Deep Talk About the Songwriting Process.

"I'll put my demos and finished songs on playlists alongside artists and songs I really admire. It's a great test to determine if a song is done. And it's usually pretty brutal because it's not really fair to play my demo right after a classic U2 song. But it gets me motivated," says Ted Sablay, the touring guitarist and musical director for The Killers. And how does Sablay know when a song is done? "When it no longer annoys me," he says. Like most songwriters I interview, Sablay gets many so

"My ideas are the most plentiful when I just put something out into the world," says Claud. "I immediately start thinking about all the stuff I want to do next time." Some of that stuff comes from consistent journal writing, where their big picture ideas and creative world emerge. But the hard part, as we all can attest, is how to minimize distractions to let those ideas happen in the first place. The secret for Claud is two-fold: never use in flight wi-fi, and always take the new puppy for a wa

"It's trash that evokes emotion," says Chelsea Rifkin of Wilt referring to her junk journal. The singer for the LA-based band uses this journal as an important part of her songwriting process. The title is literal: "It's a scrapbook of trash that I get throughout the day." Rikfin showed me one of the journals. It was filled with napkins, stickers, cards, menus, wrappers--literally anything that might evoke a memory later on. This makes perfect sense because touching and seeing a concrete obje

"I get a prebiotic soda and some popcorn, then head upstairs to write. And if I'm not feeling it, I leave." Joy Oladokun is nothing if not brutally efficient in her songwriting process. There's no room for wasted time. "I work fast but never in a rush," she says. Oladokun writes most of her songs in a matter of minutes, but that's because she's methodical, not haphazard. Oladokun likes to write in the morning, ideally among birds. "I love the morning because I get to see the world change," sh

“I love to sing out loud there. No one can hear me because everyone is, well, underground,” says Julia Jacklin. And if that’s not the best reason for singing in a cemetery, I don’t know what is. Walking is a daily and essential part of Jacklin’s process. “I’m obsessed with walking,” she says. There are two kinds of walks to Jacklin’s process. The first is when she goes with nothing on her mind; this is for filling the well with inspiration. The second is what she calls “intentional walking to

"I like to write at my desk," says Brennan Wedl. It makes me feel like a professor, so it's correlated with discipline in my brain. It's like a writing altar." This tracks with Wedl's penchant for adhering to a writing ritual and its attendant discipline. She's a big fan of Post-it notes, loves to get up early and feel the sun on a morning walk, and believes in the power of a schedule. But as you'll hear, when she really wants to "lock it in," she turns to the power of chewing gum. Brennan We