Hey, did know this was still going on. HEY ANDREW!!!! I've been talking about you here and other places. Glad you checked in. I think you'll find some people right up your alley here and you have a pretty good story to tell. 

Everybody, Andrew is the guy from Australia I worked with who has had a number one song over the past year or so. A great example of writing with artists and finding your own niche that some times is right in front of you instead of having to go far to find it., sometimes we have to leave our homes to find out things right down our block.

All I can say about Cricket is that one of my best friends, who passed away two years ago, grew up in Liverpool. She HATED CRICKET and would talk about her Dad taking her to matches as a kid and how they always broke for tea in the middle of the match. I used to tweak her all the time. She became this HUGE NFL fan and LOVED the NEW ORLEANS SAINTS! Loved anything about the Saints. 

She had these two HUGE TV's at her house, and would have the huge football watching parties and got REALLY heated up on the games. When the Saints were playing in the Super Bowl, I snuck off and checked the tunings on other channels. They had DISH TV and got all these weird channels. So I found one that had all day cricket matches from India or somewhere. So during one of the commercials, when she was in the kitchen (which she was always in the kitchen, an AMAZING COOK) I switched the TV's over to the cricket match. We all just kind of sat around and didn't say anything. 
She came back and sat down, and didn't notice for a minute. When she suddenly discocered it, she went CRAZY!!!!

That was a lot of fun! My favorite Cricket Memory!

Andrew may be sulking because England beat Australia yesterday. On the other hand, he may not since Australia retained the Ashes, as the series was tied at 2 wins each. Exciting stuff, MAB - you should have been watching.

Gavin,
I'm sure I should. Today is the day I have a bit of paint on my back porch that is drying in the sun. So I need to watch that instead. 

Cheerio though! LOL!

M

@mabbo

Thanks for talking about me MAB.

For other people following this forum it was a song I wrote with MAB while I was in Nashville called "Made In Australia" that got my foot in the door to write with Benn Gunn.

I play piano and at the time I hadn't worked out how to write an uptempo rocking guitar based song on piano. MAB helped me write an AC/DC type song where I supplied some really Australian themed lyrics and he supplied all the music...an epic hard rock anthem which is the type of song I'm best known for writing now.

That got me into a co-write and after 2 1/2 years of writing with Benn Gunn where nearly every song is an uptempo anthem I've got a good handle on that now.

There's a couple of things you can take away from this. First you don't have to be a great musician or even play guitar to write really uptempo songs. And full on uptempo songs are much more likely to get cut. There would be thousands of brilliant ballads written that haven't been cut yet. Most really great full on uptempo songs get cut pretty quickly. If you're still writing ballads you should go back and  read that sentence about 20 times.

Also there are a pile of songwriters writing love songs. Keep in mind if you're writing those you're competing with the best songwriters on the planet.

I know I'm not that good so the majority of songs I write are uptempo anthems. I write about 2 ballads a year, always with an artist and they're killer ballads because I'm not writing one unless I know it's an out of the park great idea.

I wrote a ballad with Benn Gunn called "Another Aussie Digger" which is HUGE in his live show.  But the chance of that getting released as a single is not good. Radio plays about 1 song in 10 ballads...the rest are mid and uptempo. And the bigger the reach of the radio station (meaning the more you get paid in songwriting royalties) the higher the percentage of uptempo songs they play. Write uptempo.

Finally you should definitely do MAB's songwriting tour if you haven't already. It's a huge shortcut. If you've already done a MAB songwriting tour do another one!

Lol..... I know that’s right! I get so bored browsing through sites like these reading one broken hearted ballad after another... Congrats!