Confessions of a Serial Songwriter

What People Are Saying…

I’m eternally grateful to professional songwriters, the unsung heroes of many giant careers. Shelly Peiken provides fascinating insight into this least understood profession to the thorough delight of the reader.

—Clive Davis

"In the conversational tone of your BFF, Shelly Peiken tells you everything about the life of a songwriter. The good, the bad, the funny, the sad, what you need to know, what you want to know and even what you wish you didn’t know, but are now grateful she told you. Confessions of a Serial Songwriter is the ‘must have’ songwriter’s guide to life in the music business."

—Cynthia Weil

Life, love and lyrics: with her open heart and personal prose, Shelly takes readers through the looking glass into one of the music industry’s…most essential professions. Anyone aspiring to a career as a songwriter will find a wealth of eye-opening revelations and hard-won wisdom within these pages.

—Dan Kimpel, Song Biz Editor, Music Connection Magazine

I relate to this strange, small world of which you speak—the games, the competition, the doubts, the sadness, the elation, the camaraderie, the ‘songwriter’s high’...seeking a better way. We are not alone.

—Candice Beu, Mother and former Recording Artist on S-Curve Records

Shelly is a true beacon in the night for the rest of us.

—Teresa LaBarbera Whites, A&R

Shelly brings authorial wisdom and a perpetual coolness to the pop song like no one else.

—Greg Wells, Grammy-nominated Producer and Songwriter

Shelly bares her soul, speaks of her triumphs, her insecurities, her loves and her losses. On these pages you will see that her songs and her life are inseparable…her life is where her songs come from.

—Kevin Cronin, REO Speedwagon

It is incredibly hard sometimes to earn respect in the writing room when you’re a young singer-songwriter. Shelly, however, not only respected what I had to say, but also nurtured my ideas in such a caring way. After writing with her, I felt that I had both collaborated with her and learned a lot from her!

—Laura Marano, Actress, Recording Artist

Folks need to read and know about the great women in the music business.

—Kevin Goins, Editorial Coordinator at SoulMusic.com

I love Shelly’s ability to really tap into the personal and turn it into something catchy and sing-able in record time. She’s such a warm, creative, caring person, who really invests herself in each song, and I’ve really enjoyed picking her brain about how to be a working songwriter and a mom at the same time.

—Lisa Loeb, Recording Artist

Shelly Peiken gives even more meaning to this wacky world we’re lucky enough (and crazy enough) to be a part of.

—Emily Warren, Songwriter

"Shelly’s writings are some of the best I’ve ever read regarding this truly life-morphing process, always from a chef’s stew of her own personal and professional senses. For those of us who share these wonderful yin yang days, weeks, years and/or decades searching for the note or the line or the mood or the sound that makes us go ‘aah...’—capturing in those moments something we soooooo want to describe, but ultimately come up short of, she gets as close as anyone has a right to."

—Mikal Paul, Musician

Copyright © 2015, 2016 by Shelly M. Peiken.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published in 2016 by Backbeat Books

An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation

7777 West Bluemound Road

Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices

33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

Permissions can be found here, which constitutes an extension of this copyright page. Every reasonable effort has been made to contact copyright holders and secure permission. Omissions can be remedied in future editions.

Edited by Ronny S. Schiff

Cover Design and Formatting by Wicked Book Covers, www.wickedbookcovers.com

Cover Photography by Karen Ray Photography, www.karenrayphotography.com

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Peiken, Shelly.

Title: Confessions of a serial songwriter / Shelly Peiken.

Description: Montclair, NJ : Backbeat Books, 2016. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016000480 | ISBN 9781495049255 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Peiken, Shelly. | Lyricists--United States--Biography. |

Popular music--Writing and publishing. | LCGFT: Biographies.

Classification: LCC ML423.P33 A3 2016 | DDC 782.42/164092--dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000480

www.backbeatbooks.com

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

The Muse

SongSex

Snapshot: Crystal Blue Persuasion

Movin’ on Up

Carly Simon

So Sue Me

Underneath It All

The Mother App

Snapshot: I Saw the Light

The Antidote

A Visit from Jim

The Opportunists

Wilson (No) Phillips

Daring to Suck

That Song!

A Perfect Storm

Bitches & Babies

Snapshot: Sara Smile

Her Name Was Christina

Miss America

One on One

Human & the Chrissies

Christina—The Sequel

Cars & Cats

Free Falling

Almost Doesn’t Count Almost Didn’t

Snapshot: Maggie May

So Sue Me (Twice)

No. 1

I Could Cry

Come On Over, Shelly

Breaking Away

Napster

Suzan, My Wife

The Mother App Revisited

Map to My Song

Snapshot: Time Travel

Cirque du Beatles

6 Degrees of John Lennon

Snapshot: Across the Universe

Eargasms

Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus

What a Girl Wants (The Movie)

Turn the Page

Snapshot: Fast Car

Where Have All the Albums Gone?

So Sue Me X3

Forever Young

Snapshot: What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Nashville

Stumbling

Snapshot: Creep

Tom & Delilah

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Toplining

17 Minutes of Britney

Come Together

How Hard Can You Get Me

Double Dipping

Kum Ba Yah

Gleeful

Snapshot: Beautiful

Worst Session Ever

Farewell, My Muse

The Competition

Snapshot: Human

He Ain’t Heavy

Get Off My Cloud

Fucking You

The Way It Wasn’t

(Not So) Gently Down the Stream

What on Earth Is a Hit Song?

Ain’t Gonna Happen

Suddenly

Grammy Fever

The Future Always Comes

Should I Stay or Should I Go

Snapshot: Complicated

Tick Tock

The Pitch

A Little Help from My Friends

Accidentally on Purpose

To Sell or Not to Sell

So You Want to Be a Songwriter

Little Earthquakes

Landsliding

The Gap

I Hope You Dance

Afterword

Thank you…

Glossary

Photograph, Text, and Lyric Credits

About the Author

se·ri·al adjective \'sir-ē-əl\

The repetitive nature of similar acts performed over a period of time.

Foreword

Hang around the music world awhile, and you’ll often hear the phrase, It all begins with a song. Hang around even longer, and you eventually realize somebody actually writes these songs. The incredibly talented Shelly Peiken has spent her life to date as part of a remarkable and ever-changing creative community of successful and professional songwriters whose work you know and love, even if you’ve never known her good name and excellent face. So if you’ve ever sat in your car or on a subway or around your backyard singing Bitch made famous by Meredith Brooks, or What a Girl Wants by Christina Aguilera, or dozens of other familiar songs sung by everyone from The Pretenders to Celine Dion to Keith Urban to Britney Spears, then it’s definitely time you get properly introduced to the funny, smart and beautiful woman who did so much to bring those songs to life.

Confessions of a Serial Songwriter offers you the tremendous pleasure of really getting to know Shelly Peiken—and then some. This is more than a great book that takes us inside this fascinating world of working songwriters—it’s even better than that. This is an insightful, honest, often funny, emotional look inside the good, the bad, the ugly and ultimately the transcendent aspects of trying to lead a creative life inside a competitive career that—like most of them—is full of highs and lows, ups and downs, art and commerce. And as you follow this pop culture pilgrim’s progress inside the world of music, as well as film, television and life generally, you soon begin to realize that this time it’s extremely personal—and that songwriters are the soul inside the music machine that never stops. A little bit Nora Ephron, a little bit Carole King and a whole lot of fun, Confessions of a Serial Songwriter is ultimately a book about life, as all the best ones really are."

—David Wild is a Contributing Editor for Rolling Stone, a two-time Emmy nominated television writer and New York Times best-selling author.

Introduction

I am not Sheryl Crow. Though sometimes I wish I were. I love how she sings. I love how she plays guitar. (I love how she does it all in eight-inch strappy heels.) She writes songs that speak to my heart and other bodily parts. And, she seems like a really nice lady. But like I said, I’m not Sheryl Crow. So who am I?

I am the young girl who was riding her bike around her Long Island neighborhood one summer day and passed a car with the window open and the radio on. The most amazing sound was heading right toward me—almost knocked me off my bike. It was Karen Carpenter singing Close to You. It put a spell on me. All I wanted to do was follow that car and catch the magic.

I wrote my first song soon afterwards on a used piano in the den of my family’s split-level home. My parents paid $19,000 for the house and $150 for the piano. Most pianos were shiny and lacquered. This one had a textured black and white stucco finish. It was the oddest-looking piano I’d ever seen. Nevertheless, I couldn’t keep my hands off of it. My father gently informed me that the melody to this first song was similar, if not identical to, Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. That was my first taste of copyright infringement. It was as if I had given up my virginity and something went terribly wrong. It didn’t stop me. I began compiling lyrics in those composition books with the faux-marbled black and white cardboard covers that ironically matched that strange piano. My parents could see I needed guidance, so they hired a piano teacher, Mr. Milken. He tried to get me started with some classical pieces, but I wouldn’t have any of it. I had caught sight of a stack of sheet music in his briefcase—popular songs like What the World Needs Now Is Love, I’ll Be There and…Close to You. For God sakes, let me in! I convinced my mother to instruct Mr. Milken to bypass the classical and let me have my way with one pop song a week.

Fascinated with chord progressions and how moving from one particular triad to another could manipulate mood, I had no use for the melodic function of my right hand. Why bother playing the melody when I could just sing the melody while plunking out the accompanying chord changes with both hands?

Poor Mr. Milken. He had no purpose. I was in my own little world. One time I turned around and he was sleeping. I didn’t care; I was just using him. He was my dealer. The drugs were in his briefcase.

In-between lessons, I discovered I could extract the chord progression from my favorite song and write my own song on top of it. A single progression suggested an endless choice of melodies. It was like creating a drawing through tracing paper. I could imitate the emotional arc of a piece of music until I got the hang of its lines and curves... how it flowed from one section to another—the tension and release. Eventually, I could do it all by myself without the training wheels. The art of crafting a song was becoming second nature.

Carly Simon would become the soundtrack to my teenage years. Something about the way she expressed herself pulled me into her world and made me think about mine. I listened to her records all the time.

I listened to other records too: Carole King, Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Jackson Browne. They were all able to reach a place inside of me with their self-examination, honesty, incongruities, longings, and whimsical pleasures. 

In college, my own musical ideas began echoing from that same place—the place where these artists started the fire. Only I was expressing my observations, my whimsical pleasures. I didn’t know what I’d do with these ideas or if anyone would ever hear them or how I’d even get anyone to listen…but it didn’t matter. They came and I received them. There wasn’t a choice.

The lure of a piano was visceral. It was my happy place, even when I was miserable—especially when I was miserable. It was where I went when I needed to cope with life’s uncertainties.

My songs were personal. I never considered anyone else would be interested in singing them. As far as I knew, whoever sang a song wrote the song they sang.

So after college, I headed for New York and formed a band thinking maybe I could get a record deal. I was pretty sure at that point I was meant to share my songs with the Universe, like Carly Simon. For whatever reason, the powers that were didn’t agree. We’ll never know if the powers were right about that. Who knows what might have happened if I’d persisted. Sometimes it can take years for an overnight success to succeed.

One thing’s for sure: along with the privilege of making your own records comes the challenge of summoning an endless stream of inspired material and the pressure to stay at the top of your game—year after year. Terrifying. In hindsight, I don’t know if I would have had the fortitude to promote myself, to tour, to show up, to prevail, and to withstand the scrutiny. Besides, I really liked coming home to Sushi, my cat. So…maybe the powers were right. At the risk of sounding like a songwriter, perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.

But, I was a SongJunkie. Writing them allowed me to expose emotions that were hard for me to express. If I couldn’t make my own record, I had to find a different path that would keep them at the center of my life.

The Universe must have concurred, because after yet another gig at CBGB’s (a Lower East Side rock club), with no offer to be the next Carly (or Carole or Joni), Hit & Run Music, a small boutique publishing company, invited me to be a songwriter on their roster. Joey Gmerek, their creative rep, had come to see me play. He said Hit & Run would help me get my songs to recording artists, keep me up-to-date on who was looking for material, arrange collaborations. I wondered if this could be the different path. I accepted their offer.

Soon, I was writing for pop stars that were vying for position on mainstream radio. Pop stars that had the x-factor, and were comfortable singing an outside song—a song written by a serial songwriter, just one who never got her own record deal. I also began writing with artists, because many of them enjoyed the adventure of collaboration and were not intimidated by someone who could take their ingredients (listen to their ideas) and help them bake their cake (write their song).

And that’s what I’ve been doing since I signed that first publishing deal: writing songs for and with the artists who sing them. Totally self-contained bands that write their own material—I’m not on their radar—they don’t need me. And that’s okay; I’m having a very satisfying career—sometimes even exhilarating.

But it’s been a bumpy ride. The music business has changed, more so lately, than ever. These are the stories of my journey—the ups, the downs, the in-betweens.

Songwriters in the Round at The Mint in L.A. with Kevin Griffin (Better Than Ezra).

The Muse

I went to college at the University of Maryland. I chose Maryland not because of the Textile and Human Apparel program (which they offered) or the breathtaking campus (which it had) or the out-of-state government-assisted tuition (which I needed), but because when I visited the school Cowgirl in the Sand was wafting across fraternity row from an open window. I loved Cowgirl in the Sand. That was that. Songs are powerful.

I majored in something called Fashion Merchandising. I know it doesn’t have a particularly scholarly ring to it, but Maryland had a diverse curricula and I always thought it would be interesting to design, assemble, and put forth a line of clothing. It didn’t occur to me to major in music. After all, music was my joy…my pleasure. Work was supposed to be work. I probably could have used a little more time to think about who I really wanted to be when I grew up. Where was the gap year in the 1970s?

I wound up boarding at a sorority house because it was the only on-campus housing available at the time. This particular sorority was populated by Southern debutante daughters of wealthy businessmen. They wore preppy rugby shirts, headbands and Docksiders. I wore overalls, bandanas and earth sandals—the token Jewish girl from middle class Long Island. They said, Innit nice and "Warshington DC. I said, Why are you tawking like that?" I didn’t really fit in. There was, however, a semi-tuned, wobbly, black matte baby grand in the living room of TriDelt and that was a blessing. At least there was a place to express myself on this strange turf, and there was much to tell. After all, your first semester of college wakes you up. That’s when it occurs to you that you’re more than just an extension of your parents or your hometown or your high school.

I liked my studies well enough. I was thrilled with my straight B-minuses. I enjoyed learning how to assess the bias of an A-line dress in a store window and recreate it on my Singer sewing machine. But by second semester, I desperately missed people who tawked like me, so I made plans to transfer to F.I.T. (Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York City, where I’d be around the corner from the Garment District and a hop-skip away from on-site training. But then I changed my mind, because a few weeks before the end of freshman year, I fell in love.

Jake was adorable, scruffy and sandy haired—exactly not my type…that would be adorable, scruffy and dark haired. The first time I saw him he was calling to my roommate, Ginger, from the street outside our second floor window because he wanted to have a look at her homework. I should have known right then he was trouble. I shouted down, Ginger’s not here…I’ll tell her you came by. And then he disappeared.

The next day I was sitting on the front steps and there he was again, skateboarding down College Avenue, cuter than the day before. I must have said something like, Hey, and he said something like Hey, and before I knew it I was on that skateboard with him. He laughed. I squealed, and in the next few minutes something happened that would affect me for the next, I’m embarrassed to say, thirty years. There was no turning back. My father ripped up the check for F.I.T.

Jake started coming around to see me. In my mind it was obvious we were crazy for each other. I’m still not sure what was going on in his mind. Rumor had it he had a girlfriend, but this was college. All bets were off. Statuses changed weekly.

I was sensible and cerebral; Jake was spontaneous and carefree. Perhaps I was attracted to qualities I secretly wanted to have. He bounced in and out of my life, little reprieves from his girlfriend I supposed. I lived for those elusive visits. If I couldn’t have all of him, I would take what I could get. There were nights we’d end up in his bed or in my bed kissing and pressing our bodies together. Years later, I would thank myself for not giving him the one thing I couldn’t take back.

The musical floodgates opened. When my feelings are that alive and accessible, songs write themselves. I don’t have to wait for inspiration. It oozes from every pore. After many hours behind my Singer, I’d escape to the fine arts building on the far side of campus and the sanctuary of a tiny practice room (furnished with an old but impeccably-tuned upright), where songs tumbled out of me. I didn’t necessarily know what words would come out of my mouth, until my hands landed on the keys. And, I didn’t necessarily know where my hands would land, until they touched down. It was spontaneous—discovery as opposed to contrivance. There were no guarantees. How was I going to get Jake to love me as much as I loved him? I never found the answer, but that was okay. It wasn’t about the answer. It was about trying to find it.

Over summer break, I received only two handwritten letters from him. Remember those? And one phone call. Remember those? He was a cook in a crab house on the Maryland shore. I was a waitress three hundred miles north at a seafood restaurant on the waterfront in my hometown. My uniform was short. My pigtails were