The Compost Playlist: A Simple Ritual for Rediscovering Lost Songs
You never know what you might find in the dirt.
Every songwriter and composer that I know has a folder on their hard drive full of ghosts—half-finished demos, weird little sketches, voice memos named things like “maybe something,” or “bridge idea? lol.” At some point, we thought they mattered. And then… life moved on.
I used to think of those folders as graveyards. Places where creative failures go to die. I’d feel embarrassed scrolling through them—like I was a deadbeat musical dad who’d abandoned his kids.
But lately, thanks to a young and courageous mentor of mine, I’ve started to see those tracks as something else entirely: Compost.
In the garden, compost is messy (even smelly!). The best compost is a pile of poop, scraps, and rot, after all. But it also breaks things down so something new can grow. And in creative work, I think our hard drives are full of that kind of fertile ground—things we weren’t ready to finish, but might be ready to listen to now.
So here’s a ritual I tried recently, and it changed the way I relate to my old material:
🥾 Step One: Make a Compost Playlist
New album or seeds of tomorrow?
Take an hour (or two) and bounce a bunch of old song ideas—voice memos, half-tracks, anything with a pulse—into MP3s. Dump them into a private playlist. Call it something inviting. I call mine something encouraging or even give it a fake album title. Here’s an album I once planned and may come back to called Idaho Nights.
🎧 Step Two: Get Out of the Studio
Put your playlist on your phone and head away from your usual space. Go for a walk, take a drive, or wander through a museum. The goal isn’t to edit—just to listen with different ears.
You can load your tracks into Dropbox, or even use a USB stick if your car still rocks one. No judgment. No pressure. Just curiosity.
📝 Step Three: Bring a Notebook
Jot down anything that stirs you—a timestamp, a lyric idea, a memory. Some songs will still be trash. Some might feel like time capsules. But if you're lucky, one of them will whisper:
“Hey... I'm not done yet.”
Distance quiets the inner critic. That voice that once said, “this isn’t good enough,” isn’t as loud when you’re listening somewhere new.
My song Zombie Lover came about from listening to some old strange drum recordings while taking a Brian Eno songwriting class.
🎵 A Song Born from the Compost
My recent release Zombie Lover (available exclusively on Bandcamp) was born from one of these forgotten sketches. It started as a random drum experiment—just me running my kit through some new guitar pedals. No click track. Just vibe.
A couple of weeks later, I stumbled across it while building a compost playlist. The drum texture was wild and raw. I chopped it into loops, layered a vocal about doom-scrolling frustration… and a song was born. One that almost never had a chance.
It was a good reminder that even the discarded stuff holds energy. Maybe even something essential.
🧠 Brian Eno, Archives, and Happy Accidents
Earlier this year, I took a songwriting course with Brian Eno. Every week, he talked about the power of a personal archive—something his assistant, Peter Chilvers, later expanded on in a post-course letter.
They’ve built a private system where Brian’s decades of sketches are organized into tagged playlists like “Crowd Pleasers”, “Songs Without Lyrics”, or even “Atonal Funk Bluegrass.”
One of his favorite practices? Shuffle. Pure random playback.
The idea is to get surprised by yourself—to hear what’s still alive in the compost.
Want to try it?
Make your own Compost Playlist this weekend. Take it out into the world. Let it hit you when you’re not trying so hard. And bring a notebook. You might be surprised what wants to grow next. Let me know how this goes for you!
