I’m great at guitar. Everyone knows I’m great at guitar. Someone recently asked me if I’ve ever written any of my own music. I said no. Then I wondered to myself – why haven’t I written any of my own music?


When I was about 8 years old I wrote my first song. It was called “Smackdown“, inspired by the WWF’s Thursday Night Smackdown. I wrote the lyrics on a piece of paper. The only ones I remember are:

I’m gonna lay the smackdown, baby in your face
You’re never gonna beat me in my race

Jeff or Tom, I can’t remember which one, found the sheet of paper that had the lyrics. It was over. It didn’t matter how good my song was. I could have written Stairway to Heaven on that paper and they’d still have made fun of me. They ripped me to shreds over Smackdown and my creative expression.

And since then, I’ve committed to being unoriginal. You can never be ridiculed for your bad songs if you don’t write any songs to begin with.

Who knows what might have happened if they read the lyrics and said “Hey Sam, this is a great song, you’re a really good lyricist!“. I’d be selling out Wells Fargo.

Instead, I’m writing blogs for Splitting Tens.