DAUGHTRY, FAT JOE, BEN MOODY HELP BMI HONOR SONGWRITING

BMI put together a star studded panel of songwriters for their 2nd annual ‘How I Wrote That Song’

BMI put together their 2nd Annual ‘How I Wrote That Song’ panel discussion on the art of songwriting Feb 9th at The Key Club in Hollywood, California and 2008’s star studded panelist included Chris Daughtry, Fat Joe, Ben Moody formerly of Evanescence and songwriters Rodney Jerkins (Beyonce, Mary J Blige); Polow Da Don (Fergie, Pussycat Dolls, Ciara); Anthony Hamilton (Tupac Shakur, Eve) and Brian Howes (Hinder). The event, which was open to the public, featured each songwriter giving a little history on what it takes to write a hit song and some insight into the true art-form of songwriting.

Ben Moody, who is a Grammy Award winning songwriter formerly of Evanescence responsible for ‘My Immortal’ and who has also written songs with Kelly Clarkson and Celine Dion also shared his thoughts on getting inspiration for songwriting from The Beatles.’

“Well I’ll say this and this is a cliche answer but it’s true. I even have this book that’s the entire work, everything The Beatles have ever recorded, it’s the score. Everything from guitar tablature, to string arrangements and charts and all that and if you ever need a trick or something to pull out of your hat, think of a Beatles song that has the emotion or has the feeling and I go to that book and I break it out and I start dissecting what they did. It’s cheesy because everyone says The Beatles, but it’s true. There’s a reason why they’re The Beatles.”

We also caught up with Chris Daughtry, who made a name for himself on American Idol but has been a bonafide hit with his debut album, which sold over a million units in the first 5 weeks alone, to get his thoughts on writing his hit songs ‘Home’ and ‘It’s Not Over.

“You know ‘Home’ was a totally different process than ‘It’s Not Over.’ ‘It’s Not Over’ was practically written, with the exception of the chorus before I got to it. So I rewrote that chorus for ‘It’s Not Over’ with Ace and then ‘Home’ I wrote before I even went on Idol sitting on my couch at home. It was a totally different process. You know at the time I didn’t know what it was like to be away. It was kind of like a foreshadowing.”

We also talked to Fat Joe about writing his best songs while in his car driving down the highway.

“There’s two places. I like writing in my house. I really don’t like writing in the studio because it’s so enclosed. I like to look at stuff. And then when I’m really trying to write a song, a hit song I write on the highway. So I have Macho drive me and I’ll put the beat on repeat and for some reason that just gives me some freedom, on the highway just driving doing 80 miles per hour when the beat is playing for some reason, some weird reason I write my best stuff in the car.”

BMI is an American performing right organization that represents more than 300,000 songwriters, composers and publishers in all genres of music. Celebrating over 65 years in business, BMI represents a repertoire of more than 6.5 million musical works from around the world. The non-profit-making corporation collects license fees from businesses that use music, which it then distributes as royalties to the musical creators and copyright owners whose works have been performed.