I’ve just written a Christmas song. In August. It was part of a challenge among some songwriting friends. With this particular song I didn’t feel it at all. And not just because of the lack of snow, and red-nosed reindeer.

Ideally I like to start a song with some kind of urge, whatever that may be, to communicate something. Some emotion or thought that I want to get out of me, and into a lyric and a melody. But often, and understandably, when writing a song as a set task, that kind of feeling doesn’t materialise to act as a guiding rudder.

In these instances the songwriting process is an attempt to write something that touches the feelings and emotions of others, as though from a distant memory. There is a kind of Auto-Pilot Songwriting switch that needs to be turned on.

Writing this way is not nearly as enjoyable for me, to be honest. In fact I nearly gave up on this song at one point, because of that lack of feeling. But it’s finished now.

And you know, though I haven’t played it to anybody yet (it’s August! I’m not a supermarket!) it won’t matter in the slightest how little I felt whilst writing it - the important point is that they feel something when they hear it.

I know from experience that my emotional attachment to a song isn’t generally a factor in whether or not that happens.