What is Léona's first rule for songwriting?

Léona's first rule is to write songs that you genuinely like yourself. This serves as a core principle and the best advice for any aspiring songwriter, ensuring authenticity in the creative output.

How can songwriters overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed by choices?

Léona suggests using a framework like 'I feel, I want, I choose.' By first identifying your emotions and desires, you can make more aligned choices, turning the chaos of freedom into structured creativity.

How did Léona transform an existing song into 'O Tropos'?

To create 'O Tropos', Léona adjusted the BPM for a cooler vibe and altered the melody by removing notes, making it sound more abstract and nostalgic, like hearing it from the past. She also rewrote lyrics to reflect her modern, independent perspective.

What inspired the song 'Tilepathiki'?

'Tilepathiki' was inspired by random graffiti found on a wall. Léona categorized the inscriptions (political, funny, philosophical, romantic) and focused on the romantic ones, leading to the concept of telepathic love channeled through anonymous wall messages.

What is the main theme of the song 'Tinos Eisai Esy'?

The song 'Who Do You Belong To?' explores the conflict between personal identity and societal or familial expectations, particularly within Greek culture. It questions predetermined destinies versus the desire for self-definition through songwriting.

What does Léona mean by embracing 'chaos' in songwriting?

Embracing chaos means accepting that not everything needs to make immediate sense or fit a perfect mold. It's about allowing for messiness, personal expression, and continuous change, reflecting the complexity of life and the self, much like her song 'Tinos Eisai Esy'.

Key Moments

Πώς γράφεται ένα τραγούδι | Léona | TEDxDUTH

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Nonprofits & Activism5 min read21 min video

Apr 8, 2026|5,017 views|6

Art Creativity Greek Identity Music (topic)Personal growth Storytelling TEDxTalks [TEDxEID:65668]

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Key Moments

TL;DR

Songwriting is 90% deliberate choices, not inspiration. Leona reveals how to overcome creative chaos by asking: 'What do I actually feel?'

Key Insights

Songwriting is approximately 10% inspiration and 90% deliberate choices.

The creative process involves confronting the 'chaos of freedom' which offers infinite options.

Leona uses a 'feel, want, choose' framework to navigate the songwriting process.

The first song, a cover, was transformed by changing the BPM, adding nostalgic guitar, and updating lyrics to reflect modern themes like independence and the 'cringe' nature of overt romance.

The second song, inspired by graffiti, explored the concept of 'telepathic love' arising from impulsive, hidden expressions.

The third song, 'Whose are you?', grappled with identity, belonging, and the struggle to reconcile personal desires with societal and familial expectations.

The myth of effortless inspiration in songwriting

Singer-songwriter Leona begins by addressing the common misconception that songwriting is a purely spontaneous act driven by inspiration. She likens the blank page to an overwhelming choice, a feeling many experience when asked to create freely. This 'chaos of freedom,' with its infinite possibilities for genre, style, and instrumentation, is precisely what Leona finds most challenging at the outset of writing a song. She posits that artists who claim inspiration simply arrives may be withholding the true, more deliberate nature of their craft. According to Leona, inspiration accounts for only about 10% of the creative process, with the remaining 90% comprising conscious choices. The core tension lies in navigating this vast freedom by understanding one's own internal landscape.

Finding order through rules and a personal framework

To combat the paralysis of choice, Leona proposes establishing boundaries and rules, akin to a personal 'checklist.' She shares two guiding principles. First, 'I write songs for myself first,' emphasizing authenticity as the primary audience. Second, she introduces the 'feel, want, choose' framework. This methodical approach involves identifying a feeling, determining a desire, and then making a deliberate choice based on that alignment. This process helps to translate an abstract emotional state into concrete creative decisions, providing a structure to channel subjective experience into tangible musical and lyrical content.

Reimagining a familiar song through personal feeling

Leona demonstrates her process by first transforming a well-known Greek song. Faced with creative freedom on a hot July day, she felt a strong desire for winter and a slower pace. This feeling dictated her first choice: lowering the BPM to create a more relaxed, groovy, and 'sexy' vibe, contrasting with the original song's energy. She translated this desired mood into a rhythmic foundation. Next, she addressed the melody, noting a sense of nostalgia derived from the original 1966 composition and an idealized past. To evoke this nostalgia, she chose to make the guitar melody more sparse and 'dreamlike,' as if fragments were fading over time. Finally, she tackled the lyrics. While appreciating the original sentiment, she felt it didn't represent her current independent perspective or the complexities of modern relationships. She replaced lines like 'I can't live without you' with her own words, reflecting a more nuanced view of love and self-reliance, resulting in her song 'The Way.'

Crafting a song from disparate visual prompts

Leona's second example stemmed from a walk where she saw a wall covered in random graffiti. Challenged to write a song using these disconnected phrases and images, she began by photographing and researching them. The initial input was fragmented ('lead-free at 168,' 'a dollar for your neck,' 'a nice salantian flower'). To find a coherent theme, she categorized the graffiti into political, funny, philosophical, and romantic. She focused on the romantic inscriptions, interpreting the act of spray-painting as an impulsive, risky expression of desire, like sending a 'telepathic message.' This concept of 'telepathic love' became the core idea. Musically, she envisioned an ethereal, spiritual sound with a soft synth, jazz chords, and a melancholic guitar. She grounded it with an urban beat and R&B/hip-hop influences to reflect the city landscape where such walls are found, creating the song 'Telepathic.'

Navigating identity through chaotic personal narrative

The third song, 'Whose are you?', arose from a period where Leona felt creatively blocked, needing to write for a play about growing up in a province, feeling different, and struggling to fit in while staying true to oneself. The theme resonated so deeply and personally that it felt like 'psychological striptease' to explore. She shared snippets of her life: moving frequently due to her military father, experiencing bullying, her parents' divorce, her shyness, and how music gave her confidence. She contrasted her parents' desire for her to have a 'stable' life with her own ambitions. A dream about a truffle calling her a failure and her witty retort, along with a memory of her father's advice about being 'stable like a river,' led to a powerful synthesis in her mind. This coalesced into the central question and title: 'Whose are you?', which she interprets as a profound Greek truth about imposed identity and lack of true choice, versus her own drive for self-definition through songwriting.

The inherent chaos and beauty of self-discovery

Leona concludes by performing 'Whose are you?', acknowledging its chaotic, ever-changing nature, mirroring her own. The song directly addresses the societal pressure to conform and be categorized ('I count as a number') versus her pursuit of self-determination. She emphasizes that this struggle, this resistance to easy definition, is not only frightening but also where the true beauty of authentic self-expression lies. The song's lyrics question external assertions of belonging and reject the idea of being a mere statistic, ultimately embracing the dynamic and perhaps messy process of becoming oneself.

Léona's Songwriting Framework

Practical takeaways from this episode

Do This

Write songs that appeal to you first.

Understand your feelings: 'I feel, I want, I choose'.

Use rules and limits to guide your creative choices.

Embrace the 'chaos' during the creative process.

Translate emotions and ideas into musical elements (rhythm, melody, lyrics).

Be yourself and express your unique perspective.

Don't be afraid of messy or unconventional creations.

Avoid This

Be paralyzed by too much freedom and too many choices.

Write solely based on what you think others want to hear.

Force yourself to write something you don't connect with.

Try to make perfect sense of every element; sometimes chaos is the point.

Judge your work prematurely; just create and let it be messy.

Common Questions

According to Léona, inspiration accounts for only about 10% of the creative process. The remaining 90% involves making deliberate choices about the song's elements, such as style, instruments, and lyrics.