantic, and one sentence I cannot stop thinking about.
I write my own songs because I need them to come from the exact place they are about. Not because no one else could write beautiful words. Of course they could. But there is a difference between a song being beautifully written and a song knowing where it hurts.
The first line is rarely the first line.
For me, songs usually begin as fragments. A sentence in my notes app. A melody hummed into my phone while walking home. A phrase that arrives while I am making coffee, or brushing my teeth, or trying very hard to think about something else.
I have learned not to judge those fragments too early. Some of them are terrible. Some of them are embarrassing. Some of them are just a mood pretending to be a lyric. But every now and then, one small line carries a whole room inside it.
That is the part I listen for.
Trying chords against the words. Sometimes the guitar tells me the lyric is lying.
A lyric can look good on paper and still not sing truthfully. That is one of the strange things about writing songs. The page can approve something the voice refuses. I can write a clever line, even a pretty one, and the second I try to sing it, I know it does not belong.
That happened with "Still in the Air". I had this line in the second verse that I loved on paper — something about light through curtains, very visual, very poetic. Every time I picked up the guitar, I'd sing through it and feel this small drop, this moment where the song stopped believing itself. It took me three weeks to admit that the line was decorating the song rather than being part of it. I replaced it with something much simpler. One syllable shorter. Less beautiful on paper. Completely right.
The voice is annoyingly honest that way.
So I rewrite. I take out the beautiful word and use the simple one. I change the line that sounded poetic but did not feel lived in. I move one syllable and suddenly the whole thing breathes differently. That part can take hours. Sometimes days. Sometimes months.
"A song is not finished when it sounds impressive. It is finished when I can sing it without feeling like I am acting."
I know that sentence is true because I once had a version of "Let It Stay Like This" that was finished by every technical measure — structure, melody, production — and I still couldn't perform it without bracing slightly before the second chorus. Something in me knew it wasn't honest yet. I rewrote that chorus four times before it finally felt like I was just saying what I meant.
Writing from myself, but not always about myself.
People sometimes ask if every song is autobiographical. The honest answer is yes and no. I do not think a song has to describe exactly what happened to be emotionally true.
Some songs are direct. Some are built from memory. Some are built from a feeling I recognise, even if the story around it has changed shape. I might take one real moment — a room, a sentence, a silence after someone leaves — and let it become something larger than the original event.
That does not make it less true. Sometimes it makes it more true.
The laptop is for structure. The notebook is for the things I do not understand yet.
I like writing by hand because handwriting does not ask me to be efficient. It lets the messy part stay messy for a little longer. There are arrows everywhere, crossed-out words, lines circled three times, pages where one verse slowly becomes five different versions of itself.
The laptop comes later, when I need to make decisions. Verse. Pre-chorus. Chorus. What returns. What changes. What the song is actually asking for.
I used to think structure would make a song less emotional. Now I think structure is what gives emotion somewhere to go. Without it, a feeling can just spill everywhere. With it, the feeling can move.
The song has to know what it is protecting.
Every song has a secret centre. Not necessarily a secret in the dramatic sense. More like a small protected thing — the reason the song needs to exist.
When I am stuck, it is usually because I have started decorating the song instead of listening to that centre. I add words. I add harmonies. I make it prettier. But prettier is not always closer.
So I ask myself: what is this song protecting?
With "Still in the Air" it was the fear that grief can outlast love — that you can stop missing the person but still miss the shape they left in the room. With "Let It Stay Like This" it was something more fragile: the idea that wanting to protect something gentle is not the same as being too afraid to reach for it. Those two things felt different to me, and the whole song was the difference.
Recording at home always keeps me close to the reason I wrote it in the first place.
Once I know that centre, the choices become clearer. The verse can be quiet because the chorus needs to open. The bridge can say the thing the rest of the song has been avoiding. The production can leave space because the silence is part of the story.
That is what I love about being involved from the first sentence to the final take. I know what each song is trying not to say. I know where it is fragile. I know which moments need to stay imperfect because polishing them too much would make them less alive.
The private moment before someone else hears it.
There is always a strange little silence before I let a song go. I can spend weeks wanting it to be finished, and then when it finally is, I suddenly want to keep it for one more night.
Because while I am still the only person who has heard it, the song is completely mine. It has not been understood yet. It has not been misunderstood yet. It has not become anyone else's memory.
Then I send it. Or upload it. Or play it for someone I trust. And the song starts leaving me.
Listening back. The part where I stop writing and try to hear it like someone else might.
I used to find that part frightening. I still do, sometimes. But I also think it is the point. A song is not meant to stay locked inside the room where it was written. It begins there, in the private mess of notebooks and voice notes and half-sung melodies, but eventually it has to find another room. Another person. Another quiet morning.
That is the gift of writing your own songs. You give something away, but you know exactly what you gave.
Not perfectly. Not cleanly. Not always bravely.
But truthfully.
The listening back video.
A small moment from the session — just listening back, letting the song exist for a second before changing anything else.