People in Nashville cowrite songs. Generally, you meet up with someone at 11AM, sometimes at your house, sometimes in a writers room on Music Row, and you get amped up on coffee together. With the coffee’s help you do one of two things: One, you get to talking about life, about what’s going on in your life, and how those goings-on have got you to thinking about this one thing, and how this thing seems song-worthy. Or, two, you get to talking about song ideas you have, and if you’re me, you figure out if you can connect to any of those ideas personally, whether it be through your own personal life, your sense of humor, or your sense of empathy. A lot of songwriters talk about how cowriting is like getting into a room with another person, sometimes a stranger, and pulling your pants down.

On the Sky Captains of Industry, working together, and the future prospects of the rest of your heart. -by Ryan Morgan

Like all songwriters, I have a pathological incapability for listening to other people’s music without thinking about how it was written. This manifests itself in a lot of different ways - I always try to guess the rhyme after the first lyric in a verse, for example, or I think “Hmmm, I wanna use that chord progression” instead of just appreciating it. In a recent interview with Conan O’Brien, Jack White says...