►► Download the 20 Ways To Start Writing A Song Guide here: http://songwritertheory.com/freeguide/

In this episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast, we're asking if this perspective on art is holding your songwriting back.   I constantly hear people, including songwriters and musicians, say "Music is just all subjective", "Art is subjective", "There is no good or bad, art is purely subjective".

Not only is that unequivocally wrong, I think it's an actively destructive view that doesn't leave any room for us to "get better" at lyric writing, music composition, or anything else songwriting because, by definition of music being entirely subjective, there literally is no such thing as "better" lyrics or music or songs.

So why spend time trying to make our songs better? How could we even begin to have a discussion on how to write better lyrics or improve our chorus? If it's all completely subjective any of that would be a total waste of time.   So, in this episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast that absolutely no one asked for, we're going to talk about why this view is wrong and why it also is destructive to us and our future as songwriters.  

Transcript:

So there's a certain perspective or opinion or just something that people say, especially artists of any kind, seemingly, and certainly songwriters. It seems like songwriters are constantly saying this and I think it's both destructive and just completely wrong. So because of that, we're gonna talk about it in this episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast.  Hello, friend, welcome to another episode of the Songwriter Theory Podcast. I'm your host, as always, Joe Svedala. Honored that you would take some time out of your busy day to talk songwriting with me. Extra honored that you would take some time to listen to this podcast where we are, this is a podcast for being honest. Nobody asked for me to talk about this. The vast majority of subjects we talk about is something that either is inspired by what I think some of you would want me to talk about if you did tell me, and then a lot of it is off of what you do tell me. So a lot of the content recently, the last several months, has been inspired very directly by your feedback when I asked what your number one songwriting struggle was. Most of the content has been pretty directly off of that, some more directly maybe than others.   And I still need to finish that series as well, which we'll get back to. I have not forgotten.   But this is one of those episodes where we are talking about something that nobody asked for, but I still think is important to talk about.   And I've wanted to talk about it for a while,   and then just realized it's a good podcast episode. I think it's an important thing to discuss, because you may not end up agreeing with me,   but hopefully I can at least get you to consider that instead of what seems to happen, which a lot of people just kinda,   I wanna say mindlessly kind of repeat this thing, I think it's a cop-out answer, and I think it's not true, or at least there's an argument, I would argue a very compelling argument, that it's clearly not true.   But regardless, hopefully you at least reconsider the repercussions of this view of this perspective, and also maybe consider that maybe it's just not true.   If you haven't already, be sure to grab my free guide, 20 Different Ways to Start Writing a Song. It's a cheat sheet, it's shorter, it's better than it used to be, and has double the ways to start writing a song. It's a great way to go, especially for somebody who is struggling with your song sounding the same, or you feel like you're uninspired. One of my favorite things to do, because my bread and butter way of starting a song is starting with a piano riff or something at the keyboard. But whenever I feel like, I just don't have any piano riffs in my fingers right now, I feel like I've written them all, which obviously I haven't, right? But just, you know, if you write a piano riff   two a day for five days, by the sixth day, you're kind of like, I just, I don't even know, like I've done every key of it, I just don't know where to start. But just doing something as simple as, I'm gonna go grab a stock funk beat and improvise to that, or I'm gonna do a bass line, or I'm gonna start with an interesting symbol or song title instead, or I'm gonna think of an interesting character or an interesting story to tell. Those can be all great ways to start a song that will refresh us creatively, so that we don't get into writer's block.   So anyway, be sure to check that out, songrithury.com slash free guide. So what is this perspective that I'm wanting to talk about that I think is super prevalent and ultimately pretty destructive and just not true, just wrong?   It is that art is completely subjective, or art is totally subjective, or art is just subjective, all the different versions of that quote that seemingly everybody says. And not everybody says it, not everybody has that opinion. I think a lot of people don't have that opinion, but the people who do are very loud about it.   And I think, first of all, it's just not true, which we're gonna cover first, why I think it's just not true.   And then also, regardless of the level of truth, I think it's an unhelpful perspective if you want to get better as a songwriter. If you wanna write better songs, I think it's an unhelpful, if not overtly destructive perspective.   So first, let's talk about some of the reasons why I think it's just not true.   And we're gonna start with quite a claim probably, but and that claim is, I think the vast majority of people who say this don't actually believe it. They think they believe it, but if we tease it out a little bit, if we discuss it a little bit, dive a little bit deeper, about the repercussions, if it really is true that music, art in general, movies, books, it's all subjective, just totally subjective.   There's a lot of consequences of that view that almost no people that do start with the premise of like, all art's all subjective, music's all subjective. Most of those people, when we go down some of the paths we're gonna go down, it's like, okay, if that's true, then this other thing has to be true. But those people, even if they wouldn't admit that they are like, yeah, I guess I don't agree with that.   Inwardly, I think they just, they would know. Oh, I don't think this view is correct.   So first let's start with how logic works, I guess, which I know you didn't expect this in a songwriting podcast, but this is, if you want to get to the truth, you have to think logically. And I know a lot of people listening to this might be like, really, I didn't expect a logic thing today, but here we are.   So whenever a logical claim is made, one way to test it is to take it to the extreme and see if it still holds true. So for instance, if I were to make the moral claim that all stealing is bad, you take it to the extreme, find the most understandable or seemingly justifiable version of stealing and try to figure out is that morally right? If it is, then that undermines my point that all stealing is wrong, right?   Or all lying is wrong, for instance. So if we were to say all lying is morally wrong,   but then we take it to the extreme, right? If we were to say all lying is wrong, then we would be able to lie to a certain evil German party from the 1940s to save certain people from a horrible fate. If we lied to them, is that a moral good? I would argue yes, because they're saving their lives and life doesn't always give you perfect choices. So you're not lying for evil   and you've edited that deeply because I don't know, YouTube algorithm is weird and YouTube doesn't like talk about certain things and they will brand it. You can't even say certain words without them. You're like, oh my goodness, they're bad guys. Like, no, no, I'm presenting them as the bad guys. But anyway, hopefully you got my drift about 1940s certain German.   But anyway, if you can find one example of something, then the whole claim is just not true. So if we take the claim that art is completely subjective or songwriting specifically is completely subjective to the extreme, we would take the most extremely bad version of art and extremely good version of art, put them together and say, is it true that it's just subjective that this really bad thing is better than, or is worse than the really good thing?   So let's do that. If we believe, if we believe that all art is purely subjective, again, this is, don't, this is getting ahead maybe, but there's no false, no, don't false dichotomy here.   The claim that all art is subjective, is totally subjective is a extreme claim. What I'm not claiming is that it's purely objective. I'm not claiming that. I think that's actually more arguable than this, but I'm not arguing that. I think there's objective ways to look at art and there's of course, there's subjective ways to look at art as well. Of course, there's subjective ways to look at everything.   But the idea that it's purely subjective is what I'm saying is not true. It's not 100% subjective. But if it's true, that's 100% subjective, then it is 100% valid, 100% valid for me to say that the first scribble my daughter did is equally as good art as Starry Night, Mona Lisa, Sistine Chapel, Statue of David.   And not only do you have no grounds to refute or argue with me, because you said it's all subjective. So if I subjectively believe that my daughter's first scribble is better than Sistine Chapel,   what, is your subjective opinion more important than mine? That would be blatant narcissism, right? That your subjective opinion matters than somebody else's subjective opinion. That's like the epitome of narcissism, is we all have equal opinions except mine is more equal. Like mine is more importan