Three years of rejected pitches. One email that arrived at the least glamorous possible moment. I do not care even slightly.
Got the email today that a song I wrote close to eighteen months ago, one I have been pitching persistently to a specific rising artist for the better part of three years now across multiple different co-writes and multiple different pitch rounds, has finally, actually been placed on her upcoming record, a genuinely significant professional milestone that arrived, in classic songwriter fashion, at the single least glamorous possible moment, standing at my kitchen sink elbow-deep in dish soap, phone buzzing on the counter beside me.
I have been pitching to this specific artist’s team consistently for three years now, submitting song after song through my publisher, watching pitch after pitch come back with some version of a polite pass, close but not quite right for this particular project, strong song but not the right fit for her current sound, the specific, genuinely maddening rhythm of persistent rejection that anyone trying to build a career in Nashville’s publishing world eventually has to make some kind of peace with, one way or another, if they intend to actually keep doing this for a living.
This particular song, when I first wrote it in a co-write with two other Nashville songwriters I have worked with regularly over the years, felt immediately, unusually right for this specific artist’s voice and sensibility, and I remember genuinely believing, submitting it that first time close to eighteen months ago, that it would land quickly given how well I thought it fit. It did not land quickly. It took eighteen months, several rounds of her team passing on other projects it was submitted alongside, before finally, today, actually finding its way onto her upcoming record.
I called my co-writers the moment I had dried my hands properly, both of them genuinely thrilled, one of them reminding me, with a laugh, that this exact song had actually been one we almost did not finish writing at all, having hit a genuine creative wall partway through our original session together and nearly abandoning the whole idea before pushing through to a finished draft neither of us was entirely confident about at the time. That detail feels worth remembering properly today, a reminder of how unpredictable it genuinely is which specific songs, among the dozens any working Nashville songwriter generates in a given year, actually end up finding real commercial life.
I think there is something genuinely important about the specific persistence this business demands that does not always get discussed honestly enough outside the actual songwriting community itself. Three years of pitching one specific song to one specific artist, absorbing rejection after rejection along the way, requires a particular kind of stubborn, unglamorous belief in your own material that I do not think outsiders to this industry always fully appreciate, the sheer accumulated administrative and emotional labor of simply not giving up on a song you genuinely believe in, long after most reasonable people might have quietly moved on to pitching it elsewhere.
My publisher called shortly after, genuinely excited on my behalf, and mentioned that placements like this one, landing specifically with an artist you have pitched to persistently over years rather than simply catching a lucky first-round placement, tend to open up considerably more sustained future opportunities with that same artist’s camp going forward, since the relationship built through years of submissions and genuine, consistent engagement with her team’s specific creative direction carries real weight beyond just this one individual song’s eventual success.
I am going out tonight with my two co-writers to properly celebrate, a modest dinner considerably less glamorous than the milestone itself probably deserves, though I suspect that specific mismatch, a genuinely significant career moment landing in the middle of an entirely ordinary Tuesday and getting celebrated with a fairly modest dinner out, is exactly the kind of thing that makes this particular career feel real and lived-in rather than some distant, glamorous fantasy. Three years of persistent pitching, one dish-soap-interrupted email, and a song finally, properly finding its home.
I have already started thinking, walking around genuinely giddy for most of the rest of the afternoon, about which specific song in my current catalog deserves this same kind of patient, three-year pitching commitment next, a question that feels considerably less daunting today than it would have yesterday, now that I have real, direct proof that this particular kind of stubborn persistence can actually, eventually pay off rather than simply representing wasted effort on a song that was never going to land regardless of how long I kept pitching it.
My publisher, in that same call, mentioned she has already started thinking about which of my other songs might benefit from a similarly sustained, patient pitching strategy targeted at this same artist’s camp specifically, now that a real relationship has finally been established through this placement. That possibility, a door opening rather than simply closing after years of persistent knocking, feels like the genuinely exciting part of today’s news that I have not fully processed yet, still mostly caught up in the simple, uncomplicated joy of the placement itself.
More from this author at Camden Rose, prat.uk.