Do Great Songs Even Matter Anymore?
A note to every songwriter who still loses sleep over a line.
I entered the music industry at the wrong time.
Or maybe I entered it exactly when I was supposed to.
Maybe it just took me this long to figure out what I’m here to do.
I spent years writing songs and chasing things the industry told me mattered.
The smash hit.
That top 40 validation.
The approval of people whose approval changes with the wind.
And somewhere in all of that, I lost touch with the reason I started.
The way a fire goes out when nobody’s tending it.
The music at the top stopped being great.
And when you’re surrounded by people reaching for likes instead of reaching for greatness, you start to absorb their target without realizing it.
But it wasn’t just that.
It started to feel like great songs didn’t matter to anyone anymore.
Like the world had moved on and left the fine art of songwriting behind.
And if nobody cares about the depth and the craft of a song, what’s the point of the obsession?
What’s the point of losing sleep over one line?
So somewhere along the way, I stopped believing it was worth doing.
I lost faith in the importance of the song itself.
But then I’d go back and listen to the greats
Songs written fifty years ago by people who had no idea what Spotify was, who never thought about a playlist pitch or a three-second hook or what was trending on TikTok.
They just wrote the best songs they possibly could.
The thing is, some of those songs have billions of streams on Spotify.
Not because of an influencer campaign or the algorithm.
Because a great song doesn’t expire.
The world never stopped needing great songs.
The mainstream just stopped delivering them.
And that gap — that enormous, widening gap between what’s at the top of the charts and what people actually hunger for — that’s not a reason to give up.
That’s a reason to keep going.
So here’s the one plan worth having.
Keep your head down.
Remain obsessed with your craft.
Write the best song you possibly can.
Then write another one.
Share it with your world.
Not for external validation or industry accolades.
Not because the timing is right or the market is ready.
Because great songs matter.
They always have.
And the songwriter who still believes that,
The songwriter who still loses sleep over a line,
The songwriter whose only aspiration is to create something truly great,
That songwriter has something increasingly rare.
Maybe nothing happens for a long time.
Maybe you look up from your desk one day and something did.
Either way, you spent your time doing what you were made to do.
You made something worth making.
And to me, that’s always been the point.
The point was never the mountain.
The point was always the song.
If you enjoyed reading this, the highest compliment I can think of is if you restacked it or shared it with one person who you think it would help.
Maybe it's as simple as writing a song with the understanding that you may be the only one who ever hears it. You write it because you must. Because at some point it stopped being your choice whether to write it or not. You're a songwriter, full stop.
That’s it man. I’ve never paid attention to the charts. Ever. I listen to what I like, and I find new music on a large number of ways. Great songs never stopped being written. The place they started popping up changed, and without a pop radio station, most people had no way to know. I’ve recommended this to you before. But look up Nathaniel Rateliff. Look up Matt Nathanson. Look up Dead South.