In The Vault

I still buy a fair amount of new music every month. Technology has allowed us the ability to swap whole music collections with friends- this is amazing. I believe that critical listening to the other artists is completely essential to developing as a songwriter. It sounds obvious, but what is also apparent to me is how many of my peers fall back on familiar sounds and motifs essentially derived from their earliest listening experiences.
Books like This Is Your Brain On Music have documented how the music of our adolescence is deeply imprinted on our consciousness.

We'll always have the sounds we love the most, but there is a process of stretching yourself as a listener that is crucial. Helping you along the way is connecting with other music fans, reading up on writers, and being engaged in trying to get behind the illusive answer to the question, "Why something works and why it doesn't."
Before I ever wrote a song, I spoke to friends endlessly about favorite tunes and what was it exactly that made them so great. Creating mixtapes can be seen in this way as a form of proto-composing.
Singer, writer, and musician are often three different careers that each take a lifetime to perfect. It's rare to find greatness in all three areas in one person. It makes collaboration, practice, experimentation, and further study all the more important. Your music collection is your textbook.