Co-writing

Songs are written in lots of different ways, and therefore co-writing can happen in lots of different ways.

The first worship song I was involved in writing was a song called 'When I was lost' which came about by my husband Miles tinkering around on the piano and he started playing what became the intro and I said, I reckon I could write a song to that. Sometimes it’s a little flash of unexpected inspiration that starts the ball rolling.

When we were in lockdown in the COVID years, I got in touch with some old friends in the UK, Geraldine Latty and Carey Luce, and we somehow we were like why don’t we try writing together? Initially we wrote a whole bunch of Christmas songs including one called 'To Us He Came' where they wrote all the melody and I wrote all the lyrics. My passion is lyrics so that was a real gift to me. I like that way of working a lot.

So you need to figure out what your strengths are. Are you a lyrics person, are you a melody person, are you a chord sequence /vibe person? Figure out what your strength is, and bring that to the table.

Brooke Ligertwood says that when it comes to collaboration, one of the most important things to do is to lay a foundation of conversation and shared agenda. So when she and her husband Scott wrote the song ‘King of kings’ with Jason Ingram, she says they started with a three-hour lunch, and talked about the Church, laying a foundation that they could start writing from.

Jonas Myrin says the power of co-writing is to bring ideas with open hands and to share them freely.

Brandon Lake says bring titles, Scriptures, and themes, as well as your best melody and lyric ideas. And he says commit to helping set the atmosphere in the room, keep it high in encouragement and energy.

These days, a lot of songs seems to have a lot of writers’ names along the bottom. If you’re starting out in co-writing, maybe keep the number of writers smaller rather than larger to begin with. If you’ve got 6 people in the room, that’s a lot of ideas to co-ordinate, it’s a lot of opinions. I think it’s easier to co-write with one or two people while you get the feel of it.

You obviously need to be considerate of other people’s contributions. Be an encourager. Choose your words well if a suggestion someone makes is really not resonating with you. Maybe sleep on a suggestion. When you’re used to hearing something a certain way, it can take a while to get used to the possibility of it becoming something else.

Brandon Lake, again, says If you believe your idea is always best, you’ll struggle to collaborate. And, make it easy for someone to reject your idea. Take the initiative and move on.

The great thing about co-writing is the different perspectives and ideas that you wouldn’t have otherwise had access to working alone. And when you meet up, whether in person or on-line, at the end of that meeting, put a date in the diary to meet again. That gives you a deadline to work on something by. Sometimes we creatives need deadlines, to get things done.

If you co-write with others, you are creating something together, and the reality is, you will need at some point to talk about song splits, or in other words, how you divide the ownership of that song. I’ve heard Keith Getty say that’s just between you and the other writers in the room. So I’m not going to say ‘you should do this or this’. But here’s a couple of thoughts:

You can just decide before you start that whatever happens, you’ll split it evenly. That’s probably best if you’re all starting on a songwriting session from scratch, and then it doesn’t require any further thought.

But another scenario might be, say, if someone has written, 80% of a song, and then they invite you to come in and help edit and finish. They might say let’s split it evenly, but you might think, well you did more, so you should have a bigger split.

I think you just need to arrive at a place that seems fair to all parties involved. And it’s usually better to err on the side of generosity.

It should be a fun, exciting, inspiring thing to spend time with other writers. Make the health and quality of your friendships and relationships with your co-writers the most important thing, so that you all want to come back and write together again another day.