Doing both allows creatives to dip their toe in both areas to figure out what works best for them, songwriters say.

By, Sarah Tomlinson

For Elena Goddart, mainstream music was always a novelty. Growing up near Smithers, B.C., on a farm, she was homeschooled and was only permitted to listen to classical and Christian music. Nevertheless, she and her siblings were enrolled in music lessons and whenever they would go to town, she’d hear pop music.

“I thought it was the coolest thing. I’d never heard the songs before but it sounded so familiar and authentic. It made me feel all excited,” she said. “It was my lack of access to it that just made me want it so much more.”

She remembers hearing Britney Spears’ songs playing in stores and going home to replicate the sounds she’d heard.

“I think that’s how a lot of songwriters start, by hearing a song and then writing a song that sounds exactly alike, the same melody with different words,” she said.

When it came to choosing a school, Elena attended Berklee College of Music as a pianist, taking music business courses while songwriting with a group of friends on the side.

“Every week, we'd have a few hours always scheduled and we'd always write together. We'd always review each other's songs,” she said. “I had such a solid community of co-writers and friends that it almost felt like I was getting more from that than the songwriting classes themselves.”

Elena Goddart sitting in Brooklyn, New York for her upcoming project Holy Tender Artist. (Photo by Lillian Maslen)

Although she would write her own songs, she never saw herself singing them because she never thought her voice was good enough. Therefore, when she got to Berklee, she was overjoyed by the amount of singers she could write for.

She also noticed that nobody judged her for her voice since she had established herself as a writer.

“I didn’t feel like I had to impress anybody with my voice to show them my songs. So I got comfortable with singing my songs, but I’d always bring in other singers to do the final demos,” she said.

However, she would finally get more comfortable with singing during the summer of her second year as a student. She was writing songs with a studio in New York when all the singers had gone home before they could record it. She suggested they record it the next day when one of the producers asked, “Can you just go in there and you sing it and we'll just put on autotune over it?”

After singing through the song twice, Elena remembers waiting for the producers to say something but they kept working at their desks. She assumed her performance had been poor.

On the contrary, after mixing her vocals into the song, one of them turned to her and said “By the way, we're keeping your voice on it because you have a really cool sounding voice.”

While another producer acknowledged her pitchiness and lack of strength in certain parts of her vocal range, he mentioned that those were things she could learn to improve on her already great tone.

For Elena, that was the first time she ever saw herself as an artist.

“I guess I came to the realization that my songs would have a lot more impact if I'm singing them, versus just giving them,” she said.

Elena wrote, sang and recorded her first EP in 2016. Later that year she signed a management and recording deal. However, in 2018, she got out of the deal as it wasn’t beneficial to her growth and independently released her first single "2morrow." Fusing electronic beats and catchy-hook-filled lyrics, she has released a series of singles, amassing over 15,000 monthly listeners on Spotify alone.

Becoming an artist allowed Elena to make more sense out of her life, she said.

“As I was starting out as a songwriter, it felt like my whole life was detached. Now it just feels like my whole life is this one giant brand and they're all incorporated into what I sing about in the songs,” she said. “ I think that helps me live more unafraid and be more open.”

For emerging songwriters or artists, she said she recommends not comparing yourself to other creatives. “It’s literally sucking the creativity out of you,” she said.

Based in Toronto, Oleyada’s journey as a songwriter started at a young age when she would pretend to write songs for Hannah Montana. She continued writing for herself throughout her teen years. In 2016, she joined an indie rock band but split with them in 2019 once she realized her style was more geared toward indie-pop.

“It just kind of ended up falling apart a little bit because I wasn't really doing the music style that really aligned with who I was,” she explained.

As someone who experiences social anxiety, she said she always shied away from writing with other artists. However, when her bassist put her in contact with her soon-to-be boyfriend, she started writing with him.

“The first session did not work out at all,” she said.

However, once he started sending her beats and having her write melodies and lyrics independently, she said she gained a lot of confidence in her writing. That led her to reach out to fellow artists to start co-writing and join song camps.

The artwork for The Free Label’s song “Toys” feat. Olyeada released on Oct.7, 2020. (Courtesy Oleyada)

She started writing for The Free Label, a pop and RnB band from Toronto and has since written for artists like Chelle. Moreover, she’s written for producers Jonathan Karkar, Martin Añón, Imogen Joy, Tennyson King, Emma Lamontagne, Faneva, and Josh Grant on currently unreleased music.

Although writing for herself allows her to be more specific, she said writing for others is great when she doesn’t have any personal inspiration.

“If I'm writing for somebody else, that doesn't have to be a thing at all. I can either come up with a story or I can listen to their stories, so it's, it's a little bit freeing.”

In 2020, she started releasing her own music as Oleyada. Her first song “Pick Up The Phone,” a bright and pop-sounding diss track to your worst best friends, was a semi-finalist in the songwriting competition Unsigned Only, and earned her a spot in the 2020 Canadian Songwriter Challenge.

Apart from the creative side of songwriting, Oleyada said songwriters should really learn about the business side of the industry. Through her participation in the RBC Launchpad Music Entrepreneurship Program, a program offering mentorship to emerging professionals in the music industry, she said she’s learnt about music publishing.

“The business side has definitely been a little bit more tricky. Whether you're an artist or a songwriter, you have to figure out all the marketing, creating a business plan, creating goals for yourself, making sure that your catalogue of songs is not organized,” she said.

“You are essentially your own small business and that's what I'm really learning about right now.”

Shannon Dooks always saw herself primarily as an artist. Growing up, she would beg her parents for vocal lessons and luckily had their support. She only started songwriting in high school.

“[Songwriting ] was kind of a nice outlet for me to get it out of my brain and onto something else. It was kind of therapeutic in a way to make stories out of what I was feeling,” she explained.

She moved from Oshawa, Ont., to Australia to pursue a music teaching degree, but later realized she wanted to perform and work in the industry as an artist.

Since then, she’s worked with Daniel Caesar as a vocalist for one of his songs “Violet” released in 2015 and with Raff Pylon, a French Canadian artist, on a collaboration with Snoop Dogg.

Shannon Dooks at Kensington Sound celebrating the success of her song “No Doubts”. (Courtesy Rosanne Baker Thornley)

Apart from recently releasing her single “Doubts,” she’s been working with producers Ben Pelchat, Earl Powell, Will Schollar and songwriter Rosanne Baker Thornley, who has worked with artists like Tyler Shaw, Ryland James and Poesy.

Although she’s never written songs for other people alone, co-writing is something she does often where she and the other writer have to decide who will sing the song after it’s written.

“I guess it just comes back to serving the song again and just making sure it's put in the right hands…you have to take yourself out of it because you get really emotionally invested in the story and the process,” she said.

As an actress as well, Dooks said creatives have a bad habit of trying to put themselves in a box, which leads them to not pursuing all their abilities.

“Whatever is riding the wave I will ride with it and kind of go along with that,” she said. “I'm definitely more music-focused but I wouldn't be opposed to an audition. I really do think you can do both and I think there's a nice balance of having both in your life too.”