Are you as good a songwriter as the pros ?

[Lt. Bob]

I write my tunes better than anyone else in the history of songwriting.

[ido1957]

I can write decent songs IMHO but I could use a good producer to improve them.

[Greg_L]

I write my tunes better than anyone else in the history of songwriting.

I've said that many times about my own stuff. No one writes or plays greg music better than me.

[smili]

To me the performance is much of the song, fwiw. The same song performed differently sometimes makes all the difference.

[rayc]

Everything said previoulsy is valid & subjective and situationally appropriate and stuff like that.
The songs I write aren't as good as anyones simply because I can't write a complete song on my own. I have NO facility for melody.
Once I collaborate things change.
Some of the songs I written collaboratively have been good and a couple were amazingly good but they aren't mine in the sense of complete personal ownership.
At best alone I can cobble together a chord progression, song structure and lyrics.
Not many pros make it just doing that - maybe some rappers?

[jonny deep]

Everything said previoulsy is valid & subjective and situationally appropriate and stuff like that.
The songs I write aren't as good as anyones simply because I can't write a complete song on my own. I have NO facility for melody.
Once I collaborate things change.
Some of the songs I written collaboratively have been good and a couple were amazingly good but they aren't mine in the sense of complete personal ownership.
At best alone I can cobble together a chord progression, song structure and lyrics.
Not many pros make it just doing that - maybe some rappers?

You're half Elton John, half Bernie Taupin.

[VomitHatSteve]

I don't know that there's a lot of objective metrics that you can use to judge whether or not a song is "good" as written.
You can judge whether or not a song is well-recorded. That's pretty straightforward.

But every metric for the quality of the songwriting itself is really subjective. What's catchy to one is repetitive and annoying to another. What's deep and clever to one is sophistic and banal to another.

That being said, my songwriting is brilliant. If I didn't think so, I probably would spend a lot more time playing video games and a lot less time trying to record this stuff.

[YellowDwarf]

I've written some pretty good songs - if you time travelled back about 35 years, some might've even been hits ... The second biggest problem with my music is that I am not a professional musician and don't have the playing ability to make my songs sound their best.

Who cares though, I'm in this for the fun of it.

[Xdrummer]

Naturally this is subjective. I think I've written a few "good" songs that I think could compete with some of the most "successful writers" in similar genres. However, I've also written a couple of hundred not so good songs (some were downright pathetic). You have to write crap to learn how to write good stuff.

I've made a few bucks in the process with a couple of songs used in movies and a TV show. I've been paid for a couple of jingles and for composing music for a couple of indie films and a couple of stage plays and I've even writen music/voice over for a couple of industril training videos and music on hold.

While I've had some minor "successes" - I've had some miserable failures and I have a file box full of rejection letters. But, I take the craft serious and I keep trying, keep writing and hopefully keep improving.

Certainly the chances of major "success" are small and regardless of the amount of dedication and significant effort involved - there is a great deal of luck involved and I have no real expectations of anything more than small successes here and there (maybe enough income to by a piece of gear or two.

However, if we are serious about writing, we have to keep writing, learn from failures and accept successes with due appreciation. Am I confident in my abilities - I think any performing artist has to have a large dose of self confidence - but I hope I am humble enough to balance confidence with reality.

While much luck may be involved, I do know that the harder I work, the luckier I get.

[SloppyJo]

How about we look at this from another perspective:

Anybody who writes music they think is crap, please raise your hand.