The Pro Files: Shelly Peiken
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There’s a lot to talk about with Shelly Peiken. The songs, the hits, the blog, the book, and the Grammy nominations (including one this year for Best Spoken Word Album). Whether or not you are aware of who she is, her music has been part of the soundtrack of most people’s daily life for almost 30 years.
She’s worked with EVERYONE: Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Brandy, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Celine Dion, Meredith Brooks, Backstreet Boys and Reba McEntire, to name a few. Her Serial Songwriter blog, which is featured on the Huffington Post, deals with all aspects of the songwriter’s journey, and her extremely honest book “Confessions Of A Serial Songwriter” tells her own story, in such a way, that all creatives can relate. On top of all that, Shelly is also a founding member of SONA (Songwriters Of North America), fighting to #GetTheRateRight, and secure a better future for the songwriters of tomorrow.
Shelly refers to herself as an “immigrant” from the analog world of yesterday, when people bought albums, to the digital world of today, where people stream just the singles.We met up one Friday morning in a little coffee shop in the valley, to talk about creativity, business, and the past, present, and future of songwriting.
Chen Neeman: You’ve written before that great songwriters are born with songwriter DNA. In your opinion, what does that look like?
Shelly Peiken: I think that those who were born with the DNA are not asking a lot of questions. They’re just doing it. Not wondering IF it’s gonna happen for them, more of a question of WHEN. Ideas are coming to them melodically and lyrically without them having to sit down with a pen and paper and say “hum, what shall I write about today?”
It’s not a profession or a vocation, its a way of life. From a very early age, they’ve been expressing themselves in three-minute little ditties without any plans to become a songwriter or to make money from it. It just IS. Which isn’t to say that those of us who want to be in the business of songwriting shouldn’t take workshops or classes, or work on our craft. Making a living at it requires additional wiring on top of just being born with the DNA.
CN: In your book, you describe the very organic way in which you learned how to write songs. What practices would you recommend for becoming a better songwriter?
SP: To be a better songwriter, or a more successful commercial songwriter?
CN: That’s a good distinction. How about both?
SP: To be a more successful commercial songwriter (I’m not gonna use the word ‘better’), you have to listen to the radio.
See what people are recording. Records are a fashion, or at least their structure is. Years ago we didn’t have post choruses. Now posts are as important as the hook. In the past, the verse was sort of bland in a good way. It was foreplay. The pre-chorus was a ramp up into the hook, which was the payoff. Now every section is a hook. We use to have 45 seconds to a minute to get to our hook. Now you better be there by 22 seconds. Why? I think because we now as a culture, have a shorter attention span. It’s because of all the distractions of screens, and notifications, and multimedia. So if you don’t get someone’s attention immediately, you’re gonna lose them.
Look, if you’re a fashion designer, you gotta go to the shows and see whats on the runway. I’m not saying you should copy that, but somewhere you got to put that in the back of your mind, and take that into consideration in your own work. I’m not saying you should chase it, but you have to consider it. All these things don’t make for a better song; they just make for a better commercial song.
And to be a better songwriter? I’d say tell your own unique truth. I think after you’ve been doing this for a while, you can sit back and look at your songs and see which ones did the best and why. When I look back at my own body of work, those songs that were the best for me, were confessional, painfully honest, vulnerable, self-identifying, that some other artist was able to connect with and perform. They were not calculated. I wish I could sit down and write a calculated song, I really do. But that’s not my strength. When I look back on the handful of songs that changed my life, they were songs that I wrote when I wasn’t planing them. I didn’t go to a session that day and say “Kelly Clarkson is looking for a new single, let’s write it!” That never works for me. That said, I might not have written those organic “non-thinking” songs, had I not done the “work” of listening to what was going on around me. Something must have sipped in.
CN: You mentioned those ‘handful’ of song that changed your life. Which ones were they?
SP: ‘Bitch,’ which was as much my story as it was Meredith Brooks’s, ‘What A Girl Wants’ (Christina Aguilera), ‘Almost Doesn’t Count’ (Brandy), ‘Human On The Inside’ (The Pretenders).
I’m probably missing some, but I feel like those are the songs that define me. There are a few others that were not hits, and a few that were never even recorded.
CN: Speaking of the ones that don’t get recorded, rejection is constant in the songwriting business. How do you deal with it?
SP: I deal with it all the time. Everyday. I think I even feel it more now because there are so many more songwriters, so many more songs, so many fewer opportunities to have songs recorded. There is just so much material, and so little places to send them to. Back when people made more records that needed more album cuts, There was more opportunity.
So what do I do? I take some time to feel bad, and then I get occupied. Cooking, running, yoga. I connect with my worth and remind myself that whether or not that song got cut, does not determine my worth.
And if I feel bad at night, I just remind my self to get a good night’s sleep. It’s always better in the morning.
CN: Enough about rejection. Congratulations on your Grammy nomination! Is the nomination for your performance, or for the book itself?
SP: Well the nomination itself is for the performance, but I think I’d be fooling myself if I thought it was JUST for the performance. I think that there has been a lot of really beautiful support from the community for the soul I’ve bared, not just my own, but on behalf of many working songwriters. Especially those of us who have been around for a while.
Young people coming into the business today are digital natives. They are not immigrants like me, who have crossed the line from an analog world into a digital world, and they’re not feeling that there has been a big change. For those of us who have been around for a while, there have been huge changes that affected us both financially and emotionally. And my process and culture have been effected. And so I feel like when I read my words in the studio, after being away from it for a while, I felt inside it again. And so I hope that showed in the performance.
CN: You say your process has changed. How?
SP: After the book came out, I made some very conscious changes. I write way less than I used to. I’m not trying to make sure I have five sessions a week just to say that I’m working. Just because it worked for me in the past doesn’t mean it will work for me in the future. So I write less, and with people I know have the resources, the passion, and the relationships to get the song done and cut.
Also with demoing songs, used to be that sometimes whether or not I demo a song wasn’t entirely up to me. The producers, other co-writers, all had a say. And a lot of songs that I loved fell by the wayside because of that. So now if I have something that I love, I’ll go to a studio and record an acoustic guitar/vocal of it.
The three songs in the past few months that I love the most, I wrote by myself and recorded just with an acoustic guitar. Cause you know, Kelly Clarkson just cut a couple of songs off of voice memos. So maybe we are getting back to the song, rather than the record.
CN: There is a chapter in your book called the opportunist, where you talk about writing a song with an almost famous Jim Carrey. How much of an opportunist does a songwriter have to be nowadays?
SP: You have to assert yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to be a stalker, but I’ll walk up to someone in a professional setting. I met Pat Benatar the other day, and I’m probably gonna reach out. You have to assert yourself, because its musical chairs. Twenty years ago there were ten chairs, and fifty songwriters circling those ten seats with their songs. Now there are three seats, and a thousand songwriters circling them. So if you’re shy, it’s just not gonna happen. You have to put yourself out there.
CN: With that in mind, what advice would you give to new songwriters just starting out in the business?
SP: You have to get up in the morning and live the life. Write songs, make music, and develop your craft. But just as important, is getting out there. Maybe try to get a job as a receptionist at a recording studio, or be somebody’s intern.
Do that for a while until one day you’re in an elevator with them, and they ask “so whats your deal?” Opportunities happen outside in the world. You gotta get out of your house, away from your rig, away from behind your screen and your social media, which are all important, but you gotta be outside where you can meet people. Human interaction is everything. The songwriters that are getting signed these days are the busy bees, the ones that get out there. You can be super talented, but if you never leave your house, you’ll never get the opportunity to be heard.
Other than that, you need to know whats going on with the business. Join groups like SONA, and learn about upcoming legislation, and who your representatives are. Join the fight to help protect the future for songwriters, because if you don’t do it who will?
Find out more about the fight to #GetTheRateRight at www.wearesona.com.
Get Shelly’s Grammy-nominated audiobook “Confessions Of A Serial Songwriter” .
Award winning and multi platinum selling songwriter/producer Chen Neeman's songs have been recorded by artists such as Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Joe Jonas, Zendaya, and The Muppets, among others. Chen is dedicated to helping aspiring songwriters learn how to write better songs through personalized one-on-one coaching sessions via Skype, FaceTime, or in person at his L.A Studio.
Find out more about Chen’s Pro Songwriting Coaching, at HitSongCoach.com