Somewhere along the way, co-writing stopped being one option among many and started being treated as a rite of passage. If you’re a serious songwriter, the thinking goes, you’ll be in writing rooms with other people.
If you’re not, you’d better have a good reason. And if your reason sounds anything like “I prefer working alone,” prepare to be told you’re holding yourself back.
It’s worth questioning that assumption.
A recent article by Andrea Stolpe, What We Miss If We Never Try Co-writing, takes an honest look at the pressure songwriters feel to collaborate, and asks the more useful question: what do you actually want from your writing life?
Her piece is the springboard for the thoughts below.
Where the Pressure Comes From
Open the credits on almost any commercially successful song right now and you’ll find four, five, sometimes ten names listed. Co-writing isn’t just normalised in modern songwriting, it’s the default operating model for most of what gets played on the radio and pushed through streaming playlists.
The implied message is hard to miss: solo writing is a relic, and if you want your songs to land anywhere meaningful, you need to be writing in rooms with other people but that message doesn’t account for the writers it doesn’t fit.
Why We Got Into This in the First Place
Songwriters arrive at the craft from different doorways. Some of us were drawn to the social side from the start. Bands, jam sessions, the back-and-forth of building something with another musician in the room. For these writers, collaboration isn’t a strategy. It’s why they make music at all.
Others came to songwriting because it was a place they could go alone. The control, the privacy, the slow process of sitting with an idea until it becomes something. For these writers, the writing room is a sanctuary, not a meeting space.
Neither origin story is more legitimate than the other, and pretending otherwise is part of the problem.
The Genuine Upsides of Co-writing
When co-writing works, the benefits are real. You finish more songs, and you finish them faster. You absorb skills from your co-writer that you wouldn’t have developed on your own, whether that’s instrumental ability, vocal range, or just a different way of approaching a hook.
You also get plugged into their network, which means the songs you write together get heard by their circles too and the simple fact of being challenged in a room with another writer can lift the quality of your work in ways that solo writing rarely matches.
These are real gains, and they’re worth taking seriously.
The Honest Downsides
But the gains aren’t free, and they’re not guaranteed.
Co-writing can mean significant time and energy spent managing a relationship that isn’t quite clicking. It can mean session after session with someone whose vision, skill level, or intent doesn’t match yours.
It can also pull you away from your own artistic identity, especially if you write with too many different people too often, until your catalogue starts to feel like a collection of compromises rather than a body of work.
This is mostly the case when you happen to be writing with whoever happens to be available rather than whoever brings out your best. You can end up with a long list of finished songs and very little to show for it.
Quality Is Unpredictable
One of the most useful observations Stolpe makes is that talent doesn’t guarantee chemistry. She’s written unremarkable songs with remarkable writers, and remarkable songs with unremarkable ones.
There’s no reliable formula. A successful songwriter friend of hers once said some friendships are better off without a song between them, and that he’d poke his eye out with a pencil before writing with his best friend again.
That’s the truth of it. You don’t know which co-writes are going to be worth your time until you’re on the other side of them.
Co-writes Don’t Have to Last Forever
There’s a romantic notion of the lifelong songwriting partnership. John and Taupin. Lennon and McCartney. The implication is that if you find your person, you stick with them, and if you haven’t found them yet, you keep looking.
But most co-writes aren’t like that, and they don’t need to be. Some sessions produce something great, then end. The co-write becomes the complete experience.
Approach It With Intent
The most practical takeaway from Stolpe’s piece is this: walk into each co-write knowing what you want from it.
Maybe it’s meeting new writers and expanding your circle. Maybe it’s breaking yourself out of a creative pattern. Maybe it’s networking with intent because you’re treating your music like the business it is. Maybe it’s just because you enjoy someone’s company and want to see what happens.
Whatever the reason, name it. Thinking strategically about who you write with and why doesn’t make the art less artful. It actually makes it more likely your music will reach the people who need to hear it.
The Bottom Line
Always remember,co-writing is a tool, not a test.
Choosing to write alone isn’t a failure of nerve or skill, and choosing to co-write isn’t a guarantee of success. The writers who get the most out of their careers tend to be the ones who make this decision deliberately, rather than defaulting to whatever they’ve been told a real songwriter is supposed to do.
Before you assume you should be co-writing, take a moment to ask why. You probably know what you need better than anybody else.
Source: What We Miss If We Never Try Co-writing – Andrea Stolpe
