‘Push through the feelings of: I’m worthless, this sucks’: can anyone learn to be a top songwriter?

Imagine you’ve spent the past 20 years writing about songs but never had the chops to write one. This is my penance: sitting in a room in north Wales, with a tiny keyboard and notebook spidery with attempted lyrics, the only rhythm in my ears my rave-energy heartbeat, the only melody in my mind the lilting panic of my inner critic going: “Argh!”

It’s the final day of a fourday songwriting course at Literature Wales’s 16th-century HQ, Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre, led by Brian Briggs of folk band Stornoway and Welsh poet and songwriter Paul Henry. Tonight, I have to perform an original song with two relative strangers, in front of people I didn’t know four days earlier. This particular terror is the climax of a bigger endeavour on my part: to explore the growing popularity of songwriting courses, and to find out if they work.

These courses are everywhere in 2024. Spotify has recently teamed up with BBC Maestro, which offers recorded online songwriting lessons with Gary Barlow and music production tutorials with Mark Ronson. US platform MasterClass has Alicia Keys, St Vincent and John Legend on its glamorous roster. Real-time contact is available too, with Big Thief’s Adrienne Lenker recently running a Zoom course with US institution School of Song, while in the UK, creative writing centres such as Moniack Mhor and Arvon have critically acclaimed musicians such as Boo Hewerdine and Kathryn Williams running songwriting retreats.

These courses are booming “because lockdown gave people time to reflect,” reckons Williams, whose new album, Willson Williams, made with Dan Willson (AKA Withered Hand) stems from a friendship that has involved them teaching together. Since Covid, “people have been finding ways to retreat,” Williams adds, “and songwriting feels accessible, revealing of ourselves or a way of working out past situations. It can be stepping into another character or seeing something from another perspective.”

But where does a newcomer begin? Williams recommends Jeff Tweedy’s book How to Write One Song, full of warm-hearted guidance. I try some online classes, and find St Vincent calms my nerves, a bit. “Push through the feelings of: I’m worthless, this sucks,

I’m a fraud,” she tells me, sentiments I recognise. “That’s half the battle of writing.” Gary Barlow encourages me to listen to lyricists I love, so I mainline Leonard Cohen, Amy Winehouse and CMAT, hoping their genius seeps into me.

I also listen to the most popular singer-songwriter in the world in a fancompiled YouTube video of her top tips. “I think as a songwriter there is that urge to connect,” Taylor Swift says. “To say: ‘This is how I feel sometimes’, and have fans say: ‘Oh my God, I feel