 I've gotten a lot of questions after my last couple of YouTubes about songwriting, so I want to do some clarification on how music works when you're not just writing about death, heartbreak, divorce, and all these miserable things. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon and this is Muse Formation. Paul Simon has this great quote that says, it's good to start with something that's true. If you start with something that's false, you're always covering your tracks. I've gotten some pushback on some of my most recent videos about that not every song that's powerful needs to be about heartbreak and death and emotionally painful things. While our own troubles do commonly inspire the most resonant expressions since love songs are what affects most people, there are also thousands of powerful songs written about subjects that aren't pain and love. The first argument I hear about writing what's resonant to you is, what about all the rappers? The only rap about money, yo! At times the most emotionally resonant thought someone could express is their lust for money, since the struggle of being poor is all that's on their mind. If that's all you think about, you need to express it. One of Trick's Point never writes songs to envision a sci-fi film through music since that's what he's most passionate about. Grimes says she imagines making a trailer for a fictitious movie. On White Lung's Paradise, Mishway said she had little of the purge in the way her relationship struggles since she's now happily married. So she adapted her obsession with serial killers by writing from their perspective. Right now it's easy to find many people who are inspired by politics and bringing it into their music with great resonance. Plenty of songwriters adapt the stories that are told to them by others or read in books as they feel resonance with them. As long as that's what's trying to get out of them, they can do it in a way that's resonant to them and others. Just as we discussed before, listeners can only identify with emotions they understand. Love, loss and loneliness are the most intense emotions we feel and therefore they're easy to connect with. That doesn't mean there aren't important songs to be written about a variety of subjects since love has been expressed in so many shapes and forms. While more listeners can relate to unrequited love than serial killers, it's shocking what can resonate with a listener when it's authentically expressed. You can even be the most passionate person about partying. Hi Andrew W.K. As vacuous as that sounds, that's some musician's truth. Morrissey was able to sustain half a dozen albums by feeling passionately about feeling nothing at all. You must not force your passion towards a subject that's not what you authentically feel. What matters is the passion to pursue your ideas along with fearlessness of showing others how you feel and your authentic need to say something on the subject. We have to remember every word and phrase has imagery to it and oftentimes just playing off of that and making music that feels like something is what draws out the emotion in a song. If you could find the synergy between what the words say and what the music sounds like, that often makes a huge emotional resonance and it doesn't need to just be love and pain. That's it. Am I missing anything? Is there any way you would have done this? I need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since I want to answer them so leave them in the comments. I hope you liked this video and if you did please like and subscribe and get notified for my future videos since I'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with tons of others on promoting your music and how to make music you're more happy with. As well I have a Facebook group that's linked below that has only helpful information. No one tried to sell you anything. Playlist or con artists only helpful information for musicians looking to be better themselves. If you want to learn more about me make a record with me or check out any of my books podcasts or anything else I do head to jessicanon.com or at jessicanon.com on any of the socials. Thanks for watching.