This week I am celebrating my 30th year of being a person! It definitely feels like a milestone birthday, and I am looking forward to cake, candles, and all the birthday things. And as someone who loves songs…it has had me thinking about the birthday song. I mean at this point, if you don’t have people sing “Happy Birthday to You” on your birthday, does your birthday even count? Obviously, you still become a year older no matter what…but the birthday song feels so intertwined with the birthday experience! So I did a little research, and want to share some things I have learned about the birthday song. 

A little history…
Did you know that “Happy Birthday” aka “Happy Birthday to You” is the most recognized song in the English language? Which probably isn’t too shocking, as you would likely expect people to join in if you started the song. It would be weirder if you walked into a room full of family and friends singing the song, and nobody knew the words! The crazy thing is that when “Happy Birthday to You” came out in print in 1912, there were no credits given. This is one of many reasons that there is still quite a bit of dispute regarding authorship, rights etc. Sisters Patty and Mildred Hill published the melody of what we recognize to be “Happy Birthday” but with different lyrics in their 1893 children’s songbook, with the song titled “Good Morning to All.” What we know as the happy birthday lyrics are referenced not as lyrics but as lines in a poem called “Roy’s Birthday” by Edith Goodyear Alger copyrighted in 1901. And in 1935, the Summy Company registered the song “Happy birthday to you” crediting Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R. R. Forman as the authors, and later sold the rights to Warner/Chappell Music. So, in terms of credit, it gets really messy! 

Copyright craziness…
And as much this song may feel like it belongs to everyone,“Happy Birthday” only very recently became public domain! Meaning that up until 2016 in the United States, if a TV show, movie, performer etc. wanted to sing or use the song “Happy Birthday” in any public capacity they would have to get permission and pay royalty fees in order to do so. This is why many TV shows commonly included “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” instead during birthday episodes, and why restaurants have created all of their clever birthday song renditions like “Happy happy birthday from all of us to you…we wish it was our birthday, so we could party too!” With the official “Happy Birthday” being pricey, over the years people have had to decide between paying fees for the official song, or getting creative with birthday singing in more public celebrations . Some estimate "Happy Birthday" to be the highest earning single song in history! It was only after a lawsuit starting in 2013, that new evidence eventually convinced a judge to rule that Warner/Chappell’s claim over the lyrics was invalid, leading to the song becoming public domain (meaning free for anyone to use) in June of 2016. 

So, now the song “Happy Birthday” really does belong to everyone! You may have even noticed more shows, radio programs, and restaurants incorporating the actual song over the past few years, now that they can do so completely free of charge. 

Well, it’s about time for me to eat some cake! "This is my birthday song...it isn't very long...HEY!"

-Taylor Miranda 

A few weeks ago, I volunteered at my church women’s group for a “back school night” fun activity for grown ups, where we were given “class schedules” and switched “periods” in the spirit of learning new things and getting to know one another better. I had the privilege  of teaching the music class titled “Songwriting 101” for the evening. It was a super fun challenge, as the women participating came from all walks of life, ranging from ages 19-80 years old, and I was only given 15 minutes to teach each class! I ended up giving a brief lesson on how songs are typically put together, focusing specifically on the relationship between verse and chorus. 

Yes, the actual teaching part was very fun, BUT what I really wanted to share is what these unique students taught me though this experience! Toward the end of the class I had each class do a group writing exercise (it was a class on writing after all!). For the exercise, I had written a quick verse, that I wanted them to write a chorus or what I like to call a “punchline” moment, to go with it. Instinctively, I had an idea of where the chorus would likely go, and assumed the class would be on a similar wave length. However, I was completely shocked at the variety of ideas that came from each group. 

To give some context, the verse talked about meeting someone in past tense and having an instant romantic connection. Originally in my head, I thought the chorus would be about how much their life had changed because of meeting this person. But check out where the 3 different groups landed, after starting with the same set up of meeting and connecting with a love interest.

Group 1 chorus main idea: “I know I will never see you again, but what a beautiful goodbye.”

Group 2 chorus main idea: “It feels like this is the start of a great love story. Are you on the same page?”

Group 3 chorus main idea: “Never mind let’s just be friends…I’d be just fine if I never saw you again.” 

Three extremely different takes, building off the same starting verse lyrics! I was literally blown away. I genuinely did not expect each group’s chorus responses to the the prompt to be so unique, and honestly, all really cool ideas! 

It was a huge lesson and reminder to me regarding the creativity that exists in each of us, and it was really exciting to witness and be a small part of! This may sound like such a small thing, but it was truly inspiring to me, and I thought it might be for you too, to simply remember that we all have something truly unique to bring to the table, even a unique chorus, when starting with the same verse. 

​-Taylor Miranda 
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​My favorite songwriter Carole King is famous for saying “Song Form is Limitless.” 
I am famous (among my students anyway...) for adding to that quote in my lectures.“Song form is limitless. BUT…The more you understand about what's been done/happening with different components of song structure in popular music, the more tools you have in your tool box, and the greater ability you have to be intentional with every aspect of your songwriting.”

I know it’s long winded. And truthfully a big part of that quote existing, is that it’s fun to share a quote space with Carole (I like to pretend we are on a first name basis). But I believe that. Yes, music and writing at the end of the day can be whatever you want. You can scream one word for 3 and a half minutes, and rightfully call it a song, or record yourself throwing rocks at a piano keyboard and put it up on Spotify. However, just like learning foundational techniques in painting, such as creating lines, and using certain brush strokes, the more knowledge you have of form and techniques in songwriting, the more you have to draw from to create incredible, compelling, and connecting music of your own. And it is from this perspective that I approach teaching songwriting. 

The main things I focus on in my songwriting teaching are the following:
1. Exploring what has been done before in popular music writing, along a variety of topics. 
2. Trying new techniques for generating the great song ideas that are inside of you. 

Here’s how that breaks down in an actual lesson:
Show and Tell:
I provide space at the beginning of each lesson for ANYTHING a student wants to show me that they are working on. And because songwriting is so subjective, my role is not to judge whether a song is good or bad. Instead I try to provide helpful feedback, and ask questions, (for example: “what’s the main point you are trying to communicate with this song?”) to help the students decide what might be best for moving forward. 
Lecture: 
After the sharing process, we dive into a slide show and lecture on a more focused topic within songwriting. Topics like “generating ideas,” “the art of writing duets,” “vulnerability in songwriting” etc. tailored to the individual or class level. 
Assignments: 
Throughout the lecture, there are discussion questions, and song examples (both that I come up with, and the students come up with), and on the last slide, are the assignment options that relate back to that topic, as a chance to explore it further. For example, one of the assignments for “the marriage of lyrics and melody” is a melodic or lyrical switch up, where you take a song’s melody and give it new lyrics, or you take a song’s lyrics and give it a whole new melody, in order to experiment and see how they sound divorced from the original marriage of both.  

​My goal in teaching songwriting is to provide tools for student to further find their own inspiration and processes for creating original music. The topics break down songwriting into understandable bite-sized components, and the assignments give students the chance to stretch and explore the topic for themselves in a very meaningful creative way. I LOVE teaching songwriting, and watching my students grow in their own unique way through this incredible art form! 

-Taylor Miranda  

My just turned four year old daughter is crying in the bathroom singing “my mom is so mean…I’m so mad at her…” And as much as I don’t like hearing songs about how mean I am…(even if it’s for not letting her eat chocolate for breakfast), I can’t help but laugh and smile, firstly because of how silly the situation is, and secondly, because it seems like she has the “songwriting gene” after all. This is a gene that seems to run in our family that compels you to instinctively put your feelings to lyrics and melody as soon as you feel them. I didn’t teach her to do this. My son who is older, (though ridiculously in tune with instrumental music) doesn’t seem to have this same inclination or “gene.” This is why I think it is so interesting. It seems to just naturally be a part of her, just like it’s naturally a part of me. Something in our DNA, leads us to process the world in this way. The same way someone else naturally might want to take objects apart only to put them back together to understand how they work…for my daughter and for myself, we have the natural habit of turning what we are experiencing into song long before we can put together the conscious thought of, “I should make this into a song.”

It’s not as unique perhaps as some forms of synesthesia (like hearing in color, or tasting and sensing geometric shapes), but watching my daughter experience the world in a way similarly to me, brings me a deep sense of connection to her and great joy in recognizing what a gift this has been in my life. 

I wrote a song a while back called “Thank you music.” This is a love song that I wrote to the music inside of me and all the happiness and comfort it has given me over the years. In the song I talk about how sometimes I can get caught up in the prestige of what my music can do for me, and how it can make me more successful etc. These thoughts aren’t crazy, as creating music is truly a means by which I bring home money to help support my family. However,  the point of the song was taking a moment to recognize the gift that music is in it of itself, whether or not it leads to to any notions of “fortune” or “fame.” 

​Seeing that same gift come out through my 4 year-old takes me back to this perspective. Kira is not singing songs about how mean I am, because she thinks it will land her a record deal. She does it because it makes sense to her to do it and express her feelings. Because it is fun to make music out of little moments. Because she loves to sing and she loves to talk, so why wouldn’t she be combining the two every single day? This doesn’t mean she has to follow my footsteps and pursue any of this professionally. It does mean that music is likely to follow her all of her life, as an outlet for all of her feelings and hopefully a source of comfort and joy that she can carry with her always. 
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​-Taylor Miranda

When I was in middle school, I wrote a song worried about the fact that we are going to “run out of songs to sing” and that basically every topic has already been covered in music. The song ended with the hook “but we’ll never run out of love…” It wasn’t my catchiest song in the world. But, as it popped back into my brain recently, I realized that I was both right in some ways and in many ways, very wrong.

​Obviously it’s true that the world has not run out of love. So, nailed that idea (haha!). But despite the fact that we have library upon library of music from way back when, artists and writers have kept on creating and we have more songs to sing than ever. Especially love songs. You would think that we have covered it all. And yet somehow, we find new things to say about these familiar topics. Or find a new way to say something that has been said over and over again throughout time (you know, like, “I love you”). Instead of putting a giant check mark next to the love song category, this topic persists as one of the biggest themes in music creation time and time again, as we add our own spin, our own perspective and our own experience to the concept. Whether it’s about longing for love, falling for someone, losing a great love…as you change stations on your car radio or let your Spotify play at random, there’s no denying that ideas of love are propelled in every genre of of music. 

When I first heard “I love you like a love song” sung by Selena Gomez back in 2011, I thought it was kind of…lazy? I felt like they couldn’t think of an original way to say ‘I love you’ in a song of their own, so they just borrowed the idea that other songs say it better…so, I love you like a different song, that’s not this one, because I couldn’t think of how to say it. But having heard it again recently in line with these thoughts I have a whole new appreciation for it. It starts with this same idea (as stated earlier in this rant) saying that “every beautiful thought’s been already sung…” and yet “here’s another one.” Followed by the hook in the chorus “I love you like a love song baby.” 

How beautiful is it that despite the fact that love has been covered over and over, we keep coming back to it? As if our nature calls us to explore this topic for ourselves. That even in our awareness of “this has been said before…” we say, well, “here’s another one” and try our hand at adding to the love song collective. Most of us understand that we cannot live through the love that others experience, and must experience love for ourselves to truly know it. And I think truly experiencing love, with the good, the bad and the rollercoaster that comes with it, it can’t help but bleed into the art, and especially the music that we create, as long as we are still creating. And if anything is going to inspire you to break out in song…it’s love. 

I guess I’m writing this all to say—I LOVE that. You can call it cliche when you hear another love song on the radio and think “how unoriginal.” Or you can join me, and let it make you proud to be a person; proud to be connected to a humanity that never stops coming back to love, no matter how many times it’s been said and done before. 


-Taylor Miranda ​

Can I tell you a secret? I write a lot of sad songs (sorry if you were expecting a juicier secret!). I’m even working on an album called “Quarter-Life Crisis” to showcase some of the harder things I have been working through over the past few years (for me, a lot of it has been related to my experiences in motherhood). And though I have never personally been diagnosed with depression or anything like that, I have always been a person with a lot of feelings, and making music out of these less happy experiences and thoughts, has been an incredible journey for me personally. And because I love writing sad songs…I would like to make a case for why sad songs are so important. I recognize that this isn’t a controversial topic by any means, and there is not an active anti-sad song movement for me to rebel against with this statement...Nevertheless,
I want to share some of my thoughts on the importance of sad songs. 

1. Sad songs provide a space for your own sadness. 
Sometimes you just need to fully feel the feeling(s) that you are in. And music can help you do that. Music can give your sadness a space. A place to sit for a while, while you process whatever it is that you are going through. Blasting out a song about loss or heartache that resonates with what you are feeling (or have felt) can be extremely cathartic, and help to carry some of that emotional heaviness. Is there anything worse than hearing an over-the-top happy song when you are sad? When something is hard, you are not ready to have musical sunshine shoved down your ears. Sad songs show us that we as human beings have depth, and are not just one thing. Sad songs can sort of give you permission to be exactly where you are, whatever emotional state that is. 

2. Sad songs help you know you are not alone.
There’s a reason that support groups are a thing! When you know you are not the only one that has ever gone through what you are going through, or felt the way you have felt, this plugs you into your humanity, and brings an important sense of connection. The fact that other people create art that echos feelings you feel yourself means that there are other people that understand. And for some reason, that fact alone can be like a giant hug of healing. Other people thought the same (or similar) topic was worth singing about, validating that what you are going through is real, and matters. Sad songs say we all face hard things. We all cry. We all feel something more through the act of just being alive. 

3. Sad songs show that something beautiful can be made out of something difficult.
Sad songs are an incredible symbol of beauty from the ashes. People took their pain and turned it into music. Something ugly, something hard, was transformed into something bigger. It doesn’t mean the sadness necessarily goes away all together, but there is a hope in seeing pain pointed in purpose, becoming something more, something profound beyond a difficult thing stuck in your way. On a subconscious level, I think when we hear sad songs we can recognize that we can create something meaningful out of the difficult things that we experience. That although life will always have its ups and downs, and things that we cannot control, we do have some say in what we do with the chaos and heartache thrown our way. We can choose to see beauty, learn something, create meaning. 

The book The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, has been a game changer for me on multiple levels. It’s so hard to explain until you read it….but I’m going to do my best to express a small portion of what this book has done for my life. The point of this book is to expand your creativity, and unblock whatever might be stopping you from living your most creative life. The phraseology of the book really resonated with me, and there’s key concepts and practices that I hope to keep forever because of reading this. Although I could probably write a book about how much I love this book...to keep it simpler, I want to talk about 3 components of my experience gained through the 12-week program of The Artist’s Way, that have become very meaningful in my own creative life, namely: Morning Pages, Artist Dates and My Artist Tribe.

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Morning Pages
The task of morning pages (assigned by Julia Cameron in the book) is to write 3 whole pages of stream of consciousness writing first thing in the morning. The premise is no judgement about what you are writing, and no rereading (until after several weeks of writing). This practice was so hard for me to become consistent at, but I saw the value pretty dang quickly, and this is something I work really hard to continue (even after the 12 weeks). Why you ask? Because for some reason they work, and just make my life better. Sometimes my pages have been filled with complaints or emotions or bad dreams. But what also showed up on my pages were meaningful ideas and actions for me to take to make important things happen in my life. My pages forced me to take time everyday to write out my thoughts, to be more aware of what was even going on inside my head, and more clearly recognize my own inner compass. I found that I could leave my frustration and work things out in my pages. I found that I could learn what lies I tell myself when writing them down and arguing with them. I found that inspiration started to come to me as to what do next in my creative passions, because of taking the time, three pages at a time.


Artist Dates
The second task assigned via the Artist Way is a the weekly task of the “Artist Date,” which basically means doing something by yourself (for at least an hour) that makes your inner artist happy, and can sort of rejuvenate your artistic spirit (much like date night with your significant other can rejuvenate your relationship). If I thought Morning Pages were hard, they had nothing on how hard it was for me to do my weekly Artist’s Dates. This one is still harder for me to continue outside of the program, but when I do, I remember how necessary it really is. Everyone is different in terms of what experiences fill their soul. My inner artist loves standing in front of the ocean, exploring quirky antique shops, and letting myself go crazy at the dollar store. Probably my most “artsy” artist date was visiting an art gallery in Palm Springs (Which was amazing!). I would always come back from my artist dates refreshed and filled with new images to draw creative energy from, and just be more excited about life! Having such a hard time doing them, was also very enlightening for me! I’ve had to ask myself: why is it so hard to give myself one hour a week to do something fun just for myself? Do I not value myself enough to give myself one hour of alone time to enjoy something? I recognize that when I take the time to take myself out on an artist date, I am telling myself that I am worth dedicating time to, and I think that concept of worth translates into my artistic work, and life. When I follow through with these artist dates as a practice, I am saying that I am worth taking time to see beautiful things and experience small soul-filling adventures.


My Artist Tribe
The third aspect from the 12 weeks of the Artist's Way, that made a huge impact for me, was going through this process with a group of other artists via a “Creative Cluster.” With a group of about 10 other women, we started the 12 weeks at the same time, and met once a week to discuss our progress and the different things we were learning. The first time I went through this, we met Sunday evenings. Sunday evenings very quickly became my favorite. It was really interesting, because we were all aquatinted with the person who started the group, but other than that, none of us really knew each other. We were all different kinds of artists: painters, comedians, writers, musicians, decorators, and we were all at different phases of life ranging from college, to young motherhood to grandparent life. And every week we met and we shared. We talked about what was hard for us. We talked about creative victories. We talked about beautiful things we had seen that week, as well as painful discoveries that were difficult, but significant. Every meeting we laughed. Sometimes we cried. What ultimately happened is that we became undeniably connected. I found a group, that I opened up my heart to, that I let really see me, and I saw them. We got to root for one another, and we got to watch each other grow and see the incredible changes that were happening within each of us. It became the most beautiful support group, I never knew I needed. I loved so many aspects of this group's weekly meetings. The check-in aspect forced me to be more reflective and thoughtful with my week. Hearing these women's stories with all their ups and downs, magic and vulnerability, inspired me. But what it all adds up to, is what truly means the most to me: an artistic bond of sisterhood, that I plan to keep forever.


Concluding Thoughts
My love affair with The Artist's Way, is a love that is real. I love these practices of morning pages, artists dates, and taking time to reflect and connect with other people on various creative journeys. I love the new friends I have made. I love all that I have learned. And I love that I now have more tools to continue forward toward a more abundant creative life. 
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​-Taylor Miranda

Picture of me and co-writer Eliza Smith, when we filmed our music video for our TREN song "You're an Angel."