Music Is My Meteor

I’m often asked how I got into music – and the truth is becoming a songwriter was as sudden as a meteor strike for me.

One moment I was a suburban mother juggling the demands of family life with a part-time career as an art teacher and the next I was a songwriter with an unstoppable need to express myself in lyrics. It was amazing. I woke up one morning in August 2008, picked up a piece of paper and literally started writing without any idea of what I was really doing. Lyrics started pouring from my head into my hand and I wrote – about everything: stars, boats, love, fire – but especially love. I really believe (though I can’t prove it) that I had some form of mild musicophilia*. My long-term relationship was disintegrating and I’d been under immense personal stress, probably for years. Some switch got thrown inside my head – or maybe some block was finally lifted – and everything that had lain dormant in me musically since I was a child just exploded.

It was fabulous!

After years of struggling to express myself creatively, I had finally found something that felt fluid and natural for me. I also knew that I needed to understand the laws of lyric-writing – pronto! I quickly turned cyber-mermaid and surfed the net obsessively, working out in a matter of weeks exactly what I needed to write great songs. I owe a lot to the songwriting wisdom of both Robyn Fredericks and Jason Blume. They really showed me the structure and mechanics of good lyric-writing, reminding me that access to knowledge is everything. There’s no need to limit yourself if you’ve got the means to learn how to grow. And, of course, the internet makes that possible. It’s the greatest gift of the twenty-first century so far, in my opinion, and it’s given us all an almost equal shot at excellence.

I really didn’t win prizes much as a child – in fact, it was a bit of a “thing” with me. But within weeks of lyric-writing I started placing highly in the Lyrics Only Category of global competitions like the Great American Song Contest, The ISC and The Song of the Year. These were competitions that had thousands of contestants world-wide and I was routinely in the Top 10 after just a couple of months of song-scribing. I couldn’t believe it. It really felt like the universe was supporting me and leading me forward. It was a magical time – and even more so because my cry for good things in the lyrics that I was writing, had been answered in the most direct way.

Music sparkles for me still and it always will – it’s imprinted in the DNA of my relationship with it. But perhaps the biggest surprise has been where it’s led me since. I started going to singing workshops and songwriting conferences and developed some amazing co-writing relationships with people like 5ive’s Ritchie Neville, Kitty Groove’s Sven Tydeman, CBD’s Gary Pinto, Producer Barbara Griffin and John and Rick Brewster from the Angels. I met Shane Nicholson and Andrew Farris from INXS and was privileged to hear Karise Eden sing as an unknown 17 year old at the Ettalong Tourist Resort (of all places!). Her performance then was as electrifying as it is now. I began writing my own melodies and teaching what I knew to other budding songwriters.

As the lyrics and the melodies flowed, all my years of singing a capella around the house and in the car and to my son as he went to sleep at night began to naturally lead me forward to recording my own songs. UnConquered Sun is my first true release as an artist. I started as a lyricist and now I’m a singer/songwriter starring in my own beautifully shot and highly polished film clip. Such a thing would have been unthinkable three years ago. It’s amazing where a little bit of adventure can take you ….

I’ve just won the Lyrics Only Category of the UK Songwriting Contest for the second year in a row, having found out that I’d won it the first time round on the day the Mayan Calendar infamously ended – December 21, 2012. Everyone was waiting for the world to come to a halt and I’d won this fabulous contest – a dream come true. I laughed out loud when I realised.

It was so symbolic for me personally – and so funny. What we think of as being the end of everything need not be that – it might even be the beginning of something better.

August 23, 2013

Susan’s next blog will be published on Thursday August 29.

*Musicophilia is a sudden unexplained ability for music, usually brought on by trauma, accident or illness. For a brief explanation of the condition see the New York Times Book review of Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/books/review/Gottlieb-t.html