The secret world of songwriting camps

Published: Aug. 8, 2023, 9 a.m.

Beginning in the nineties, pop songwriters have traveled to a 13th-century castle in the south of France for what\u2019s come to be known as a \u201csong camp\u201d \u2013 a place where songwriters and collaborators can hunker down and spend a week together writing the next big hits.\n\nThe castle\u2019s owner Miles Copeland, former manager of The Police, brought songwriters to this far-flung location for a dose of creativity, and yielded massive success through the process: artists like Celine Dion, Britney Spears and Miranda Lambert have all benefited from songs stemming from these retreats.\n\nOver the last fifteen years, song camps have exploded in popularity from Peter Coquillard\u2019s Bali Invitational, to Rihanna\u2019s $200k LA camp, to the Anti Social Camp: a NYC-based event and the world\u2019s largest songwriting retreat. This episode of Switched On Pop, we take a look at the secret world of song camps, and even manage to be a fly-on-the-wall in a camp with songwriter Nicholas Petricca of Walk The Moon, Julia Cumming of Sunflower Bean, engineer Will Campbell and producer Andrew Maury.\xa0\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices