10 Perfect Songs That Were Written Incredibly Fast

Songwriting at the Speed of Light.

By Tim Coffman /

You can spend your entire lifetime trying to get just the right thing to bring a song together. It normally takes a lot of hard work, but when you finally get every aspect of a tune to fall into place, there’s nothing like hearing all of that hard work come out through the speakers. If you’re lucky enough though, some of the greatest tunes end up falling right out of the sky.

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For as many decades as these writers may have been trying to hone their craft, these are the few times where they get in tune with something really special that almost possesses them to write. Usually you can write a fully former song in the matter of months, but these took days, if not hours to complete, just kicking back with your guitar or piano and just letting the chips fall where they may.

It doesn’t seem like it should work, but these songs turned into something classic along the way. Even if they have only a few minutes to show for their work, these songs have become standards in the rock community, with melodies so universal that they feel like they’ve existed since the dawn of time. You can try to understand all you’d like, but there’s no accounting when the musical gods work their magic through musicians.

10. Song 2 - Blur

The rise of Britpop in the mid '90s always seemed like a response to what was going on half a world away in Seattle. Whereas a lot of the bands coming out of the grunge were looking to talk about their inner torment, the likes of Oasis and Cast were writing songs that made you feel like you can take on the world no matter what it threw at you. When both genres did intersect though, chances are a lot of the grunge bands didn't realize they were being made fun of.

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As Blur were cutting songs for what would become their self titled album, Song 2 began as just a farce about what songs the Seattle crowd would have probably liked. Centered around just one riff from Graham Coxon, most of Damon Albarn's lyrics just feel like they were stitched together from different meaningless phrases, almost like what Kurt Cobain would have done at the time. It may have seemed in poor taste at the time, but nothing mattered once the fuzz and distortion pedals came on, with oblivious fans being more than happy to shout along to the WOO HOOs throughout the chorus.

Even the title was considered a bit of a throwaway, only being called Song 2 because it was the second song on the record and the fact that the song came out to 2 minutes and 2 seconds. Although this is the song that inadvertently launched Blur into the spotlight on the other side of the Atlantic, those who were looking for a British version of Stone Temple Pilots were going to be disappointed the minute they heard something like Beetlebum.

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