It’s time to put an end to one of the worst and most common excuses for why songwriters have trouble writing songs: “I can’t find anything to write about.” 

Here’s why this excuse isn’t valid.

“Bad” and “good” are vague and frustrating terms when it comes to measuring up music. What’s good in the mind of one listener might be awful to another. A better way to think about it is determining whether a piece of music is successful or not, and as songwriters this is a topic that’s near and dear to our hearts. We don’t have to personally like a song to recognize that it has standout qualities that we’re looking to emulate in our own music. Similarly, there are universal qualities we can listen for and avoid in unsuccessful music. Here are five signs that a song isn’t going to make a connection with listeners:

There’s a good argument to be made for why songwriters should create music for their listeners above anyone else. It’s natural to want to please your audience, and writing with their tastes and needs in mind is a way to try and do that. It’s also natural to want to win the approval of bandmates, managers, labels, and venues with the music you make. Plus, there are the added benefits of financial and critical success to think about if you’re a professional musician. But does writing for others first and yourself second actually result in music that audiences will more likely want to hear?

You might not realize this, but there’s an internal conflict that plays out whenever you write music. As songwriters, we carry the weight of our experiences and allow them to shape who we are and the music we make. Things like a traumatic breakup or the six months you backpacked across Europe inevitably show up in your music in subtle or overt ways. However, we often forget that our musical pasts have complicated impacts on the music we make in the present. Believe it or not, how you approached learning your first instrument could be bad for your songwriting process through an overreliance on control.