Commercial Songwriting Structure:

Artistry or Selling Out?

When I first started writing music, I was a closet songwriter. I wasn’t a very skilled guitar player or singer and couldn’t really play and sing my songs when I wrote them because my writing style was more advanced than I was musically. It was good therapy for me to practice and after many years my technical ability improved. I didn’t write music because I had any commercial aspirations. I wrote music because it made me feel better.

After about 5 years of writing, I came out of the songwriting closet and let people know I had written some music. I even performed an open mic night and was so scared my entire body was trembling. That sent me back home vowing to not play my songs in public again. During the early years of writing I had no knowledge of song structure and didn’t have any reason to study songwriting. Music was my hobby and a deep passion of mine.

When I was living in Boulder, CO, I was at a crossroads in my life and decided to go play an open mic at a coffee shop in Vail to clear my mind. My friends went with me for the road trip and we stopped in Idaho Springs for pizza on our way home. A drunk man came up to our table to talk to us and when my friends told him I was a singer he brought the owner of the restaurant over to meet me. I was hired to play a festival that weekend.

A guy from a radio station in Boulder came to see me perform both days at the festival and the next week I was at the station recording 4 of my songs in their studio. One of my songs was played on the radio that week and my career as a singer/songwriter had begun. A couple of years after being in Boulder, I moved up to Telluride, CO and loved being in the mountains. When I started performing there I was home.

There was a new songwriting conference I heard about that was happening in Durango in the fall one year, so another songwriting friend and I went down there to check it out. After 10 years of writing songs, I was finally in an environment of professionals talking about the craft of writing music and the music business industry for the first time. A music producer talked about song structure in one of the panels and I was curious.

When I saw him later, I asked him what the best song structure is to use for writing a song. He told me that the commercial hit radio song structure is “verse, chorus, verse chorus, bridge, chorus, out”. So that got me thinking. I thought that if I am a true artist, than I should be able to paint on any shaped canvas, so as a songwriter I should be able to write my songs using any format. In fact, having a format made songwriting easier.

When I started using the VCVCBCO song structure, I found that once the chorus was written, the song was pretty much done. Weaving the story with words became more interesting. And while I didn’t always use that structure for all the songs I wrote, the ones I used it for were received well by people in my audiences. The structure sets up a rhythm to a song. It brings people into the chorus like an anchor to the story and it’s cool.

So now unless a song needs to run along a free form line, (and some of them do), I usually write using the VCVCBCO song format as my song canvas to work with. The songs I’ve brought into the studio that follow the format give my new CD, as a whole, a solid foundation of professionalism. The songs that aren’t in that format have become added color and interesting music explorations for the listener to travel with.

It’s my opinion that art is art and doesn’t need any explanation. It’s also my opinion that art can be created any way a person is inspired to create it. But if a person is looking to bring their work into the commercial marketplace (which is a business to make money) than they need to package their talent and expression in a way that people can buy it. That requires some honesty, marketing ability and research on the part of the artist.

It is much easier to be an artist that doesn’t have a calling to bring their message to the masses. In my artistry, if I’m not on a PA, singing my songs in a public space, on a regular basis I get twitchy. I have a calling to be in public with my music and my writing. I have something to say to people about the life we are living here. Because I have a need to communicate, I’ve had to get serious about learning how to communicate effectively.

Laura Cohn is a recording artist/singer/songwriter, author, certified mediator, reiki practitioner, and life coach specializing in healing relationships. She developed a program called “Word Healing: The Art of Reframing Your Life” after she became aware of how her use of language altered moods and amplified emotions. Her new CD is being released in 2008. Laura can be reached at Laura@WordHealing.com or Laura@LauraCohnMusic.com.