“When I Feel a Song in Me”: Exploring Emotions through the Creative Songwriting Process

Abstract

In this paper, I use 33 interviews with songwriters to explore the relationship between songwriting and emotion, particularly as it relates to the lived and embodied aspects of emotional experience. I contend that songwriting can be understood as a form of sensual reflection and inquiry, one that synthesizes the emotional and evocative properties of both music and language. For songwriters, the creative process of songwriting serves as an embodied vehicle through which to assign meaning to lived emotional experience and the self. Resultant performances represent an expressive forum in which to communicate the outcomes of this process. For sociologists of emotion, examining the neglected process of songwriting represents an opportunity to extend the study of emotion beyond discursive and dramaturgical approaches, lending fresh insight into the lived, embodied character of emotion.

Citation

Cobb, M.C. (2016), "“When I Feel a Song in Me”: Exploring Emotions through the Creative Songwriting Process", Symbolic Interactionist Takes on Music (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 47), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 61-79. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620160000047013