Episode One

On Songwriting Ep. 1: "Reading"

Hit songwriter Christopher Ward (Alannah Myles, Diana Ross, Hilary Duff, Backstreet Boys) talks about how songwriters can use reading as a source of inspiration and how author Raymond Chandler inspired him while writing the Top 10 Canadian hit "Beautiful Goodbye" for Amanda Marshall.

“This song, recorded by Amanda Marshall for her first album, was written by David Tyson and myself with a strict division of responsibilities - Dave had the music completely done when he gave it to me to write a lyric. It’s one of the most challenging that I’ve ever written, I think because I loved the music so much and wanted to do something that measured up. In the end, I wrote the lyric in what I thought of as the hard-boiled noir style of Raymond Chandler, one of my favourite authors, who wrote ‘The Big Sleep’ and ‘Farewell My Lovely’. Did I succeed?”

— CW