The Menken Letters: A Songwriter's Diary [Part 2 of 3]

A quick note before you read. Some of you know my story. Some of you are just finding your way here. Either way, here’s a little context: I'm Andrea Smith, founder of Rising Artists, a music agency based in Los Angeles. I spent years as a DIY artist before finding my way into artist management, co-founding a record label, and eventually building the music agency I run today.

This series, The Menken Letters, is a diary I've wanted to write for a long time. In the summer of 2009, while I was studying both the music industry and composition in college, my cousin Alan Menken offered me something I didn't expect. A mentorship. If you don't know his work, Alan has eight Academy Awards. The Little Mermaid. Beauty and the Beast. Aladdin. He is family, and what he taught me that summer became the foundation of everything I've built since.

Part 1 landed in your inbox a few weeks ago if you'd like to start there.

I went into that first assignment feeling ready. Eager, even. I had always believed in my writing. I submitted quickly and waited for what I thought would be confirmation that I was on the right track.

What came back stopped me cold.

Alan had been watching something across everything I sent him. A pattern. And in one email he named it plainly, with the kind of directness that only someone who genuinely cares about your growth will offer.

He went further.

Fine. Judged on its own terms.

I've thought about that sentence more than almost anything else he said that summer. Because he wasn't being cruel. He was being precise. My work was exactly what it was. It just wasn't what it needed to be if I wanted to write to serve a purpose, to serve others, rather than for myself.

The architecture metaphor landed hard. A building isn't made for the architect. It's made for the people who will live inside it. You bring your craft, your vision, your instinct. But in the end you're constructing something that other people will walk through, inhabit, call their own. The moment you forget that, you stop being a builder and start being someone who makes models of buildings no one will ever enter.

It feels forced.

That one was harder to sit with than "fine on its own terms." Because I had tried. I had followed the instructions. I had done everything correctly on paper. And it still didn't feel like anything.

What I started to understand, slowly and uncomfortably, was that following instructions and actually feeling something are not the same thing. You can execute an assignment perfectly and still produce something hollow. Correct form. Right technique. And nothing that moves anyone.

That's the gap many artists never close. They learn the rules. They follow them. And they wonder why the work still doesn't connect.

I wrote back to him after that June 27 email with something I'm still proud of. Not the music I submitted, but the response. I told him that architecture was functional creativity, that a building creates a framework people then personalize and use for themselves, that I understood now what he was asking me to do. Get out of the song. Get into the listener.

I meant every word. I just hadn't learned how to do it yet.

I understood what he was asking. I could feel the gap between where I was and where he needed me to be. I just couldn't close it yet. And the only way forward was more work, more feedback, more willingness to hear "I need you to do better" without collapsing or defending myself.

I think about that often now, sitting across from artists who understand exactly what they need to change and still can't quite execute it yet. The understanding comes first. The doing follows. The only thing that bridges them is time and the courage to keep going back.

WHAT I CARRIED FORWARD

The hardest feedback to receive is the kind that tells you you're limited. That your work lives inside a box you've built so well you can't see the walls anymore. That's what Alan gave me that summer. A map of my ceiling.

And if something you create feels forced, even after you've followed every instruction correctly, that's not a failure of effort. That's information. The technique was there. The feeling hadn't arrived yet. Those take different things to fix.

The architects who build things people actually live in learned to disappear into the needs of the person who will one day walk through the door.

Next month: the moment it finally clicked. After every rewrite, every redirect, every "I need you to do better," something shifted. Alan sent me an example of what he meant. And I wrote back three words that said everything: "You inspired me."

Sincerely,

Andrea Smith
Rising Artists Founder