Oscar-Nominated Songwriters Share Advice for Aspiring Music Creators

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Oscar Sunday is here at long last. If you’ve been meaning to watch the Songwriters Hall of Fame’s 10th annual “A Conversation With Oscar-Nominated Songwriters,” you have another week to catch it on the SHOF site. (It will be available to stream through March 23.)

All five nominated songs are represented on the Zoom session by their writers (or at least one of their writers). The session was co-moderated by Nile Rodgers, who serves as SHOF chairman, and SHOF board member Paul Williams, a SHOF Johnny Mercer Award honoree and 1977 Oscar winner for best original song for “Evergreen (Love Theme From A Star Is Born).” (At the time the session was taped, he was the only person on the call who had actually won a competitive Oscar.)

The mutual respect among the nominated songwriters is heartening to see. As EJAE put it, “I’m so honored to be on the same screen as you guys. You guys are legends. I’ve learned so much from you guys.”

The best part of the session came at the end when Rodgers asked: “Can you share your best advice for aspiring music creators?”

After they each offered their best advice, Williams shared his take: “I wrote a commercial that I didn’t want to write. My partner [Roger Nichols] had to talk me into it, and I said, ‘I don’t want to write a bank commercial,’ and we wrote the song, and put everything we felt into it, and it was ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ which Karen Carpenter turned into a big, big song for us. [Editor’s Note: the Carpenters’ recording of the ballad reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970 and brought Williams and Nichols a Grammy nomination for song of the year.]

Williams concluded, “My advice is: Put that word ‘authenticity’ at the front of your alphabet, because it’s your authentic selves that has brought the heart and the soul to the stories that you’re telling.”

Here are the responses by this year’s Oscar-nominated songwriters to the prompt, “Can you share your best advice for aspiring music creators?” Responses were lightly edited for clarity.

Raphael Saadiq

Nominated for co-writing “I Lied to You” from Sinners with Ludwig Göransson. It’s his second best song nomination, following “Mighty River” from Mudbound.

“I would say my best advice is whatever you love, hopefully whatever you love as a child … is something good, because it’s gonna chase you for your whole life. And don’t be blinded by categories of music. Music has no categories, so dream as high as you want in different sounds and different styles.”
Bryce Dessner

Nominated for cowriting “Train Dreams” from Train Dreams with Nick Cave. It’s his first best song nomination.

“What Raphael said is beautiful. And I would second that. I came up playing classical music and then started rock bands with my brother [Aaron Dessner] as a teenager and then went to music school. And I’m here in Prague about to play with the Czech Philharmonic. Often in school, especially, they’ll say you need to pick one thing. And I actually think it’s your wide interests, the diversity of what you do, that makes you you, and it’s embracing all those things. And so many people on this call with us, all these songwriters, are great evidence of that. We are the sum of all our interests.”
Diane Warren

Nominated for writing “Dear Me” from Diane Warren: Relentless. It’s her 17th best song nomination and her ninth in a row, the latter an unprecedented feat.

“Work your ass off, be f—king great and work f—king hard. Show up, show up. The secret to what I have, anything that I’ve achieved is I show up, I show up to work hard. I show up for my friends. It’s showing up, showing up is the secret.”
Nicholas Pike

Nominated for writing “Sweet Dreams of Joy” from Viva Verdi!. It’s his first best song nomination.

“I think I’d say two things, if you really want it that badly, and this is your life, then of course, you’ve got to go for it. But most importantly, I think you have to listen to your own voice. You write what you want to write. Because there’s a lot of pressure to do what you think other people want to hear but, but you are the important part. What you have to say is the most important thing.”
EJAE

Nominated for cowriting “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters with Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo and Teddy Park. It’s her first best song nomination.

“I think a lot of people believe that success is where you learn a lot, but actually it’s failure. I think we learn the most when we fail, actually, so I think that’s helps to not be afraid of that. And also, whatever project comes your way, it could be like for a tiny commercial, whatever it is, I think it’s important to give 110%. Do whatever you can to make sure it’s like top quality. I think that’s so important. I think a lot of people think like, ‘Oh, it’s something small. I’ll just do a scratch take.’ Even for this, for Kpop Demon Hunters, I went all-out. I didn’t care if it was a tiny scene. I put all the harmonies in there; made sure my vocal sounded fantastic. So, I think that’s really important too, being proactive like that.”