10 Amazing Songs Written Out Of Competition

When you're assembling a song, inspiration can come from all sorts of places. Over the years, there have been plenty of acts who write about things that could be stupid, profound, or even sarcastic all within the confines of a single song. Though many people can have a straightforward method to writing their song, it gets a little interesting when friendly competition starts to creep in.

Instead of using the typical verse chorus verse placeholders, these songs are more written in response to other songs. While some of these show up as the result of two in-band songwriters slogging it out, the interesting bits come from a more disconnected rivalry, with one artist writing a song to deliberately throw their colleagues off their game.

Why would you turn this artistic statement into a competition though? Well, this is done more often than not to break up the monotony between writing the same song over and over again, but there's a little something else to it. The idea of writing a song almost to assignment is a great way to get artists out of their comfort zone and try to write in either another style or a different creative mindset altogether. Either way, these songs become something totally different once you realize their inspiration.

The making of Blink-182's self-titled album was fractured to say the least. As the trio struggled to get back on the same page after Tom Delonge's experimentation with Box Car Racer, the whole record feels like the happy accident coming from inner band tension. Though Feeling This acts as the mission statement for the whole record, there's a bit more method behind the trade-offs between Delonge and Mark Hoppus.

Starting with the backing track, Delonge's original vision had been to have a trade-off with Hoppus, but they weren't exactly sure what to say. Instead of trying to work it out together, their producer initially suggested that both of them go into separate rooms and try to work out lyrics themselves. Ironically enough, both Delonge and Hoppus came through with lyrics that were both about sex.

Instead of fighting over which ones to go with, the final product is the result of both lyrics being thrown one after another. This makes the entire song feel like a dissection of sex, with Delonge's carnal lust in the verses giving way to the more romantic side of things from Hoppus on the chorus. Even though the days of this incarnation of Blink were numbered at this point, this is one of the few salvos from the sessions that was actually a pure collaboration.