Who would want to say this? An artist is a brand. If a song doesn’t fit their brand, they aren’t going to sing it, no matter how good the song might be. If you can come up with a handful of artists that might think your song fits their brand, you are on the right track. If you can’t, you probably aren’t writing a commercial idea. For instance, I once wrote an amazing song about a boy catching his father cheating on his mom. It was a GREAT song. The only problem was, no one wants to stand on a stage and call his or her father a cheater in front of 60,000 people every night. The audience would believe that it was true. That’s not going to happen. Asking myself “Who would want to say this?” would have saved me some disappointment.

​How does this make the artist look? If you are not painting the artist in a positive light, you have almost no chance of getting a song recorded. 

​One of the biggest mistakes I see aspiring writers make is that of overlooking their peers. When we are trying to get things going with our writing, too many of us are so busy looking up that we forget to look around. There are people at your level right now that are easily accessible to you who will be the biggest writers in town someday. If you spend all of your time trying to set up co-write with writers higher up the ladder from you, you will walk right by these people. And, in walking right by them, you will seal your fate. When they do become successful, they will remember that you didn’t have time for them when they had nothing going on. 

​​My first publisher was a writer as well. He had written with a young artist who was working days selling boots down on Broadway and writing at night. This artist had been turned down by every label in town. He had nothing going on. Still, my publisher believed in him and wrote with him when no one else would.