How To Write the Perfect Breakup Song with Ben Folds
How To! with Mike Pesca
Peach Fish Projects
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2020
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lorenzo is a dental student with big dreams—of becoming a rock star. Lorenzo plays a mean guitar at open mic night, but there's one thing holding him back: He doesn't know how to write his own songs. In this episode of How To!, we bring in master songwriter Ben Folds, former frontman of Ben Folds Five, and author of A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons. Many of those lessons are about how anyone can unlock their creativity. Ben breaks down his own music, and tinkers with Lorenzo's attempt at writing a break-up song. He tells him to embrace cliché, then slip in something unexpected. Also, switch the first lyric with the second. Will it work?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And when you've performed like tell me a little bit there was like a dental school video |
| 0:04.5 | There's like something about the backstreet boys or something. Oh my god did you did you guys Google me or it's on you too. Yeah. Oh my yeah. Lord. Oh God. Are you to make me sing it? Yes. Okay. Everybody. Do you have decay? Do you have decay? I don't remember the next line. I'm never going to listen to the backstreet boys without thinking about the need to brush my teeth again. |
| 0:29.0 | This is how to and I'm Charles Stuhig. Each week on the show we try to find creative solutions to people's toughest problems. |
| 0:39.0 | But on today's episode, we're tackling creativity itself. |
| 0:44.1 | My name is Lorenzo from Montreal. |
| 0:46.8 | Lorenzo is a dental student by day. |
| 0:48.9 | It's not the most glamorous job, but I love it. |
| 0:51.0 | I think it's great. |
| 0:52.0 | And an amateur musician by night. |
| 0:54.0 | Yeah, yeah, emphasis on amateur. |
| 0:56.0 | I took lessons for guitar when I was a kid and I would go to the guitar club |
| 1:01.0 | and they would do open mics like every two weeks. |
| 1:03.6 | So I would go to the open mics and I would always just play covers. |
| 1:09.2 | I was far from the best musician there and I was far from the best singer but I was one of the better performers so I would always just go with a lot of energy and really draw the crowd in. |
| 1:20.0 | Lorenzo's a pretty outgoing guy and despite what you might think about dentists he's got a great |
| 1:28.0 | stage presence but he says that there's this one thing holding him back. |
| 1:33.0 | So I reached out because I would always go to those open mics and I would only play covers and I've |
| 1:38.9 | always wanted to write my own music and perform my own music for other people but I wouldn't even know |
| 1:45.9 | where to begin. Yeah that feeling of like writing your own song of like bringing this thing into the world |
| 1:52.1 | that sounds beautiful and talks to your emotions but it's something you actually created that that seems like an amazing sensation. |
| 1:59.6 | You'd have to be very vulnerable I guess and that would also be something I would have to learn to be a little bit better at. |
| 2:06.3 | Lorenzo is struggling with something we all confront at some point. How do we become more creative? How do we find that that spark for our hobbies that that takes |
... |
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