10 Amazing Songs Written In 30 Minutes Or Less

Some works of art take superhuman amounts of effort and time to be put into them before they finally see the light of day. They are mindfully crafted and fine-tuned over days, weeks, and months, with their creators carefully weighing each decision they make.

It took Michelangelo five years to paint the Sistine Chapel. It took filmmaker Terrence Malick twice as long to finish his seminal work, The Thin Red Line. When it comes to music, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody was in development for over six years, and Leonard Cohen famously rewrote Hallelujah countless times before finally releasing it five years after he first set out to write it.

But not every work of art requires its creator to toil at it arduously for years. Sometimes, it can all converge in a matter of minutes and produce a moment of inspiration that is enough to capture lightning in a bottle.

Such was the case with the ten songs we have collected for this list. They are all of different genres and styles, coming from different eras of music, but they all have one thing in common: they were written in 30 minutes or less.

Click through to read more about ten absolute bangers that were all written in less time than it took to write this article.

This one definitely feels like it was thought up in a very short time. Not because it’s a bad song, by no means, but because of how simple and raw every single aspect of it is. Think about it, its title is literally “Song 2” and its chorus is basically just a “woo-hoo”. It doesn’t seem like something a lot of time or effort was put into.

However, that was not a coincidence but something that the band had intended. Song 2 was written in about half an hour, and it was meant as a tongue-in-cheek parody of grunge bands of the time and a sort of a joke to their record company.

“Damon went ‘woo-hoo’ because he had nothing else prepared,” producer Stephen Street remembers.

Frontman Damon Albarn first recorded an acoustic demo, but guitarist Graham Coxon suggested they beef it up a bit and ultimately opted for the deliberately amateurish guitar sound. They settled on two verses and two choruses, bringing the track to two minutes and two seconds in length. That is, of course, the song we know today and, to the band’s surprise, it immediately appealed to the record company and they decided to release it as a single.

Ironically, it became one of their biggest hits and, ultimately, the song that would introduce Blur to American audiences. Looks like the record companies know something, after all!