Sometimes the first instinct was the right one all along.

I don't know why more songwriters aren't talking about this, but we all know that some songs take like 5 years to write and some songs can take like 30 minutes. But I feel like nobody really talks about the songs that are fully complete except for one word. And that one word can be written and rewritten in a million different ways over a few months and the song can still feel incomplete. For example, I have a song called Wrinkles. And when I write, I'm big on who is this person, where are they, what are they feeling? And I mean physically what are they feeling? Like what are they smelling, what are they tasting, what are they seeing, what are they hearing? So all the lines are there, right? For example, flip the light on low it hums above your head. Listen to this. When I flip on the light in the my bathroom, there's like this humming sound, you hear that? I talk about the tiles that they're cold underneath my feet, the drip drip of the faucet. Everything was super specific. But there was one message I was trying to get across, which was it was way earlier than I expected to be awake. I did not get a good night's sleep last night. But I couldn't figure out how to say it and I only had a couple syllables left cuz the rest of the song was fully written and I really didn't want to rewrite and rewrite the song a million different times. I liked everything I had. I just couldn't figure out how to say it's earlier than I expected it to be. The initial line that I put was it's earlier than I said because it rhymed with above my head. But what I was really trying to say was it's earlier than I said that I would be awake. So I tried a couple things. It's earlier than I thought it should be. It's earlier than I should be awake. It's earlier than I set my alarm to. It's 5:00 a.m. Nothing felt right. And I just left it there as a placeholder I thought I will rewrite that at a different point. Months go by with me trying a bunch of different things and nothing felt right. And at some point I was like the song is finished. It's earlier than I said. That's it. I'm I'm done with the song. I think it's good enough. This is how the verse ended up sounding. >> [music] >> I flipped the light on low it hums above your head. Tiles cold [music] beneath my feet it's earlier than I said. There's a drip drip from the faucet keeping time for me. I lean in close like you might say something. Your [music] eyes are tired now in ways I am [singing] not used to. Lines that I don't remember earning staring [music] back at you. Tilt your head and squint a bit. That change in angles helps. Like who you really are is hiding somewhere [music] else.