Shaun Groves reminds us that even the most successful people in their fields had to start somewhere…

“Sounds like something a Muppet would sing,” I said out loud to my empty tiny office. “I can’t believe that’s Michael W. Smith. That really really sucks.”

After getting a degree in music composition I moved to Nashville in 1993 with my new bride to begin work as an unpaid intern at what is now Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing. My dream was to write songs for other people for a living. My job though was running a cassette duplicating machine, typing and filing lyrics, and other not-songwriting-related stuff.

But on my lunch breaks I would listen to tapes full of old demos from Christian music’s biggest writers. The first one I perused was ”Michael W. Smith DAT #1”.

Before he was Amy Grant’s keyboard player Michael wrote songs for Brentwood-Benson (when it was called the John T. Benson Publishing Company) and I got to jump in a time machine with a sandwich in my hand and hear what kind of stuff he wrote at my age - in his early twenties.

It turned out to be awful. And hearing it was the biggest boost to my writing I’ve ever received. If Michael W. Smith the Grammy winner and radio star stunk as badly at my age as I do then there’s hope for me, I thought.

Shaun goes on to share a track of his early stuff…

I hope you laugh. Because it’s awful. And I hope after you laugh you sit down and write, encouraged that in time, with enough practice, almost anyone will improve.