Shawn Woods Didn't Write These Songs for You. That's Exactly Why They Land.

The songs were never supposed to exist

In March 2024, Shawn Woods attempted suicide. He spent three days on a respirator with a 50/50 chance of making it. Then three days in a state hospital, where a psychiatrist looked at him and said, "You had a bad day."

That's where the music starts. Not with a demo, not with a dream of being famous. With survival.

Therapy became part of his healing. But when he moved from Colorado to Arizona, he had to stop going — and he still needed somewhere to put everything. So he started writing songs.

He made himself one rule going in: if writing was going to help him heal, nothing was off the table. Himself, his family, relationships, mistakes, regrets, the stuff that hurt. He wasn't going to protect a subject just because it was uncomfortable to say out loud. That was the non-negotiable.

Then March 2025 hit him again — Hantavirus and Valley Fever, seriously ill. He kept writing through that too.

None of it was for an audience. These songs were therapy. No one was ever supposed to hear them.

Then he made the mistake of letting a friend listen to one.

And here we are.

Storyteller first, artist second

Ask Shawn who he is and he'll tell you in one word: storyteller. That's not a bio line, it's the whole approach.

"I don't write for the artist — I write for the song," he says. He's not chasing a sound or a lane. He's chasing the true version of whatever he's putting down. If a lyric is real to him, it stays, even when it's ugly.

He's got 93 tracks on SoundCloud, plus music on Spotify, Apple Music, and everywhere else. That's not a guy dipping a toe in. That's someone who found the one thing that keeps him here and won't stop doing it.

The biggest thing he had to beat to keep going? Caring what people think. He figured out the math fast: try to please everybody and nobody's happy. So he stopped. "I write what's real to me, and if one of my songs helps just one person, then I've done my job. I'm fine with that."

That's the whole target. One person, feeling less alone. If you've ever heard a song at exactly the wrong-right moment and felt seen, you already understand what he's after.

The spreadsheet that became a system

Here's the part that separates Shawn from most songwriters just trying to survive their own catalog.

Managing 93+ tracks across platforms is one job. Then there's the business — BMI registrations, publishing info, recording details, licensing, contacts, pitching, follow-ups, tracking what's actually performing. Every song drags a pile of paperwork behind it. The more he wrote, the bigger the pile got.

And Shawn is now medically disabled. You'd think that means all the free time in the world. "I had all the free time in the world and still didn't have enough time."

So he built a spreadsheet. Every new problem, he added a column. It kept growing until it stopped being a spreadsheet and became SWMIS — the SongWriters Music Intelligence System (swmis.net).

It's one place for independent songwriters to manage catalog, analyze their music, keep rights and songwriter info straight, hold industry contacts, run pitching, watch streaming and playlist data, chase licensing, and track performance — with AI guidance built in through a system he calls Chanel.

But strip the features away and it's really about three things: keeping you accountable, keeping you organized, keeping you motivated.

He built it because he needed it. That's the only reason anything he makes exists.

What's next

More songs. More music videos. And getting his writing into the hands of artists who actually connect with it — because for Shawn, a song doing its job matters more than who's singing it.

He's still building SWMIS out for every independent creator drowning in the same admin he was. And the big goal, said plain: Songwriter of the Year.

Coming from a man who wasn't sure he'd survive to write a single one of these, that's not a flex. It's a reason to stick around and watch.

Find him at Shawn Woods Music on Spotify, and on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at @shawnwoodsmusic.