7 Lies Potential Songwriters Tell Themselves
If you've always wanted to write a song but haven't yet, it's probably because you're holding onto one of these 7 beliefs (or lies) that stop most of us when we try something new, creative, or vulnerable.
By the end of this, my hope is that you feel confident enough to give songwriting a try if it's something you've always wanted to do.
If you don't know me, I'm Anthony Cubbage. I've written and released music garnering over 5 million streams across platforms, have writing credits with Grammy-award-winning artists like Scott Hoying from Pentatonix, and toured across North America multiple times on my own and with bands like the Nicotine Dolls. For about 10 years, I've made a full-time living as a musician through multiple streams of income like performing, teaching, and producing.
And through all of that experience, here's what I've discovered: songwriting isn't nearly as complicated as people make it out to be. The music industry loves to mystify the process, but the truth is, if you can hum a tune or jot down your thoughts, you already have everything you need to write your first song.
So let's bust these 7 myths once and for all. If you're artistically curious about songwriting, my hope is that moving through this will help you see that there is nothing holding you back from writing songs yourself if you wish to give it a shot.
Alright, here we go.
"I can't write a song because…"
#1 - I can't sing
I hear this one all the time. But the truth is, if you can sing karaoke, or even if you're a closeted singer who belts off-key in the shower, you can write a song. Yes, I'm saying that even if you can sorta follow a melody after a few drinks on Friday night, you can write a song.
When I first started making music with my best friend (who currently makes music as a producer with hip hop artists under Trippy Ja), neither of us could sing. We both would have preferred not to sing at all, but bringing a singer into the group wasn’t something we wanted to do, since we had such good musical chemistry that we didn't want to change what felt so good.
But we felt that to share our songs with people, we needed more than just guitar and drums. One of us had to sing. (Side note, hidden in here is another myth — you can make beautiful music without vocals — but we wanted to make music that people could sing along to.)
So that led me to singing for the first time in my life in high school. I had literally just joined choir that year and had no idea how to use my vocal cords. Since my only experience was copying the sounds of those around me, I basically sounded like an altar boy singing Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was not. good.
But I could follow a melody. I'd been singing in the shower for 5 years, singing to my favorite bands in the car, and quietly humming and whistling to myself for the last 10 years.
That was enough to sing a melody that I made up, even if it was just a chorus with 3 notes and 3 words, or sounded almost exactly like something I heard the day before.
#2 - I don't play guitar or piano (or singing and playing is too hard)
You don't need to play an instrument to write a song. If you can make a melody — even by itself without any lyrics — I would say the minimum something can be to qualify as a song. Think about lullabies as a kid. You might have sung "Twinkle Twinkle" with half-formed words, and no chords to support it. That was still a song to you, right?
If you want chords (which give songs emotional context), there are plenty of free backing tracks online, chord progressions, and tools that build progressions for you to sing over.
Here’s are a few chord progression generators out there:
Chord Seq AI
Really cool design - many options. Once you pick a chord, it gives you the most likely progression options.
Only Plays Piano and Metronome (keeps the beat)
Overview Video
Chord Player
Has pre-made chord progressions with multiple instruments playing the chord progression and drums keeping time instead of metronome.
None of these are great replacements for a real instrumental track (which there are plenty of free ones on YouTube if you just type in "Royalty free pop instrumental," or "Royalty free _insert genre here_ instrumental") but they work for writing, and then allow you to communicate your songs to other musicians.
Writing songs isn't limited to having an instrument in front of you.
I started writing songs with my friend, and I definitely didn't play guitar or piano while singing at first. We live in a world where access to music creation has never been easier.
#3 - I can't write lyrics
Let's break this down. Lyrics are just words, ideas, sentences, and sometimes even unfinished thoughts. In the same way that anyone can sing if they can follow a melody in karaoke, anyone can write lyrics if they can write a simple summary of their day. If you have words, you have the tools.
When I first started writing, I felt the same pressure to write something that MEANT something. But then I realized that I — and so many people I knew — didn't even listen to lyrics for at least the first 3 times hearing a song. In fact, I polled my audience of listeners (those who listen to AGE of the BEAR) recently, and of the 35 that responded, about 30% said they listened to lyrics on their FIRST listen. That means 70% of people might fall in love with your song before they even get to the lyrics.
I thought about songs I loved growing up. The topic of the lyrics was not at all in my focus. I just loved the groove, rhythms, and melodies. I mean, I’m a true believer that music existed at some level before written and spoken language, so it doesn’t surprise me that the majority of people (57% from the poll) listen for the production and overall vibe before the lyrics and even the quality of the singer/soloist.
One of the biggest reasons people fear sounding bad vocally or lyrically is that they have such high standards from the music they listen to now. It's easy to hear the gap between how you sound and how you want to sound. But that gap can't be your focus. We have to shift focus elsewhere.
For instance, if our focus and reason for songwriting is to heal or process our feelings, then you can never do it wrong. And you can always choose to share it later.
#4 - What if it sounds bad?
If a 6-year-old picks up a basketball for the first time, they probably won't be making their first shot into a 10-foot basket. But lower the net to 5 feet, and they start making some shots. When the game is made accessible to them, they start to learn the joy of small wins.
Now is a shot from 3 feet away on a 5-foot net really impressive? Maybe not objectively. But to do it for the first time feels amazing! The best songwriters understand that what they're chasing isn't approval — it's the joy of completion and expression.
That's where I encourage all my students to start. The melody may be super simple, even cringy. The lyrics may be simple and cringy too. But finishing something and expressing yourself in the process — that's the reward.
Writing your first songs is about getting reps to build the songwriting muscle and getting the satisfaction of creating something real, not something perfect.
#5 - I don't want to learn music theory
Most songwriters don't use music theory when they write. Artists like Jimi Hendrix knew how to navigate the guitar neck, but couldn't explain why he landed on specific notes. Most artists reach that understanding through experimentation, finding patterns, and copying what they like.
Think about it: gravity existed before Newton discovered the law of gravity. Light existed before Einstein's theory of relativity. And music existed before music theory was invented to make sense of it.
Theory can be a great tool, but it’s not required to write great songs. The best way to understand music is through building intuition by immersing yourself in it, and allowing parts of it to sink into your subconscious — through deeply listening, copying, and experimenting with things you've heard. I call this building musical DNA
Eventually, you'll have listened to, played, and sung songs by so many other artists that you're swimming in a pool of musical DNA. Each new song idea draws from a unique combination of that musical influence. Eventually there's enough DNA that your songs don't feel like a copy/paste of your favorite artists, but something that can stand on its own.
That's how every artist builds their musical language. Theory helps express that language, but it doesn't replace the process of absorbing dozens of artists' ideas and incorporating them into something innovative and new — like a baker drawing from the best parts of multiple recipes to create their own dish.
#6 - What if other people hate it?
Some of the biggest artists in the world still have their haters. Ed Sheeran may be one of the biggest artists in the world with one of the most devoted fan bases. But there are still people who dislike his music. Same goes for Drake, Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, and every other artist who's ever existed.
If your goal is to please people, you'll always be disappointed because there will always be people who dislike your songs. And the more people who discover and like your music, the more people who will also have a problem with it.
So why do artists try, knowing they'll inevitably find more critics the bigger they get? Usually, at least at the start, it’s because they write for themselves. No one writes their first songs for the money. The only true sustainable way to continue making music, improving, and growing is to find some type of joy in the process.
#7 - I never know where to start
This one's actually often not a lie. Knowledge gaps are real. It's hard to know what you need to know when you don't know anything. That's why when you're learning something new, it's easy to get lost on YouTube (essentially a library of knowledge in video form) — it's nearly impossible to find the perfect video that explains where to start.
You need someone to take you step-by-step through the process, meet you at the beginning, and guide you on where to go next. Within the next week, I’ll be releasing a video that dives into a songwriting process that I have all my students start with, step by step.
If you want to get a heads up when that specific video is out, get notified here, or you can join the songwriting club for free educational tips on songwriting here (at the bottom of the home page)!
