The secret truth about being a songwriter, Carole King said, is that the reward comes not from the outside world, but from within. “The reward must be in the doing,” she said. That is the simple secret; authentic, real-time passion for the process itself will shape the spirit of the song and songwriter in a positive way. Everything else is secondary.
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It’s a secret which can take some songwriters many years to fully comprehend, if they ever do. But others, such as Tom Odell, seem to be born with this knowledge, and it forever shapes their songwriting trajectory. He wrote his first song at 13 and never stopped, entirely engaged and enlivened by this new endeavor. It wasn’t about getting attention or impressing girls, the usual reasons. He wrote them only for himself and the genuine joy of these journeys of discovery.
“I didn’t do it for anybody else’s pleasure,” he said. “I found the craft and the challenge of it to be quite satisfactory without having to play it to anyone.”
He was inspired and empowered, not by the music of his generation, but by singer-songwriters of the ’70s mostly, including Elton John, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, Randy Newman and Tom Waits.
Odell’s a piano-based songwriter. He started studying piano when he was six, and had that foundation of playing for years before starting songwriting. He’s got real admiration for other piano-based songwriters, such as Elton John and Billy Joel, and though he often writes songs on a guitar, finds that the use of a piano gives his music distinction.
“I think my use of chords is usually pretty piano-led. I’m obsessed with what the left hand does. I can always hear a piano player behind a composition by what the bass is doing, because you’ve got two hands. You’ve got freedom of moving the bass separately from the chords. For example, I can tell Finneas is a piano player and some of these songs are written on piano because the bass doesn’t always follow the chords.”
Those seven years of diligence and exploration honed his songwriting to a fine degree, not unlike the opportunities for development that record companies used to offer new artists. Except that he did it himself. And it worked. By the time he released his first EP and his 2013 debut album, Long Way Down, this seriously seasoned songwriter became an overnight success. “Another Love” was the first of many hits. As of the summer of 2021, his songs have been streamed over three billion times. He’s won three UK top 5 albums, two UK top 10 singles and other awards, including the UK’s most prestigious songwriting award, the Ivor Novello award for Songwriter of the Year.
Yet the reward, to this day, is in the doing. The songwriting. That is where songs ultimately fly or fail, he said. And unlike songwriters who intentionally resist scrutinizing songs too intensely so as not to interfere with the magic, Odell is the opposite.
“I try now to solve all the problems with the composition,” he said. “I feel too many times I’ve tried to solve compositional problems with production. Why is this song not working? Oh, it must be the drum beat. Or the vocal. Or the key. When in truth the problem is probably the song. That’s probably why it’s not working. The song is just not good enough. Really, really great songs are consistently great, whichever way you present them.”
This is what’s known as “old-school thinking.” But for songwriters, this old school is worth attending because it’s where the great songwriters went to learn how to write great songs. It’s also where songwriters learn to harness an element some consider arcane and unnecessary, though it is neither: melody. The truth remains that few forces are more poignant and powerful than melody, which lends a song a sense of timelessness.
He agreed: “It’s interesting, isn’t it? I still believe in melody and lyrics, obviously. It’s still the nursery rhyme. It’s still something that people hum.” Though what he is saying opposes the conventional thinking, which insists that what is new is always better, he’s realized that nothing else supplants a powerful melody. “Things that you can hand down through generations,” he said, “they still feel resonant and relevant. Those things matter.”
Although he’s seriously focused and even reverent about songwriting, and acknowledges spiritual dimensions of songs, he isn’t precious about them. “I’ve worked with songwriters who really believe in the spiritual element of songwriting,” he said. “And I do, to a certain extent. But some songwriters write the verse and chorus and then act like it’s something religious, and it can’t be touched from that point. If you don’t like it, that’s it. That’s the song. I’m not like that. I’m much more of the mindset that if you have a great idea, you’ve got to chip away and turn it into its ultimate form. And that isn’t easy.
“When you get a good idea for a song, you can hear the whole thing in your head. You hear what it’s going to sound like in all its uncorrupted beauty. From then on, the production, the recording process and the finishing of the composition is all an attempt to get back to that original moment of beauty when you wrote it. It takes incredible stoicism and persistence to be able to do that.”
To give an example of that level of songwriting, he mentioned Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years,” which is one of his favorite songs.
“Simon,” he said, “is pushing what the boundaries of popular song could do, in the same way that Gershwin was doing. Sophisticated counterpoint harmony and melody and harmony and the way those two things are interacting. Incredibly deep and profound. Hard work has gone into those compositions.”
Odell’s commitment to realizing a song’s full potential doesn’t preclude him from creating production that is as compelling and passionate as the songwriting. He’s savvy about the ways that people receive music nowadays, and necessarily produces his music to fit. Instead of feeling dissed and downhearted by the state of digital music, as do many, Odell’s outlook is sunny.
“I’ve been very much studying the way people consume music,” he said, “and how to embrace that, rather than fight it. To be honest with you, I feel more invigorated than ever. I feel excited by music. I feel excited by what’s going on. I think what streaming has done is actually diversified music massively. There’s sort of generic pop music that is somewhat of the past now, and I think people are embellishing and celebrating their musical idiosyncrasies, rather than just making everything generic. I do that all the time.”
It’s an odd pursuit in many ways, he said, because one can’t calculate a song or blueprint it in advance. Songs come from journeys of exploration and discovery. The greatest challenge, he said, is not in the discovery, but in the process of capturing this delicate being and keeping it without destroying it.
In this way, he said, songwriting is “like wandering through a forest. You find a beautiful flower, and it’s the most beautiful but also the most delicate flower you’ve ever seen. You pick it up, you pick it, and your job is to try and get that flower home without destroying it.
“I think that’s the best analogy I’ve ever heard about songwriting. Because it shows that it isn’t easy to do. You’ve got to keep your eyes open to find it, got to be ready when you’re going to find out, and then you’ve got to get it home. First of all, you might not see it. You might never get the good idea, and then I think it’s two separate roles. You have to first put yourself in the forest so you can find it. But then you also have to try and get it home. It’s bloody difficult to do both.”
Check out Tom Odell’s latest release below.
