THE MENKEN LETTERS: A SONGWRITER’S DIARY | PART 3 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 and 2 landed in your inbox over the past few weeks if you'd like to start there.
By July the assignments had gotten harder. I was deep into rewriting the same piece, an Italian romantic theme for a film set in Rome. Each version I sent back felt closer. Each time Alan found exactly where it fell apart.
"You're going to think I'm just the pickiest person in the world. But, I need you to do better. It doesn't hold together as it should, by my standards. There are 2 places where you introduce appropriate themes and then, instead of building on them in a simple and direct way, you wander off and allow the themes to lose shape... Repetition is essential in order for the listener to invest in the music. I know this must be frustrating. But, as much command as you have of a certain niche in the pop vocabulary, both as a singer and as a musician, you need to be able to flex new songwriting muscles if you're going to try and make a career of this."
I know this must be frustrating.
He said that, and then he kept going. He didn't soften the standard. He acknowledged the difficulty and held the line anyway. That combination, warmth and honesty at the same time, is rarer than people think. Most feedback lands as one or the other. His was always both.
Somewhere in that summer he said something I've carried ever since. He told me it may take some time to develop as an artist. That the craft needed honing, the muscles needed building, the industry had twists and turns I hadn't navigated yet.
And then he said the good news is that he knows it's there.
That was it. That was the sentence.
Not a standing ovation. Not a guarantee. Just a quiet, honest read from someone who had seen enough talent in his life to know the difference. And he was telling me I had it.
I held onto that for a long time. Through every version of myself that came after. DIY artist. Songwriting coach. Record label co-founder. Eventually building the music agency I run today in Los Angeles, working alongside film scorers, composers, and writers for major productions. None of it was linear. The industry rarely is. But on the days when the path disappeared, I came back to that sentence.
He knew it was there.
That was enough.
A few days after that July 9 email, Alan did something unexpected. Instead of sending me back again with notes, he showed me. He took the two fragments from my assignment and developed them himself, attaching his version so I could hear the shape he had been trying to describe.
"The idea is to suggest a shape and an approach, more than any specific choices. Build the first theme into the chorus then let the chorus play out in a natural way, tying things up in a way that returns the listener to the top of the song. Let the music flow where it needs to flow, using your own musical taste to determine when it feels natural and right. Don't over-think it or try and muscle musical ideas into shape before they feel totally natural and complete."
I listened to what he sent.
My response back was short. Wow, that is absolutely beautiful. It sounds so natural and really helped me hear an example of what you mean. You inspired me.
That was the moment. The lesson stopped being something I understood and became something I felt. There is a long distance between those two things and you can't shortcut it. You can read about it, study it, articulate it perfectly back to someone who explains it... and still not feel it yet. Feeling it requires hearing the thing done right by someone who has actually done it, and recognizing it somewhere in your chest before your brain has a chance to catch up.
WHAT I CARRIED FORWARD
Here's the full closing section:
WHAT I CARRIED FORWARD
The standard stayed with me.
To sit inside the process of a composer with eight Academy Awards, and whose work made clear that none of it came from talent alone or writing without direction. To submit your own work to that standard, and have it taken seriously enough to critique... that is a different kind of education. And what it teaches you first is humility.
Because at that level, craft is a discipline. Repetition earning the listener's investment. Themes that build rather than wander. Knowing when a piece holds together and being honest when it doesn't. He understood the architecture of emotional storytelling well enough to do it again and again, at the highest level, for decades.
I had pop vocabulary. I had instinct. What I didn't fully have yet was the rigor. And being shown that gap, clearly, by someone who closed it long ago, is not discouraging. It is clarifying. It tells you exactly where the work is.
That's what I carried into everything that came after. The belief that something was there mattered. But understanding that something being there is only the beginning, that was the real lesson. The rest is building and refining it.
Thank you for reading The Menken Letters. It has meant more to write than I expected. If it landed, pass it to an artist who needs to hear it.
Sincerely,
Andrea Smith
Rising Artists Founder
