In my tiny apartment in the centre of Oslo there is a piano – judging by the space this is against all odds. The piano is slightly out of tune, but it is my dear companion when writing songs. The label manager has asked me to write about 30 new songs for the next album recording. 10 of them are already shipped off for evaluation. The next 4-5 are in the making; I am working on them in-between blogging and working on my PhD, singing rehearsals, and a minimum of housework…

How do one write songs? There is no waterproof ritual here. It is a myth that writing songs only is possible in inspired moments. A wise person (“wiseass”) said that the best inspiration one can get is a deadline. Sure enough, inspiration is not something you can buy or take for granted. Sometimes you have to get into the work routine of composing even when you are not bursting with inspiration. Great ideas can spring out of hours of dreary jamming alone by the piano. Other times I wake up in the middle of the night with brilliant ideas and have to run to the piano to note them down or tape them on my voice recorder. Experience shows that such “bright night ideas” have a tendency to disappear by the break of dawn.

The songs I am working on now are examples of both processes. I have played around with some song-titles: “Disenchanted”, “You Can’t Bring Me Down” and “Your Ghost Becomes A Person”. The tunes are usually finished long before the lyrics. When writing the tune I trust the first pure idea; if I work too much on the same melody-phrases and keep changing them forth and back the original idea is lost. The more filterless I write the easier the creativity flows.

(Photo: Morten Brimi / Above photo: Astrid Lunke)

Writing lyrics is a more demanding work. I collect information and images for the lyrics from my dreams. Most of my songs are rooted in some dream I had some night. Dreams are both personal and fairytale-like – sometimes surreal – so it is not possible to copy+paste directly from my dream-journal. The dream images must be translated into pop-lyrics that are shaped to fit the melody and formed to sound good when singing them. Working this out takes time.

Tonight I am going to bed with the new melodies on my mind; they are dancing their own little dance inside my head and encouraging my dreams to post some suitable images that can be transformed into lyrics tomorrow or the day after.