Tayloring

Here's 2 minutes of an interview with Ben Taylor, the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon. Pretty good songwriting lineage.

Listen especially to the last 30 seconds when he talks about editing, believing what you write, making it more pictorial, and not being cliche. It goes by fast, but he gets a lot in there.



And here's James talking about Sweet Baby James. We all know that song, right? So, if you've read any of my songwriting posts, listen to how James tells us about how he wrote that song. He had a very specific agenda, people and experience in mind when he wrote it. But, to each of us, it has very different and personal meanings. He has that whole specificity/ambiguity thing going that I like to talk about.

He also talks about structure - the way he structures the verses, how the song builds from the very specific to the greater universe, and how he structures each line, the overall rhyme pattern and internal rhymes. I think this kid will make it some day.


Here's Sweet Baby James. Now listen for what he described in the song.