How the Song Came to Be with Bonnie Hayes - Episode 19

Singer-songwriter, musician-producer and San Francisco native Bonnie Hayes wrote the hit songs "Have a Heart” and “Love Letter” from the acclaimed Bonnie Raitt album Nick of Time. She's also written songs for Cher, Bette Midler, David Crosby, Robert Cray, Adam Ant, Booker T. & the MG’s, and many more. Bonnie produced the Gospel Hummingbirds’s Grammy-nominated 1992 album Steppin’ Out, toured with pop-punk icon Billy Idol and scored a college radio hit with the 1980’s cult favorite “Shelley’s Boyfriend,” which also appeared, with another of Hayes’s songs, in the 1983 motion picture Valley Girl. Bonnie Hayes is now the chair of Berklee's Songwriting Department.

In our conversation, Bonnie shares about:

• How to take the thing that is your limitation and make it your strength & uniqueness
• Why specificity is what makes a song
• Switching between your right and left brain while songwriting
• How she wrote "Have a Heart!"