Songwriting Idiots

Luke Leighfield is a London-based songwriter and got himself into an utterly ridiculous project for 2021: He wants to write and release a new song every single week! We here at Songwriting Idiots find it hard enough to come up with a song each month so we simply had to get Luke on the show to find out he he does it. So that's what we discuss in this special in between seasons episode. On top of that, we talk about Luke's songwriting process, tech and - most importantly perhaps - his dog.

This is the first in a series of special episodes coming your way until Season 2 hits off in May. Today, we are talking with Mirco, the man behind the "USR", a project he doesn't like to call electronic music (opinions do differ). For his current EP, Mirco asked us (of all people) to remix one of his songs for the B-Side. And well ... we did and show him the shocking result for the first time on the show. On top of that, we talked a whole lot about analog synthesizers, the songwriting process, how to remodel a track ... all the good stuff - you know.

Guys ... it's incredible. We made it through an entire season of this madness we call Songwriting Idiots. Crazy. As promised though, we've got a whole series of in-between-seasons specials lined up for you, starting today! In this episode, we take a look back at 8 episodes and 15 songs, share our highs and (mostly) lows and ... play a LIVE PERFORMANCE of "Secret Santa" in seven styles! You probably wanna hang around for that trainwreck.

It's that time of the year. The time we've all been waiting for: End of season time here at Songwriting Idiots! And to end season one of the show with a blast, we take a bow to the other thing happening right now: Christmas. Or more specifically, Christmas songs. This time, however, we changed things up and joined forces in order to write and produce the ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS SONG. Promising too much? You'll be the judge ...

Ralf dreaded this episode and not even Dan was excited (which means something, that man has no standards). You charged us with writing a Ska song about our aunt's obsession with Crocs shoes ... Well truth be told: We enjoyed it more than we thought. Turns out there is more to Ska than the hideous Ska Punk we both remember from the 90s, thank f***! As for everything else, you know the drill: We both wrote and recorded a song and present them to you and each other in this newest episode of the show. Enjoy!

For this episode of the Songwriting Idiots Podcast, you have once more forced us to introduce a new language. After having done songs in English, Spanish and Italian, it is now time to get into some German here! And not just any German, mind you. We are talking proper gangster German - cause what else would be appropriate for the genre of German hip hop? And for the rest ... You know the drill: We both wrote and recorded a song, this time on the topic of the UK's response to Covid 19 (was there any?), and present them to you and each other. Enjoy!

Most musicians suffer from chronic GAS. Gear Acquisition Syndrome, that is. And while both of us are actually quite minimalistic compared to most of our peers, the gear we do use, is obviously quite important to what we do. So in this bonus episode of the podcast, we want to give you an insight into what instruments, microphones, amps, software etc. we use to produce all the seminal hits you hear every month.

In this episode of the Songwriting Idiots Podcast, you asked us to write an Italo-Dance song each. To Ralf, having grown up close to the Italian border, this came naturally. To Dan ... not so much. Well, you know the drill: We both wrote and recorded a song, present it to each other live on the show and discuss the outcome. Take a listen!

Storytelling is quite the hype these days, as I'm sure you've realized. And this doesn't only apply to marketing or writing fiction, but is also very much true for songwriting. There are actually loads of ways to tell a story in a song, both lyrically and musically. To talk about that, the story of our own Disney movie and the songs we wrote about it, we invited the creator of "The Wall", Nicole Salomon, to the podcast for this week's bonus episode!

In this episode of the Songwriting Idiots Podcast, we attempt to write our very own Disney song for our very own Disney movie! You know the drill: We both wrote and recorded a song in that genre, present it to each other live on the show and discuss the outcome. Take a listen!