When the Hits Hit the Fan

When the Hits Hit the Fan is the songwriting class you always wish you'd taken, taught by the professor you always wish you'd had. It's a deep dive into the heart of questions songwriters of all levels ask, laid out along the timeline of a song's completion. For years, these lessons and ideas have inspired students on campuses including Yale, Wesleyan, the New School, Berklee, Oberlin, Hofstra, and NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. The book marries the process of songwriting, and living a songwriter's life, with humor and empathy. It unravels the mystery and science behind the rapidly evolving art of songwriting and ends up revealing just as much about who we, the readers, are, and where we may be going. These are lessons and tools Mike Errico has honed over years of writing, performing, teaching, and mentoring. This is a book for songwriters, future content creators, music lovers, and anyone who wants to know how popular art forms are able to touch us so deeply. Forty thousand songs are uploaded to Spotify . . . per day. Recording equipment is cheaper than ever, which has lowered the bar of entry for music creation. Educators have taken note, and major universities scramble to update their music curricula and provide courses their students find relevant, while School of Rock franchises are opening nationally. The interest in how songs work has never been higher. People spend millions of hours on YouTube learning how to mix and master their music. When the Hits Hit the Fan will be an invaluable tool for finding material that rises to the level of your creative curiosity. Mike Errico will help you write a tight, focused song that kicks the door down for your vision to rush through. He'll help you plant a flag and build a creative world around it: a world that's intrinsic to who you are, and one that's nontrivial and undeniable to whoever is listening.