RuthAnne: "Creating something that’s never been created before is the closest thing to magic"

In her debut book, It’s Not Just A Song – The Ultimate Guide To Writing Hit Songs And Navigating The Music Industry, RuthAnne Cunningham writes hugely compellingly about the industry.

“There is nothing without the song,” she states in the book. “Songwriters are the foundation upon which the entire music industry is built. Without songwriters, there is just silence. Songwriters are the foundation. Producers are the backbone. Producers bring the songs to life – without producers there would be no music. Artists are the messenger, the vehicle the song is channelled through. Without artists to deliver these messages the songs stay on hard drives, never heard by the world…”

It’s a fantastic summation of an intriguing book that features interviews with some of the most successful songwriters in the world today. It’s likely you’ve never heard the names – including Amy Allen, Emily Warren, Dan Wilson and Amy Wadge – but if you dig Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran or Adele, chances are you’ve bopped to one of their songs.

The Grammy and BRIT-nominated RuthAnne has written for a varied collection of massive artists – including Britney Spears, Niall Horan, One Direction and more – and is one of a select group of songwriters on speed dial to the stars.

She’s in Dublin to promote her new book and her forthcoming album The Moment, a love letter to classic songwriting, inspired by Carole King, Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor and Alicia Keys. We meet at the Hyatt Centric in The Liberties, RuthAnne scheduling our chat over lunch, on a hectic day of interviews and photo shoots to promote not one but two exciting projects.

Her book is packed with sage advice for the budding songwriter – the groundwork required, finding collaborators, rules of writing hits, the psychology of the writing room and loads more. If there was one takeaway for a songwriter to garner from the book, what would it be?

“Preparation meets opportunity equals success, so be prepared,” she replies. “Understand that it’s a skill. Workout the muscle, do the 10,000 hours. The luckiest break might be tomorrow: how prepared are you? When you get in those rooms, are you going to be able to deliver? Or are you going to be like a deer in the headlights?

“I’ve been in sessions where I’ve been starstruck, with John Legend or whatever – and I have to deliver in those rooms. And the only thing that can help me is the fact that I’m prepared, and it’s not my first rodeo. I’ve done the 10,000 hours.”

RuthAnne. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

WRITER’S BLOCK

When RuthAnne Cunningham was 10 years of age, she began recording herself on an old two-track tape recorder, singing Mariah Carey riffs and teaching herself to harmonise. Eventually, her father entered one of her demos into the 2004 2FM Jacob’s Song Contest.

“I had a girl band at the time, called Dolce Vita, with my four best friends,” RuthAnne recalls. “It was really because I was writing so many songs and I wanted to hear them – I wanted to hear the harmonies.

We were all in the Billie Barry Stage School together. To them, it was more of a hobby. But to me, it was like, ‘This is my life.’

“I was so obsessed with music. Then my dad entered one of the demos into the Jacob Song Contest, which Gerry Ryan hosted that year in Vicar St. My track won and the song was played on radio.”

From there, things occurred swiftly. The Script’s manager contacted her and brought her out to Hollywood with the band. On her third day in California, he introduced her to legendary songwriter Billy Steinberg, a serial hitmaker, whose songs include ‘True Colors’, ‘Eternal Flame’ and ‘Like A Virgin’.

“I go in and his Grammys were on the piano,” RuthAnne reflects. “I sang, he really liked me and said, ‘Come back tomorrow’. With him and Josh Alexander, I wrote ‘Too Little Too Late’, which JoJo had a hit with two years later. That was my break. When I got to LA, I’d already done my 10,000 hours. So I was able to take that opportunity and go for it. Then we ended up having this big hit together and another one after that.”

RuthAnne was just 17 when she penned ‘Too Little Too Late’.

“Billy was saying he was 30 when he had a success,” says RuthAnne says. “I did it the opposite way around to a lot of songwriters. I had the hit first and then I was told, ‘Do it again. You’re a hit writer.’ I’m like, ‘Wait, what? I just got into this industry.’ So then it was me having to learn the ropes on how to navigate the industry.

“And that’s why I wrote the book, because I could have done with the book when I started. I had no idea about an actual songwriting career. How do you be a songwriter? There’s lots of books about how to write songs, but there’s not a lot of books about how to navigate the industry. It took me years to learn some of the stuff I talk about in the book.”

It’s deep end stuff.

“I’d go into a room and it would be like, ‘You’re writing for Shakira today’,” she notes. “I’m like, ‘Where’s Shakira?’ ‘Oh, no. You’re just going to write for her.’ So, you’d have to put yourself into the mindset of the artist. Other times, I was with the artist, so it depended on the project. I signed a publishing deal, so the publishers would then pitch the songs to artists.

“I’ve success writing with the artist, and then I’ve had success with songs being pitched. But I’ve had hundreds of failures. Sometimes, you look at all these people’s careers and think, ‘Oh, my God, they’ve done so much.’ There’s so much more they do behind the scenes that didn’t do well, but which they learn from.”

Talking with RuthAnne, you realise these songwriters write not dozens, but hundreds of songs. How is that creativity sustained?

“I’ve never really suffered from total writer’s block,” she says. “I’d sometimes have lyrical burnouts where I’d be like, ‘I’m writing about the same thing.’ I always say in those scenarios, ‘Put the pen down and get out and experience things.’ I love listening to people and finding myself in their story.

“I just try to stay present. The song is always floating in the room – whatever room you’re in, the song is there. A lot of songwriters and creative people believe that songs are floating in the air and they’re looking for a host. I do believe the best songwriters in the world, they’re just open to grabbing them.

“That’s the only way that I can explain it, because creating something that’s never been created before is the closest thing to magic. Like my song, ‘The Vow’, I still don’t know where that came from. I just woke up and immediately started writing it down. It came through me, and I just dared to put it down. It was honestly magic.”

RuthAnne. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

GLOBAL IMPACT

What’s it like, I ask, to hear thousands of

people in an arena singing one of your songs?“It’s a feeling that never gets old,” says RuthAnne. “Songs can go through such a long process to get out into the world. It can be two years. You’re waiting, and then when it gets out and the world takes it on, and it has such a global impact, there’s no feeling like it.

“I always look around at the crowd singing, and seeing the feeling that the music gives is the biggest reward you could ever imagine. It means more than charts.”

With RuthAnne’s solo album due for release, I wonder does she ever wish she had kept some of her songs for herself?

“No,” she stresses. “I’ve never had that, not once in my career. Even with ‘Too Little Too Late’, we wrote it originally for me as an artist. But I knew it wasn’t for me, and I was thinking of JoJo in my head. Songs are my babies anyway, so it’s like sending them off to college, and you’re still a part of the baby’s life.”

‘Queen Of LA’, a choice country-rock ballad that features on The Moment, about an aspiring songwriter leaving Dublin for Hollywood, is obviously autobiographical.

“Yes,” RuthAnne nods. “I felt as well, the type of album I was making, there was no one out there, female-wise, really doing that lane. There’s a lot of pressure on females now to be current and do dance music, or to be a pop star. For me, I love country music. I love soul. I love Aretha Franklin. Carole King’s Tapestry is my favourite album.

“I wanted to go back to that – singer-songwriters with soul from back in the ’70s, and the rock and roll of Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. So, every song on this album was very intentional, in that I knew what type of vibe I wanted.”

The Moment contains a reimagined version of RuthAnne’s viral hit ‘The Vow’, featuring singer Luke Burr. First released in 2018 as her first solo single, the song has built its own colourful and still-snowballing story.

PASSIONATE ADVOCATE

Seven years since on, ‘The Vow’ continues to go viral on an annual basis, providing the soundtrack to weddings and engagements, whilst breaking the UK Top 40 and hitting the Irish No.1 spot twice.

“I’ve seen from what ‘The Vow’ has done,” RuthAnne elaborates, “that you can do ballads. There’s always a pressure when I write for other artists that you must get the single, the big hit, the No.1. I realised with ‘The Vow’ that I can do emotional singer-songwriter ballads, and they can still have a home. There’s still people who want that type of music. I feel my music has become a soundtrack for a lot of people’s moments – that’s why I called it The Moment.”

A mum of two and a passionate advocate for women’s health, RuthAnne is also the co-founder of Endo&Me, an educational initiative raising menstrual health awareness in Irish schools. After years of misdiagnosis, RuthAnne was diagnosed with Stage 4 deep infiltrating endometriosis and adenomyosis, experiences that inspired her emotionally raw recent single, ‘The Way I’m Wired’.

“I was always really hesitant to write about it,” RuthAnne explains. “Because I didn’t want a sympathy song. And in general, with my illness, I was always downplaying it in front of people and hiding it. But when I got diagnosed, I was like, ‘You know what? There’s too many women suffering to not use whatever platform I have to talk about it.’

“I wrote the chorus in a hotel room, when I was too sick to go to this very important A-List session. I was so embarrassed, but I couldn’t get out of bed. But I was apologising. I feel when you have a chronic illness, you’re always apologising. So, I wrote this song for the women out there who are suffering and can’t put it into words.

“I think that women have really embraced it, and the Endo community love it. Endo&Me – that’s me and my sisters. So for the last few years, every March and April, we go around schools and educate teens about their menstrual health and the signs of endometriosis. We’ve met so many teens suffering, so there’s much more work to do.”

• It’s Not Just A Song and The Moment are out now. RuthAnne plays the Sugar Club, Dublin on October 15.