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THINGS I WISH MY AMATEUR SONGWRITING SELF HAD KNOWN

5/3/2022

I started writing songs when I was 11 years old. They were predictably bad, but heartfelt. Many were dedicated to girls in the neighborhood that I wished would notice me. If I could go back and talk to that little old guy, I would tell him, “Hey buddy, being a real songwriter is hard and stressful. It will take way longer than you think it will to succeed. But it will be the best job you can ever imagine”.

If I could go back and mentor my teenager songwriting self, I could help him avoid a lot of the unpleasant moments and tons of disappointments he experienced and help him succeed much faster. That exactly is what I am doing with the writers I am mentoring now, and it is one of the main reasons I am writing this blog.

I had done mistakes, you read these, and don’t repeat my mistakes!

WHAT KEEPS YOU GOING?

4/19/2022

For some reason, people often ask me what keeps me going? How do I stay motivated to write when I get so few songs cut in relation to the number of songs I write? I have come to believe that motivation is an internal force, not an external one. I don’t believe in “motivation”, at its core. Or some kind I can say that I don’t believe the motivation comes from any outside factors. I’m not more motivated to write if I get more cuts. I’m motivated to write by some internal force that will not be denied. There is a part of me that IS going to succeed no matter what. The part of me that write at least one new song every day, regardless of how many cuts I get. I just keep writing for matter of writing and when I write, every time I just try to write the best song I’ve ever written, and I don’t think of what to do with it next. When I think this way, I have nothing to be worried about and I can write with no stress nor any pressure.

LEARNING TO THINK LIKE BLAKE SHELTON

4/5/2022

Songwriters, do you think like an artist? One of the tricks to getting cuts with major artists like Blake Shelton is learning to think like they do. It’s not really all that hard, but it does take some time and effort which if you ask me, it totally worth it to spend that time, energy and effort to learn to think like some of the greatest writers and build your career’s foundation. In essence, songwriters are mini speech writers. We are trying to put words in the mouths of celebrities, and they will sing them out loud for the world. If you were trying to write a speech for a major political candidate, you would try to get to know that candidate as well as you possibly could. You want your words to sound very natural coming out of their mouths because literally the whole world is listening to it – essentially, these words must sound so natural, pure and relevant that sound like they wrote it themselves. To pull that off, I try to read a lot of interviews with artists I want to aim to pitch songs to.

WHO CAN STOP YOU FROM WRITING SONGS?

2/1/2022

I think that’s a valid question for every songwriter to ask themselves from time to time. We all had been there, thinking about it and we all will come back to thinking about it. On occasion, I hear songwriters say things like “It’s not really worth writing a song if I can’t get a publisher to listen.” Or “Why bother writing another song no one will ever hear?” Or even “It’s so hard to get on the Billboard Charts or make money with music these days”. When I hear those comments, I challenge the writers to examine their motivation for writing. So, I’ll ask you the same questions I ask them. Maybe they will cause you to think about your own motivation. Would you keep writing if you knew you’d never make a dollar with your music? Is your motivation solely based on money, or would you keep writing for other reasons even if it never paid off? Could lack of publisher interest make you give up? Do you really want to give them that much power? Does the size of the potential audience for your music factor into your decision to write?

QUESTIONS ABOUT CO-WRITING ETIQUETTE

1/25/2022

Once in one of our sessions a songwriter asked me, “If I don’t like the way a song turns out with a co-writer, am I free to take the idea and write it with someone else?”. It was very easy to answer her question as it’s pretty obvious and I was kind of surprised seeing that she didn’t know the answer, but on the other had the answer to such question is not written anywhere as a rule or anything. Maybe because it’s just simply too obvious, and no one ever cared to actually make it clear for anyone who might not know. The answer to her is; No. Not really. Generally, once you write an idea with someone, you are in it for good with them. It’s considered as a very bad form to take your idea and write it one your own or with someone else. And it would probably destroy your relationship with writer #1. If you are in such situation and you really don’t like the result of what came out with that writer but you really like the topic, I would suggest that the better approach is to see if you can get your co-writer to agree to bring in someone else to help you fix it or make better, while the writer #1 is also involved in the process. If he / she agrees, then the three of you could sit down and hopefully get it where it needs to be.

THE SCARIEST MOMENT IN SONGWRITING

1/18/2022

I believe that the scariest moment for any profession is the moment before you start. And the exact same goes for songwriting too. Most of us have voices that play in our heads. Those voices often tell us that the task at hand “can’t be done”. “You aren’t good enough”. “You can’t handle this”. “Songwriting is not something you can just do if you aren’t born with it”. You know the drill. It is the rare person who has never heard those voices. The negative self-talk keeps us from starting. If you don’t start, or don’t try, then you can’t fail. Or so “they” tell us. So, we drift through life taking the easy road because these nameless voices don’t believe in us. When you think about it, it seems silly, doesn’t it? Letting nameless, internal voices change the course of our lives? And giving up on something we are dying to do because we can’t summon the courage to just give it a try. And this is not just about songwriting. In fact for anything in life, whenever we want to start something new, we hear voices telling us that it is impossible and it scary and this and that. And they only shut up when we get into it, start doing what we wanted to do and start getting results. Show the voices “who the boss is”.

SONGWRITERS AND EXCUSES

1/11/2022

If there is one thing that I have learned in my journey through the music business, it’s that I’ve never made one dollar from excuses. Yet I lose count of people around me, usually newbies or unsuccessful seniors in the business who keep making excuses to justify everything rather than just taking responsibility and accepting that they could change the situation simply by working harder – or in some cases simply just by “working” instead of waiting for someone else to do their job for them. “It’s harder than ever to get a cut” “You have to write with the artist to get a cut” “I write songs that are too deep for the market” “People don’t understand my music”. These are the excuses I’m hearing on a daily basis and yes, they may all be true. But the fact remains there is that, if I write an amazing song, someone will notice. Will they notice my average songs? Not unless I have some special connection. Will I be able to sneak a “decent” song through and get it recorded? Not likely, unless I wrote it with the artist and, even then, that is a longshot.

SONGWRITING IS ADDICTIVE

12/7/2021

Time after time, I see the warning signs. It takes a trained eye to spot them, but even simple statements thrown out in casual conversation can reveal that a songwriter has crossed over from social songwriting to having a real problem. When you get the hang of writing songs, it really is addictive. You want it or not, there are times you would find yourself thinking of songs ideas when you hear even random words from people around you. My friends are talking about their life, relationship or even simple things like when they are talking about football or politics and I hear songs in my head. When that happens to you, you would know it exactly is the definition of addiction. There are lots of things an addicted person says or does that would tell you about their situation. When you hear statements like these are a dead giveaway: “I think I need another guitar” or “That would be a great song title” as will as “We should write that” or “I woke up and wrote that chorus at 3 AM”. They sound innocent enough, but they reveal a deeper problem. Much deeper than what they look like. This person is addicted to songwriting.

PUT YOURSELF IN POSITION TO SUCCEED IN SONGWRITING

11/30/2021

Many writers struggle with the idea of getting themselves in position to succeed. In fact, I see two extremes play out. Sometimes writers adopt the idea that “all I have to do is write a great song” and they believe they literally don’t need to do anything else at all. Others go to the extreme of trying desperately to “meet the right people” while ignoring the fact that they don’t have any great songs to present to those right people when they finally get to meet them.

So, I find myself continually preaching the message of putting yourself in position to succeed. Meaning you have to put yourself mentally in the right place to start seeing the signs of success and getting to understand what you need to do to take your songwriting career to a whole new level. This is what I’ve learned from these mentoring sessions. Here are my suggested steps for putting yourself in position to succeed – in order of importance.

IF YOU WANT A MUSIC CAREER, BE OPEN MINDED

11/16/2021

On a daily basis in this business I come across musicians, songwriters and artists who are trying to make a name for themselves in the industry, but it is interesting to see how a big percent of them forget the most basic attitude: to be a bit open.

People who fall into this category are mainly the ones who are either asking for opportunities, or they already have a little exposure to the industry, but they are not involved with any of the major players. Either way, they are considered as not very professionals, although some of them have a real talent in them which unfortunately they don't know how to use it to climb the ladder.

Here I am going to mention a few of the examples I have encountered with, in person and tell you why I consider them as narrow minded.

REASONS NOT TO QUIT WRITING SONGS

11/9/2021

Many of us struggle with voices in our head saying things like “You’ll never make it.” or “You’re not good enough.” And, most of us, at one time or another, have thought about throwing in the towel. I can consider myself successful at this point of my career but believe it or not, I still hear those voices occasionally and once in a while I ask myself “What the hell are you doing by writing all these songs?”. But as an answer to myself, those voices, and your stinky thoughts, here are few reasons that encourage us not to throw in the towel.

If you were born with the urge to write, you will probably never feel complete if you give it up. Most writers are not able to just walk away without feeling regret and emptiness. Writing is part of us. Creating is in our nature. Without them, we are just some bodies, moving around, pointless and aimless. If a none writer read this might not understand what I mean by saying “writing isn’t just part of us, but we ARE the writing”. We can go by not talking let’s say for a month or two, but not writing for a week can drive us insane.

DISCIPLINES IS A KEY FOR SETTING YOURSELF UP TO SUCCEED

10/12/2021

One of the biggest lessons I have learned in my years in the music business is that nobody wants me to succeed as much as I do. My publisher, my co-writers and my song pluggers all want me to do well. They are heavily invested in my success. But, at the end of the day, I’m going to have to do most of the heavy lifting if I’m going to succeed. They will help but they will do what they can do, and that’s my job to do “my job”. If they were up to do what I am supposed to, they didn’t need to work with me from the first place. And to do my job, I need to have a very strong discipline coming from myself, because in this industry we don’t really have such thing as “boss” or someone who force us to do anything. Everything, including all success or failures come, are direct reflection and consequences of our own actions. The way I always explain it for my mentees is, “We need to have a military level of discipline, and there is no commander to force us. We have to have it from inside our own will power”. Here are a few things I try to do every day to keep myself moving in the right direction:

DO SOMETHING REAL.

9/28/2021

One time, I was playing a songwriter show in Tehran and had one of the funniest, yet most profound experiences of my musical life. After the show, the hotel’s entertainment booking person wanted to have an “after party” with all the writers who played and some of her special guests. So, after the show, we head over to the hotel’s cafe to hang out, shake hands and talk to the people that brought us there. The other writer who had played the show with me was a big pop producer who had also written several hits. We were starving, so we ordered some food and continued to schmooze. Before our food came, Mary, the booking person, brought in 4 guys that were in a band she was working with. They all had facial tattoos and piercings. They were dressed in leather and either wearing bandanas on their heads or had spiked up mohawks. Chains from their wallets to their pants. Metal spikes on the boots. You get the idea. I’m not judging. Just describing.

ARRIVING IN LIFE AND SONGWRITING

8/31/2021

The longer I live and the more I write, the more I realize that there really is no “destination” in life, unless it is death.

Short of the grave, we are all still on the journey, trying to figure out the world and our place in it. In regard to writing, we all – or most of us anyway – have hopes, plans and dreams. We have places we want to go. Things we want to achieve. Accomplishments we want to grasp before we leave the planet. There is no aspect of my music career that has gone according to my plans. I’ve determined that I may not be smart enough to come up with a plan for life or a career and that, perhaps, I do my best work when I just take each day for what it is.

DON’T LET YOUR NEXT SONG CRITIQUE DRIVE YOU CRAZY

8/24/2021

After receiving different song critiques of the same song from two different people, I often hear an aspiring writer complain that the critiques contradict each other. For example: the first person critiquing the song likes the second verse, but not the first; the second person, however, likes the first verse, but not the second. Usually, the aspiring writer’s next statement is something to the effect that it’s just somebody’s opinion, and the song is just fine as it is. This is overlooking the real value of this of song critiques by misunderstanding the feedback, and perhaps, the source it’s coming from. After doing thousands of critiques of my own songs, and of songs from mentoring students in my classes, I have a much different reaction to this type of critique.

Here how to weed through seasoned feedback and uncover the real value of a song critique:

POSITIVE THOUGHTS FOR SONGWRITERS

8/17/2021

I’m a big believer in positive thinking. I have a strong faith that there are some positive thoughts for songwriters which can help keep us moving forward in our music business and can help us to enjoy this long and tough journey, which is hard enough that if we don’t have that strong faith and believe we might give up, just like those thousands or possibly millions of other people who stepped in this path and gave up after a while. We must accept what we started is something that not everybody would dare to start and even from the people who started it, not everyone are strong enough to keep it up. All the financial instabilities, all the long hours of working and all the rejections as conclusion of standing by all these hardships. It needs an iron faith to keep going and keep writing until we get the desired results. Here are some of the topics that fill up my mind during the hard times at work, and they give me more energy to continue what I sacrificed everything for.

IF YOU WANT TO WRITE UNIVERSAL SONGS, BECOME UNIVERSAL

7/27/2021

During mentoring sessions, I am asked often how a writer can make their songs more universal. It’s easy to become frustrated when a deeply personal song fails to move your audience. My answer is to become a more universal musician/writer and stop focusing on the “fix” that will make your latest song speak to others. The Beatles wrote songs that touched more people around the world than any other band in history. But did you know, at one time, that the Beatles were, perhaps, the greatest “cover-band” on the planet? They played countless hours in a club in Hamburg, Germany, before they ever got a record deal or wrote “Yesterday” and “Come Together”. John, Paul, George, and Ringo were obsessed with the latest Rock music coming across the pond from America.

They learned Little Richard vocal licks, Carl Perkin’s guitar chords, and emulated the latest overseas songwriting. Students of style, they explored everything from Classical melodies to traditional Irish drinking songs.

FIND SONGWRITING COMMUNITY NOW!

7/20/2021

No matter what your definition of Songwriting Success is, one of the most overlooked aspect of a songwriter’s journey is the community. I run into many writers who are writing pretty good songs, but they are doing it in a vacuum. In reality, it’s nearly impossible to succeed as a songwriter or anything without a supportive community around you. Being a member of at least one songwriting community will help you a lot to share your songs with other fellow writers, get their feedback and grow yourself, as well as being updated about the behind the scene of the industry. Plus, having a wider network is always great for your business, and please don’t forget that songwriting is your business and the songs you write are your product to be sold. Here are some reasons it is important to find community as a songwriter.

Songwriters are a different breed. It’s often hard for spouses, friends and family members to understand why we think differently.

DON’T LIVE WITH SONGWRITING REGRET

7/6/2021

I spent the first half of my life to date living in fear. Fear of failure. Fear of taking risks. Fear of getting involved in any sort of conflicts. Fear of performing or speaking in public. Fear of God striking me down if I misbehaved. The list goes on and on. And, around that half of lifetime point, I noticed that those fears began to have a different taste in my mouth. They began to taste more like regrets. Regret for missed opportunities. Regret for chances I missed. Regret for wasted precious days of my life. You get the idea. A steady diet of fear leads to the awful aftertaste of regret. And those tastes are not easily brushed away. Even though I took a huge risk when I decided to be a full-time musician when everyone around me where surely telling me it is not going to go well but I took the risk. And luckily it worked – so far. But still when I look back, I’ve lost tons of chances and opportunities because I didn’t take enough risks when I had to. And now after years I still regret not getting in and take those risks.

PUT THE BUTT IN THE CHAIR: THE REAL CURE FOR WRITER’S BLOCK

6/22/2021

Publishers don’t give writer’s block vacations. People often ask me how I fight “writer’s block”. Unfortunately, my publisher does not offer Writer’s Block Vacation Days. I’m expected to write, not make excuses. So, on days when I don’t FEEL like writing, what do I do? I put my butt in the chair and I write anyway. This past Friday, I was tired, stressed and brain dead. I didn’t feel like writing. The problem was that I had two writing appointments booked. One with two great writers. The other with a great writer and an artist. I knew I had to come up with something. So, I got to the office early. Picked up my guitar and tried an alternate tuning. Soon, I came up with a little lick that I thought was cool. When my first co-writer walked in, he said “I love that!”. He grabbed a guitar and started playing what I was playing. The other co-writer arrived, and that groove became our song. Within an hour we had written a great song! The energy from that song carried me through the second co-write which also went quickly. So, on a day that I FELT like mailing it in or calling in sick and tired, I wrote two really good songs.

I DO MY SONGWRITING BEST – PUTTING AN END TO THE COMPARISON GAME

6/8/2021

There is a lot of comparison that goes on in the songwriting world. Artists pick this song over the other song. Someone decides that song is better than this song. Someone decides who is a better songwriter and even among 2 co-writers, there will be someone who wants to work with one of the two as a solo writer. We all tend to compare our songs to songs on the radio. Or we go to a writer’s night and compare our work to the work of others. When we hear something better than our music, we start thinking and analysing that song to see what element made it better than ours.

At the end of the day, I am going to be disappointed if I compare my work to Max Martin’s. He has had hundreds of songs cut and makes millions of dollars. Maybe I think my songs are just as good as his. Maybe some of them are better than some of his. None of that matters. All that really matters is that I do my best. If I’ve done that, then the rest is out of my hands.

HOW TO CHANGE YOUR ODDS IN ANY CREATIVE BUSINESS

5/18/2021

From time to time, someone asks me “What are the odds of getting a cut?”. In my mind, what they are really asking is “Is this even worth trying?”. I’m going to suggest here that this is the wrong approach to dream chasing of any form. Let me put it to you this way. What are the odds that an Iranian guy with experience of being a rapper and producing hip-hop finds himself in Singapore, writing and producing more than 3,000 songs for more than 250 artists? Almost zero. Yet, here I am! What are the odds that a guy who grew up with no connections in the professional music business at all, figures it out, gets more than 400 songs recorded by internationally major artists, and writes 16 #1 songs? Not great odds. Yet, here I am. What are the odds that a rapper with no formal business training create a business that has grown from day 1 and has served more than 4,000 songwriters all over the world in just 5 years? Yet here , Flipside stands. That’s laughable.

Even let’s move one step further, what are the odds for a guy who couldn’t speak more than 20 English words to leave Iran, and next year get his first English song that he wrote, recorded, and then more than 1,000 English songs later, he starts writing books and blogs all in English? Yet, you are reading his blog right now. So, please don’t ever tell me that there is such a thing as “impossible”. I am a living proof of my claim, and I personally know people who proof it even stronger by the things they’ve got done!

The longer I live, the more I realize that it’s really not about the odds unless you are playing the lottery. In that case, there really are odds that are stacked against you. Those odds are measurable and accurate. They are based on math. They are real! In any creative endeavor, however, the odds are not so fixed. You can figure out ways to cut them way down. How do you do that?

DO YOU WANT TO BE A SUCCESSFUL PUBLISHED SONGWRITER?

5/4/2021

Today, I was sharing my songwriting journey with a group of high school students. I’ve never really told my story in quite this much detail and to such a young audience or matter of fact, to anyone out of my very small close circle, but in the course of trying to convey my story, I discovered a couple of things about myself. I told them about growing up in Tehran and how I had to leave Iran, because I almost got executed and almost lost my life, simply because of writing music which was questioning certain things about the government, and about the intimidation I felt in regard to the music business because of the huge number of people I encountered that were trying and failing to make their dreams come true.

Even though I had dreamed as a child of being one of the people whose names were on the liner notes as having written the songs, I was scared senseless, so much so that I wouldn’t even try.

I went to college and got a degree in Industrial Engineering, but I never gave up my music dream and eventually at age of 20 I ended up studying the degree course again in major of Music Production (instead of studying Master of Industrial Engineering).

IT’S NOT THE WORLD’S RESPONSIBILITY TO "GET YOU" OR "GET YOUR MUSIC"

4/20/2021

I was in Starbucks last week enjoying my morning dose of inspiration — COFFEE! — and an aspiring songwriter approached me. “Are you Flipside’s Hangi?” “Yes,” I said. He asked if he could chat about writing for a couple of minutes. He began by saying, “I’m writing some great music, but no one gets it.” He continued, “I’ve played my songs at four pitch to publisher meetings, and this world just doesn’t get my writing.” I made a few suggestions to try to steer my friend in the right direction. As he walked away, I realized he would need to accept a simple, but powerful, truth: it’s not the world’s job to “Get us.”

This was a hard lesson for me to learn in the beginning of my career. I would go to meetings with publishers or play live shows and rap battles, all with the hope of being discovered. And I often got angry when no one paid attention. They just don’t “get me,” I would say.” I’m as good as all those writers making a living with their songs.”

HOW DO I WRITE COMMERCIAL MUSIC WITHOUT SELLING MY SOUL?

3/16/2021

Often songwriters ask, “How do I write commercial music?” They are writers who would like to have commercial success and hear one of their songs on the radio or an album. But they want to know how to accomplish this and still be true to themselves. They don’t want to sell-out. The definition of commercial music generally means the music that is heard by millions and/or purchased by millions. That number could be hundreds, depending on your level of commercial success. Over my years as a professional songwriter, I’ve lived a rollercoaster ride of commercial success, some years with three songs playing on the radio at once, and some years with no songs playing. In the commercial music, I can say the only person who was pretty stable in his position was Max Martin. He was on the top for almost all of his professional career until he stepped down a little bit and in one interview, he said that’s because of his personal reasons. Else than him everybody have to work hard to get to commercial level and work even harder to maintain it.

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