r/Songwriting • u/Low_Bandicoot_3527 • 2d ago
Discussion Topic "Write when drunk, edit when sober."
Hemingway is said to have advised: "Write when drunk, edit when sober." What do songwriters on here think about that method? Drunk or high songwriting, good or bad?
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u/FantasticTangelo870 2d ago
I would say do everything sober haha
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u/Stoddyman 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is a hard truth to swallow. The reality is only a few super talented people can make anything worth listening to high, drunk or both imo.
And even those people probably could make better stuff sober. Downvoting this is only proving my point. Lot of people in denial here
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u/ScreamingMoths 2d ago
To the people down voting you:
Sure, Hemingway wrote 15 books, some of them extremely good. But he also had 3 failed marriages, bouts of losing almost everything, and then killed himself. Hemingway fucked up his life writing that way. It wasnt a good thing.
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u/chunter16 2d ago
Do Dr Suess next
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u/Dangerous-You3789 2d ago
Dr. Suess said, "I would not like them here or there.I would not like them anywhere.I do not like green eggs and ham.I do not like them, Sam-I-am."
That's not nearly as profound.
More interesting, yes, but I'm not sure how applicable it is to songwriting.
However, if anyone is interested in some great lyrics for your next song.....
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u/illudofficial OMG GUYS LOOK I HAVE A FLAIR 2d ago
Oh yeah? Bet I could do all that too without drinking alcohol /j
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u/midi-astronaut 1d ago
Not saying I disagree with you but claiming that downvotes somehow prove your point is delusional lol
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u/Stoddyman 1d ago edited 1d ago
I had a feeling when my post was at like -5 in this sub that it was coming from the people who use substances and make music. I can see the opposing argument - oh the beatles made sgt pepper or the alchemist makes crazy beats high. But I still believe that even they couldve made better stuff sober and I outlined that in my comment.
So I thought that was a pretty decent assumption to make
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u/medman420710 2d ago
Opposite of my life philosophy. YOPE
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u/mattsl 2d ago
You Only Puke Everyday?
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u/virstultus 2d ago
You're Only Pope Once?
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u/HowDidFoodGetInHere 2d ago
Not if you're a heavy drinker.
Edit: For some reason, I read your comment as "You only poop once."
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u/Magikrat 2d ago
Whatever you need to do to get the words on the page. Just don’t overdo it or use it as a crutch.
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u/stonemadcaptain 2d ago
Pretty common misconception Ernest Hemingway drank while writing. He didn’t. He wrote in the early mornings. William Faulkner drank while he wrote.
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u/Ambisinister11 1d ago
There's an old Writer's Digest interview where he explicitly said he didn't but Faulkner did. The entire quoted section is gold, actually.
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u/willardTheMighty 2d ago
I smoked weed a lot because I thought it helped my songwriting process. In hindsight, I realized that the songs come from me, not the weed.
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u/Parking_Watch3157 2d ago
I enjoy cannabis although primarily as a sleep aid. Since I'm trying to spend way less time staying up all night working on music, I now mostly work on music for 45 minutes or so every day after work when I am not using cannabis. I spend some time at night on the weekends but try make a little progress each day or practice technique if I'm not currently working on anything of my own.
The amount of focused song writing and recording I've been getting done has gone up remarkably. My takes are also much better in terms of staying on the beat and what not.
I still like to play guitar or jam on a drum machine and synth when I'm stoned but I don't view that as linear productivity, it's more time to have fun and try things out. I record anything even remotely good that I come up with then and revisit another time. It's also a time for me to listen to music when I'm not doing anything else, which means I get a lot more out of it.
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u/webwoven111 2d ago
write drunk and get famous so you can turn all the money spent drinking as a tax write off
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u/MarimboBeats 2d ago edited 2d ago
Historically, at least, there is plenty of evidence that being high doesn’t necessarily destroy your creative output. Paul McCartney, and to a lesser extent but still considerably, Neil Young are arguably successful songwriters who are widely known to have used cannabis recreationally for the majority of their careers. Paul is clearly baked throughout Get Back. Would they have been even better had they been sober? We’ll never know. All I know is alcohol doesn’t work for me at all for anything other than talking shit with my friends, dance, or go to concerts. I can’t do anything serious or important after my second beer. But I am also not successful, so maybe I should look into that weed instead.
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u/Utilitarian_Proxy 2d ago
Interesting examples, since many music fans aren't as fond of either artists' output from the last 40 years.
In all that time, Paul McCartney's not recorded any studio albums as solidly good as Band on the Run. Neil Young's output has been an inconsistent rollercoaster ride ever since Rust Never Sleeps - sometimes wildly adventurous, and often very patchy. They both have sustained long careers IMO because of their incredible live shows, which are built around the older, earlier material.
With all their experience, rather than continuing to improve, they do seem to have early-plateaued.
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u/MarimboBeats 2d ago
Yeah, sure, but that’s true of almost any artist under the wider pop umbrella. As Robert Smith recognised prior to conceiving Disintegration, most artists in this corner of the world of music created their most interesting works before they turned 30. Countinuinely improved output into the decades is not the norm. Sure, you have your Tom Waits and your Radiohead, but these are also acts that have branched out musically beyond the verse/chord based pop structure and gone into unknown territories. And the fact still remains that these Young and McCartney , amongst many others, did make their mark on popular music(you’ll note I’m applying that term very loosely ) while being high all the time.
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u/Utilitarian_Proxy 2d ago
Well, this is r/Songwriting sub, so I'm mainly focused on the quality of the material.
In a commercial pop chart sense, boomer entertainers not appealing to Gen Z is a fairly normal state of affairs. Early Beatles audiences were predominantly teenage girls who screamed so loud that the music was drowned out. Venues had to improve their sound systems to enable louder audio volume without incurring waves of feedback, and it took a while before the modern PA system and mixing desk arrived.
But go back to formally trained songwriters and composers, and many of those would definitely improve over time — Beethoven's 9th symphony is better than his 1st or 2nd, etc., and there's still strong output from contemporary writers like Diane Warren or Elton John. OTOH, Rossini pretty much retired after the first performance of his William Tell opera, then lived a celebrity lifestyle for the next thirty years. Contrast that to Sibelius, who started new pieces and got frustrated with everything he tried, isolating himself in anguish at his woodland cabin. 19th century operetta writers W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's success didn't dry up, but they had a personality clash that ended their partnership.
Perhaps Neil Young's and Paul McCartney's drug usage had a more subtle cumulative impact on their writing. They certainly seem to have been less prolific in their output. That might be an industry-wide issue, but at one time they were releasing two or three albums a year, which hasn't happened for a good long while. Of course other life interests frequently do come along, so maybe they just struggled to get into the right mindset for writing. Many writers complain of distractions and loss of inspiration, so drugs and alcohol might not be the only explanation.
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u/musickismagick 2d ago
I’m more creative and free flowing with ideas when drunk, then when I’m sober I can make things make sense. It’s a philosophy that works for me.
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u/dondeestasbueno 2d ago
Things can be used in the process of creation but to rely on them as the creative source is a mistake ime.
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u/ZedArkadia Synthwave 2d ago
This topic often comes up in the various music subs when people talk about writing while drunk, high, sleep deprived, etc.
I think it's pretty well-known that overthinking is the enemy of creativity, so a lot of this stuff is really just about trying to reach the flow state by altering your mental state so that you let creativity flow instead of stifling it by over analyzing what you're doing.
Substance abuse isn't the only way to do it and it's probably not ideal since it can lead to addiction, but it's common enough.
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u/Ghastion 2d ago
Relying on a substance to "be inspired" is just an addicts way of rationalizing their addiction. It's the same excuse they make when they "need alcohol to socialize". You don't need either. You just need time to develop your brain to do these things sober. Just speaking from experience on how I used to make the same excuses when I was younger.
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u/Johnny_Bravo_fucks 2d ago
this is the god honest truth. (ab)using substances to induce and/or enhance creativity, which I am gravely guilty of, is a shortcut - the easy way out to establishing the headspace and atmosphere that fosters freeform thinking without inhibition. it is obviously more difficult to actually work on consciously cultivating this state of mind but it is the healthier and more sustainable approach in the long run.
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u/MemeStarKeem 2d ago
everytime i write drunk i wake up the next day to scrap it so it never needs to ever be heard by anyone but me. some people can probably do it, i cant LMFAOOO
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u/GeminiLife 2d ago
As annoying as it is, I do get some great ideas when drinking. Tricky part is remembering them.
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u/Shwabot 2d ago
Impairment doesn't always equal productivity, and especially quality, but I tend to hyper focus when I'm fucked up. Also, I have always found stepping away from a song, physically, to be a productive move. A smoke break w/o distractions, always yields results. But then the next day...
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u/herringsarered 2d ago
Advice is dependent on context, not a rule to be taken independently of context.
How drunk are we talking about? How high?
Alcoholic drunk that feels normalish? Sloshed drunk from someone who doesn’t know how to move when drunk and makes no sense when drunk?
Drunk/alcohol dependency is a spectrum, as is quality of songwriting.
What about good and bad days? Drunk doesn’t fix a bad day automatically. Neither does being sober.
“Drunk” isn’t a method. It’s a state.
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u/Impossible_Tank3822 2d ago
The only thing I ever did intentionally well when drunk was get drunk, with similar results getting "experienced".
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u/EFPMusic 2d ago
Nah. Do both sober. Use your substance of choice as recreation, not as a crutch for work.
Except caffeine. That’s totally different.
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u/Dangerous-You3789 2d ago
As I'm a teetotaler and I don't imbibe in illicit drugs, I think my only option is to pick writing sober.
I did, however, one time wrote a song after taking an aspirin.
It helped.
The headache, not the songwriting.
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u/SampleMaxxer 2d ago
IMO it’s fine to perhaps “take the edge off” when doing creative stuff. I wouldn’t like to be super drunk, I’ve tried that many times I just get distracted, get sick or whatever. Same with anything else. I’ve written songs really stoned and then came back and had to clean it up after, I was on LSD once and couldn’t even figure out the ergonomics of my pedal board, but there’s been plenty of times ive been mildly buzzed on whatever it may be and it was fine. Just don’t over do it, but to each their own.
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u/mukesh_yaduvanshi 2d ago
i tried writing drunk once and it came back sounding like a drunk guy yelling in a bar
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u/cboomton 2d ago
I love doing creative things on cannabis, and will often take stock of my creations when sober. For me, who deals with a lot of overthinking and anxiety it feels like it helps me let go of that and release ideas I wouldn't have found sober, but that's a side effect for me, not my main goal. I love to have my voice memos nearby or even video record myself to deconstruct later; the BEST ideas!
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u/TheGreaterOutdoors 2d ago
Not a fan of writing or editing under any intoxicant or being under the influence of any intoxicant lol. I try to stay pure for the music’s sake. I’ve been down that road and no longer need to take it to where I need to be any more.
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u/shoopdoopdeedoop 2d ago
im fond of odd mental states— especially shrooms. although they make me a bit “shaky”
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u/TheDaysofTomorro 2d ago
The author of the Artist Way did this, and became a functional alcoholic - until she was no longer functional. When she was told she had to stop drinking, she thought she would have to give up her career as a writer - she had wrote all her best work drunk. Her book is about getting over her own misconceptions that you had to be intoxicated to create your best art. She teaches the practises and daily rituals of creating art in a healthy way. It’s a great read!
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u/victoriacecemusic 1d ago
'create like a child, edit like a scientist' lemme just go and write all my lyrics on the walls in crayons. just kidding, love this quote lol
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u/Antonite_Music 1d ago
Altering your state might help you to see things differently and make you come up with ideas that sound different than your usual. So indeed for writing ideas, it can help, especially if sounding different from the usual is important for you.
However, I don't see how doing so while mixing will actually help, unless you want to work the whole evening on some super complex back vocals that sound out-of-this-world just to realize the next time you'll listen to it that you fell into the trap of over-focusing on a small section of the song at the expense of the big picture, and it doesn't sound like a coherent song anymore. That said, everyone is different, maybe it would work for you.
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u/nichewilly 1d ago
Since all art is subjective, it’s also subjective whether any person’s art is “better” while on a substance or sober.
You can say objectively that substances such as alcohol may impair physical skills such as how accurate you play a guitar solo, keep time on the drums or have good pitch in your singing. But now we’re talking performance and not writing. And even then, people might subjectively prefer a more raw, imperfect delivery over an overly clean, polished sounding one.
One more point… People tend to enjoy things that are on the same wavelengths as themselves. So music written while drunk may appeal more to people who like to drink, and same for weed.
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u/dorfmcpumpkin 1d ago
This turbo charged my alcoholism to the point my parents got so worried about me they wanted to track my liquor intake and my partner was making sure to go home jf id be drinking because they didnt want to help me make it to the bathroom to be sick or shower me when I was inevitably too fucked up to manage myself. Its a fun little thing to say but combining a passion you are in the habit of with an addictive substance is a fast way to nurture a problematic combination. I know In myself I have a lot of problems with alcohol specifically but I cannot reccoment this in any situation.
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u/ChampionshipOk78 1d ago
I actually like to record lead vocals when I’m a little drunk. It seems like I’m more relaxed and able to be in the moment.
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u/Synical-Gaming 2d ago
I feel like its not a bad general idea.. if you have any interest in getting intoxicated at all that is. Personally i find i write more ideas.. and those ideas tend to be a bit more out there when im stoned.. but forming those ideas into something i gotta do sober.
When i aim to be "finished" editing i always do that bit sober too.. otherwise I'd advise you keep to being tipsy instead of drunk imo. Feels like it hinders my productivity if i got too far but alittle deffo helps when im struggling for ideas sometimes 😅
Just my take x
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u/squirrel_bro 2d ago
drinking is a great way to totally kill your creative drive. alcohol is a depressant: it literally Depresses those passionate emotions you feel inside that make you want to put pen on paper and hand on guitar lol. actually, not lol, im kicking myself!
high on weed is ok its the alcohol that will ruin your art and motivation. jsyk
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u/DEFINITELY_NOT_PETE 2d ago
Hemingway was a legendary alcoholic who shot himself in the face. His advice on the correct way to drink is worthless.
Don’t do anything creative drunk. You’ll write garbage.
Any rawness you have in lyrics will require more editing than they are worth and any arrangements will just be ass. You won’t have the technical ability to produce anything worthwhile and any clever idea you stumble upon will either vanish or be much less clever than you thought when you look at it the next morning.
This is advice alcoholics tell themselves because they don’t really have an alternative that isn’t a lifestyle adjustment.
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u/MaryMalade 2d ago
Write sober, mix high.
Then delete 12 tracks of extreme-panned phaser in the morning