#songwriting

#songwriting

The career of Kenneth Edmonds, better known as Babyface, offers one of the clearest expressions of that truism: a body of work that echoes the past even as it reshapes the present.

Dave Mason lived a remarkable life devoted to the music and the people he loved. He was a frontman who wrote and performed some of Traffic's biggest hits, but who hopped in and out of the lineup.

Kacey Musgraves is back with her latest single, Dry Spell, which is full of horny double entendres and signals a return to her earlier, humorous style. The song features a parched guitar sound that evokes a sense of desperation, calling out for attention. It is co-written by a hall of fame lineup of songwriters, showcasing a lyrical wit that fans have missed in her recent work.

The greatest adjustment in Cornfield's new music is her lyrical framing. In the past, her songs were so littered with personal details that listening felt voyeuristic.

She watched her peers get called up for groups like SHINee and f(x), but her own debut never came. When Kim, now known professionally as Ejae, was finally dropped by the agency in 2015, the explanation she got was simple: This was a business. As she recently told the Philippine media network ABS-CBN, "SM has a very specific vision and sonic sound and I just didn't really fit that."

Originally from Illinois and now based in Maine, where he has lived for the past four years, Pokey LaFarge brings a lived-in perspective to American roots music. Drawing from early jazz, blues, swing and folk traditions, his songwriting balances warmth, rhythm and emotional clarity without slipping into nostalgia for its own sake. Over the years, LaFarge has grown into a confident bandleader, known for performances that feel loose but intentional, with space for both musicianship and connection.

Rut took piano lessons in grade school, but they didn't stick. He asked his parents for a guitar because he wanted to be Ace Frehley of KISS. When his guitar teacher told him the members of KISS "weren't real musicians," he stopped playing-until high school. "I found a friend who knew all the classic rock riffs. That's when I started hearing songs in my head," he said.

Right now I have some writing sessions [in Monterrey] for Fuerza Regida's new album, two days from now I start Carin León's new album, then I go to L.A. for the Grammy Week,

"I feel like we were a different band than we were pre-pandemic," says Ryan Jarman, who along with his brothers Gary and Ross lead long-running UK band The Cribs, who just released their ninth album, Selling a Vibe. "It's been like six years since we recorded a record. We weren't sure what we were going to do. We weren't entirely sure how the band was going to move forward.

Def Leppard have released the new single "Rejoice" ahead of their Las Vegas residency beginning February 3rd. The track is a joyous slab of tried-and-true arena rock, throwing it back to the sound of the band's seminal album Hysteria. Somewhat unconventionally, singer Joe Elliott's lyrics were the initial inspiration for the song, with guitarist Phil Collen putting together the musical arrangement to match.

"Oh, gosh, I've got tons of stuff," he responded (as transcribed by Blabbermouth)."Since we finished the last Sabbath show [at 'Back to the Beginning' in July], I've just been going through all the stuff that I've written since the '80s onwards and updating everything. And what held me back before, I didn't have a singer when I'm at home, but AI came along. [laughs] So all my songs now, I've updated them all and I'm using an AI singer to bring all the lyrics out."

The song, in which a young woman confesses to being simply "a little much" for the people around her, is built around a steady, descending piano part that sounds more like the skeletal framework musicians use to teach each other chord changes than a fully fleshed-out song. Listening to it feels almost like sitting next to the singer as she's coming up with the song in real time, noodling away at the piano in the early morning hours,

Mayne was a very honest, straightforward guy, sometimes to a fault, said his longtime music partner, guitarist Mitch Greenhill. He was very loyal and devoted to traditional music but ready to take it to new places.

"It's important to me because I know how important it was for Donna," said Summer's husband, Bruce Sudano, in a statement about the induction. "With all the accolades that she received over her career, being respected as a songwriter was always the thing that she felt was overlooked. So for her to be accepted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame I know that she's very happy somewhere."

Our family saw Wicked together last Thanksgiving. This year, we saw it again-together, yet separately, different cities, different schedules, the same emotional landing place. At the final chords, Sara's six-year-old blurted, "It's over? Is it really over?" He captured something adults often try to hide: the uneasy truth that we don't know what comes next, but we do know we've been changed.

"It was my favorite song back then, but I didn't really know what it meant," he told Brooklyn Paper. "And now going back to and listening to 'Losing Myself,' I'm like, I knew that was my favorite song on the album, but I wasn't really sure why. It's about not really knowing what you're going to get into, but you're going to lose yourself in the moment."

"I had been sitting on all of this music long enough that there was like a tiny man in my soul beating down the door of my soul," Hobert, 26, said on a recent rainy morning at Swingers Diner in Hollywood. This week, the L.A. native sets out on her Staircase to Stardom tour across North America, Europe and Australia. Intimate venues will see her perform from her debut album, "Who's the Clown?," released via RCA Records in August.

They said they'd just written this film whose lead character was a guy called Marty McFly, and whose favourite band would be Huey Lewis and the News. They asked: How about writing a song for the film? I said: I'm flattered but I don't know how to write for film necessarily. And frankly, I don't fancy writing a song called Back to the Future.

I didn't think anything of it, he says. And then two years later, we heard some quite bizarre whispers that Rosalia had somehow heard it. It was true: six months ago, Maltese was sent the Spanish pop star's demo of the song. He tried not to get too excited, even when, a few weeks back, a blurred-out photo of a Rosalia album tracklisting appeared online. On the WhatsApp group we were like: I think that says Magnolias!