"This was the first song I ever wrote."

thread is inspired by Townes Van Zandt, who introduced "Waiting 'Round to Die" with these words when he played it live at the Old Quarter. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, since some of his posthumously released early demos are almost on the level of "Waiting...". but who knows, he may have been lying to the audience to convince them of his innate talent.

what other artists have made this claim (or had someone else make the claim) about songs that either released or performed live, and were they bullshitting?

(er, meant to say "songs that they either released...")

I feel this goes hand in hand with the claim that they "wrote the whole thing in five minutes."

"I wrote this in my sleep at the age of 3."

I'm struggling to come up with some more examples though. I'm sure I know a bunch, but my memory is shot.

i wrote this song in 5 minutes while drunk and vomiting in a dark alley... and i recorded the vocal in one take

On the live Big Star record, Alex Chilton introduces "Thirteen" by saying, "I wrote this about when I was 13." I used to think, "Christ, he wrote this when he was 13?!" (The obvious realization as to what he meant eventually sunk in.)

Duke Ellington claimed to have written "Mood Indigo" while waiting for his mother to finish cooking dinner. But he's Duke Ellington, so I believe it.

hmm, it never even occurred to me that Alex might've written that song as a kid. if that's true, then I guess it rules out the popular notion that it was written from the pov of a dirty old man.

I just remembered an interview where Kendra Smith said "Fell from the Sun" was the first song she wrote. imho it's better than anything else she recorded before or since.

I don't think it was the first song she ever wrote but Kate Bush DID write "Wuthering Heights" when she was 18.

I wrote this song in my Mead Five Star back in 5th grade. It's really existential and shows my maturity above other fifth graders. I was inspired by Ren and Stimpy.

JJ Burnel of The Stranglers claims "Go Buddy Go" as the first song he wrote, aged 15.

black francis says in the liner notes of pixies complete b-sides he wrote Velvety when he was 15.

I think it's possibly OK to write a song that attempts to encapsulate being teenager without necessarily being a paedophile

lol

Tim Wheeler from Ash allegedly wrote Girl From Mars when he was 14.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_pvmEH7LJE

On the live LP Speak of the Devil, Ozzy called "Black Sabbath" "the very first song I ever wrote in my life." I'm not sure we can trust Ozzy's memory, however.

XP

Even if Alex wrote '13' just before recording it on #1 Record, he would only have been 21/22 so hardly a 'dirty old man'

xpost I read that Kate Bush wrote The Man with the Child in His Eyes when she was just 14.

Maybe not first, but:

Neil Young claims to have written the lyrics to "Cortez The Killer" while still in high school. "One night I stayed up too late," he said at a 1996 concert. "I ate like six hamburgers...Felt terrible. I was studying history, and I in the morning I woke up and I'd written this song."

The thing is I find Neil Young's claim believable -- I mean it's a great, great song but (and partly because) it has a high school kid's sense of history in it.

some artists write and discard lots and lots of material before ever getting into a recording studio, some people end up honing the first complete song(s) they ever write into what ends up being their first album. the latter is probably a lot more common than most of the people in this thread seem to think.

There are lots of tragic tales of acts that go downhill as soon as they run through the stuff they'd been perfecting for years, pre-contract. Cheap Trick comes to mind. I know Van Halen, even as late as "1984," was drawing on demos done in the mid'-70s. What was neat about that Neil Young Archives box was the handful of future classic Neil tunes that showed up super early in nascent form.

yeah, that's a common scenario. also guys who kind of fell into songwriting after playing in a band for a while that at first only played another member's songs (or covers).

An early version of "Lucky Man" was written by Greg Lake at age 12 according to himself. Not sure if he claimed it was his first ever song, but it sure was an early one.

And 'Lucky You' was written by Taylor Swift at age 12. Believable, but supposedly 'The Outside' was as well, which sounds too good to be true: "This is one of the first songs I ever wrote, and it talks about the very reason I ever started to write songs. It was when I was twelve years old, and a complete outcast at school."

Rebecca Black has been known to make this claim but I find it dubious

I'm sure I read somewhere that Hoover Factory was Elvis Costello's first song, which is a very cool start.

I partly believe it considering his history, but Richard D. James I think made the claim that he dreamt half the songs on Selected Ambient Works II. Or something to that effect.

"Little James" from "Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants" was factually the first song ever written by Liam Gallagher.

"Four Strong Winds" was the first song Ian Tyson ever wrote.

If 85-92 is to be believed AFX was producing at least some of those tracks at 14 yo.

Doesn't Trent Reznor claim that "Down in It" was the first song he wrote?