You finish a song. You set it aside and start the next one. Then the next. Before long, you’ve got a folder full of songs, some are finished and some are half-baked all sitting there with the same unanswered question hanging over them: is this any good?
That question doesn’t stay in the folder. It follows you into your next writing session. And the one after that. Eventually it becomes a kind of low-grade pressure (this one has to be great) and that pressure is often the exact reason nothing gets finished.
Sound familiar?
There’s a simple fix for this, and it doesn’t involve becoming a better songwriter overnight. It involves sorting.
The System
Graham English over at Speed Songwriting calls it the Drawer System, and it’s Step 7 of his Speed Songwriting process: edit, stop tweaking, and sort. Most people skip the sorting part and that’s why most people stay stuck.
The idea is straightforward. Every song you complete goes into one of three categories: Top Drawer, Middle Drawer, or Bottom Drawer. The sort itself takes about thirty seconds. What it does for your writing practice is harder to quantify, but you feel it immediately, it closes the loop on each song so you can start the next one without dragging the last one along with you.
The question you’re asking isn’t “is this a good song?” That’s too vague and too loaded to be useful however, the question you are asking here is: which drawer does this go in?
That question has a specific answer, and it doesn’t carry any shame with it.
Top Drawer
Top drawer songs are the ones that surprised you. The lyric is tight, the emotional arc lands, the hook sticks. Both your writing brain and your editing brain signed off. You’d play it for someone right now without apologising for it.
When a song makes the top drawer, the next move is clear: record it, pitch it, add it to your release calendar. It’s ready to develop. Move it forward.
Worth noting: top drawer is rarer than most songwriters expect when they start using this system. That’s not a problem, it’s just the reality of how songwriting works. The drawer system isn’t a test. It’s a filing system.
Middle Drawer
This is where most of your songs will live, and that’s actually fine.
A middle drawer song is good. Solid. It has at least one strong section, usually the chorus and a real idea at its centre, even if the whole thing isn’t fully realised yet. Maybe the second verse runs out of steam. Maybe the concept could go deeper. Maybe it’s not your most personal work, but it has commercial utility.
Here’s the thing about middle drawer songs: they’re the backbone of a working catalog. They license to film and TV. They get pitched to other artists. They get revisited six months later with fresh ears and turn into top drawer songs. The songwriters who actually build catalogs are building middle drawer catalogs, they’re not waiting around for a folder full of masterpieces.
The middle drawer is also a holding place. Set it aside, come back in a week, and what felt like a flaw in the writing session might turn out to be the song’s best moment.
Bottom Drawer
Bottom drawer songs are the ones that didn’t come together this time around. The concept wasn’t strong enough, the execution didn’t match the intention, or the idea simply ran out of runway.
Before you close one of these away, ask yourself two things…
First: is there a single line, phrase, or section worth pulling out for a future song? One strong image can be the seed of something much better, take it and archive the rest.
Second: what did this song teach you? Because bottom drawer songs are what sharpen the skills that show up in your top drawer songs later.
Graham’s framing here is worth borrowing: the bottom drawer isn’t a graveyard. It’s a compost pile. Everything in it is feeding the next thing.
The Re-Sort Rule
Whichever drawer a song goes into, set a reminder to listen back in one week.
Fresh ears change things. A chorus that felt weak when you were tired and had heard it forty times can land completely differently six days later. A song you were proud of in the moment can reveal a flaw you missed. One week, one listen, one decision, then move on.
Why This Actually Works
The drawer system is as much a psychological tool as an organisational one, and I think this is where it gets genuinely interesting.
Perfectionism lives inside the writing session. It’s the voice that tells you the song isn’t good enough yet, so why bother finishing it? The drawer system moves the judgment to where it actually belongs: after the work is done, not during it.
The writing session is for writing. The drawer is for sorting. Those are two different jobs, and keeping them separate is what makes both possible.
For me, this connects directly to the way I think about my own creative practice. Sorting is a slow, deliberate act. It cuts through the noise of “is this good enough?” and replaces it with something much simpler: which drawer does this go in? That’s a question you (and I) can actually answer.
If you’ve got a backlog of demos sitting in a folder somewhere (and if you’re like me, most of us definitely do) this system gives you a way to work through them without the weight of judgment attached to each one. You’re not deciding if a song is good or bad. You’re just filing it.
Try It Today
You don’t need to sort your entire back catalog in one sitting however, pick one song, apply the three-drawer question, set a reminder for a week from now, and see how it feels.
For the full breakdown of the Drawer System, head over to Graham English’s original article at Speed Songwriting: Top, Middle, Bottom Drawer: How to Sort Your Songs Without Shame. It’s a quick read and well worth your time.
