{"id":430,"date":"2025-05-07T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/the-songs-that-made-me-a-songwriter-dan-wilsons-sunday-night-ritual\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T14:00:00","slug":"the-songs-that-made-me-a-songwriter-dan-wilsons-sunday-night-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/the-songs-that-made-me-a-songwriter-dan-wilsons-sunday-night-ritual\/","title":{"rendered":"The Songs That Made Me a Songwriter: Dan Wilson\u2019s Sunday Night Ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/04\/Lead-Credit-Shervin-LainezDan-Wilson-Shervin-Lainez-1.jpg\" width=\"\" height=\"\" alt=\"Dan Wilson (Credit: Shervin Lainez)\"><\/figure>\n<p><strong>You can\u2019t judge a songwriter by their first hit.<\/strong> That\u2019s certainly true for Dan Wilson, who topped the charts and earned his first Grammy nomination with Semisonic\u2019s 1998 earworm \u201cClosing Time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the 27 years since that song\u2019s release, Wilson has written for a wide range of artists, including Adele, LeAnn Rimes, John Legend, Panic! at the Disco, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Taylor Swift. He\u2019s collected four Grammys and last year won the CMA Award for Song of the Year for Chris Stapleton\u2019s \u201cWhite Horse.\u201d He also received an Academy Award nomination for co-writing Jon Batiste\u2019s \u201cIt Never Went Away\u201d from <em>American Symphony<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/05\/a-day-in-the-life-ofmaddox-batson\/\">A Day in the Life of\u2026Maddox Batson<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/05\/adam-duritz-its-my-world-and-i-love-it\/\">Adam Duritz: \u2018It\u2019s My World and I Love It\u2019<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/05\/the-who-announce-farewell-tour\/\">The Who Announce Farewell Tour \u2026 Again<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The prolific songwriter\u2019s talents stretch across genres. \u201cI try to think of songs as \u2018just songs,\u2019 without genre,\u201d he says. \u201cI grew up listening to and playing jazz, and so many jazz classics are songs that originally came from other genres, like Broadway musicals or Top 40 radio or Brazilian dance music. I\u2019ve always liked the idea that songs could travel from one genre to another. Really good songs are portable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While much of his time is spent in songwriting sessions, Wilson has a Sunday night ritual: sitting at his restored 1918 upright piano to \u201cend the week on a gentle note.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt always comes back to the piano for me,\u201d he says. \u201cMy musical beginnings were at my parents\u2019 piano in Minneapolis. When I was 10 or 11, I started figuring out how to make up simple songs. In my early teens, I taught myself to improvise on the piano. Throughout high school, I would deal with my emotions and anger and blues by expressing them on the piano. I can\u2019t imagine what that was like for my family! At this point, playing the piano at night is a lifelong habit of mine. Either a habit or a lifeline.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wilson began posting short pieces from these evenings to Instagram as a way of saying good night to his adopted hometown of Los Angeles, naming each piece after streets tied to significant moments in his life: \u201cmulholland,\u201d \u201cbeverly glen,\u201d \u201cmoorpark,\u201d \u201ccoldwater,\u201d or as Wilson puts it, a map of his time living in the city. Eighteen of those pieces now appear on <em>good night, los angeles<\/em>, an album that captures the quietude of Wilson\u2019s Sunday nights and makes it transportable.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s revealing to see the five (plus one) songs Wilson credits with making him a songwriter, and the context in which they made a lasting impact on him. Nearly half come from artists who were his contemporaries during the Semisonic years, or even earlier, during his time with the band Trip Shakespeare.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt every stage of finding myself as an artist I\u2019ve taken a lot of cues from the music that was happening at the time,\u201d says Wilson. \u201cThis is probably because since I was 11, I knew that I was going to be a musician. I saw new records as half enjoyment and half learning ways to make music. Songs have always had deep connections to the times of my life when I first heard them. When I was a kid, I discovered that songs are a time machine that can bring you back to an earlier chapter of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Reconnecting to the Semisonic time in his life, Wilson joins the band this summer for <a href=\"https:\/\/semisonic.com\/dates\/\" target=\"_blank\">tour dates<\/a>, including stops on the \u201cGood Intentions Tour\u201d co-headlining with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Sixpence None the Richer.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n <lite-youtube videoid=\"YACjTjzvPY4\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-coyote-joni-mitchell\"><strong>\u201cCoyote,\u201d Joni Mitchell<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>\u201cCoyote\u201d on <em>Hejira<\/em> [1976] was my first introduction to Joni Mitchell, probably my most revered and most-listened-to songwriter. It has no chorus, just a quick tag at the end of each verse: \u201cYou just picked up a hitcher, a prisoner of the white lines of the freeway.\u201d The song indoctrinated me into the life of a touring musician before I even knew what it was.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCoyote\u201d was also my first introduction to Jaco Pastorius, the amazing bassist whose melodies are like a second voice on <em>Hejira<\/em>. This was what made me want to learn to play the electric bass, and play it exactly like Jaco. Before I switched to guitar, I played bass in my high school\u2019s big band, and in all my bands until I joined Trip Shakespeare.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-purple-haze-jimi-hendrix\"><strong>\u201cPurple Haze,\u201d Jimi Hendrix<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>This song definitely changed my life. It was the first song I learned to play on the electric guitar. I was 13. A guitar teacher at our local music shop taught me how to play the major-minor 9th chord in the verses. So dissonant! So rebellious! So distorted! Most of my guitar riffs owe something to \u201cPurple Haze,\u201d even now.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-let-down-radiohead\"><strong>\u201cLet Down,\u201d Radiohead<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><em>OK Computer<\/em> ruled my listening life throughout the time I was recording <em>Feeling Strangely Fine<\/em> with Semisonic. When the band was recording part of the album out in the countryside at Pachyderm Studio, we\u2019d listen to that Radiohead record all the way out there and then all the way back at the end of the day.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There were other, splashier songs on the album, but \u201cLet Down\u201d was the one that moved me the most. The strange arpeggiated orchestra bells and guitar in a different time signature from the song created a dissonance that I couldn\u2019t get enough of. It was like an itch that could only be scratched by listening again. What an amazing thing to do with a piece of music.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1230\" height=\"815\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/04\/dan-piano1Credit-Yazz-Alali.jpg\" alt=\"(Credit: Yazz Alali)\" class=\"wp-image-463542\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/04\/dan-piano1Credit-Yazz-Alali.jpg 1230w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/04\/dan-piano1Credit-Yazz-Alali-340x225.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/04\/dan-piano1Credit-Yazz-Alali-240x160.jpg 240w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/04\/dan-piano1Credit-Yazz-Alali-768x509.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/04\/dan-piano1Credit-Yazz-Alali-498x330.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1230px) 100vw, 1230px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Credit: Yazz Alali<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-live-forever-oasis\"><strong>\u201cLive Forever,\u201d Oasis<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I was waiting to pick up a friend at the Minneapolis airport when this song came on the radio. I can still remember how thunderstruck I was. It was equal parts Beatles-y psychedelia, nasty distorted metal, nursery rhyme melodies, and Sex Pistols punk rock vocals. I couldn\u2019t believe what I was hearing. When it was over the DJ announced it was by a British band called. Oasis. What a terrible name! I thought. Now of course I love the name and everything else about the band between <em>Definitely Maybe<\/em> and <em>Standing on the Shoulders of Giants<\/em>.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-a-remark-you-made-weather-report\"><strong>\u201cA Remark You Made,\u201d Weather Report<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I loved <em>Heavy Weather<\/em> by Weather Report. I was just getting into jazz and blues music, and this record had both pop breakthrough hits and gnarly light-speed jams. Plus, it was crammed with beautiful bass melodies by the greatest electric bassist of all time, Jaco Pastorius. But the song I kept coming back to was \u201cA Remark You Made,\u201d a gorgeous ballad featuring saxophonist Wayne Shorter scaling heartbreaking lyrical heights on the horn. The final coda with its relentlessly repeated rising melody\u2014such tension\u2014only to suddenly stop, and end in a state of harmonic suspension. OMG.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-purple-rain-prince\"><strong>\u201cPurple Rain,\u201d Prince<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>What can I say, he\u2019s Prince. He is funky. But in this case, he\u2019s a diva and a balladeer too. This song should be ridiculous. It\u2019s over-the-top dramatic, no apologies. Meanwhile, the song\u2019s title is a pun on Prince\u2019s favorite color purple and his royal name (Purple Reign). Even sillier, the title is a lyric stolen from \u201cVentura Highway,\u201d the stoner classic by the band America. And yet we all sang along and cried and screamed until the final endless guitar solo finally came to an end.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can\u2019t judge a songwriter by their first hit. That\u2019s certainly true for Dan Wilson, who topped the charts and earned his first Grammy nomination with Semisonic\u2019s 1998 earworm \u201cClosing&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,31,24,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dan-wilson","category-features","category-pushly","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}