B.J. Barham//American Aquarium
“My songwriting process looks like a Dewey Decimal System, only it’s organized by emotion and one-liners.”
B.J. Barham of American Aquarium has a writing process like no songwriter I’ve ever interviewed. Plenty have told me that for them it’s as simple as scribbling lyrics on a sheet of paper. But not Barham. His songwriting process is akin to the research routine of a graduate student.
Barham has a running document—currently at 82 pages—full of different colored sections organized by emotion and themes. And each section has underneath it a list of one-liners. So he’ll have one section devoted to relationships with two subheadings: happy and sad. Or one section devoted to love, organized by love gained and love lost. This organization makes for easy access to lyrics because Barham knows exactly where to look when he needs a line about any of those emotions or themes. It’s a list that has grown over many years from taking what he calls his “field notes,” or observations of everything around him. [See here for the start of Barham’s discussion about this organization.]
Barham’s writing process has served him well during the pandemic. While some artists have had difficulty creating music under such emotional distress, Barnham has thrived in it, calling it his “wheelhouse” and one of his most creative periods. “I don’t write about rainbows and butterflies,” he told me. “I write about darkness and death and addiction, and the darkness were in now with the pandemic and the administration has been a source of creativity, probably one of my most creative periods.” (Barham has strong thoughts about Trump and isn’t afraid to share them.)
Watch our interview below!
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