Melanie Fontana, the woman who has penned the discographies of BTS, SEVENTEEN, TWICE, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, and many more, opened up her world to me during a Zoom call back in February 2025. Quickly apologizing for interfering with, what was very likely, a busy time for her, I was immediately taken aback by Melanie’s disposition.
“No! It’s okay. It’s the most amazing, perfect time- I just finished doing a vocal on a demo and I hit bounce and then I just jumped right on the call,” she said.
I was eager to soak up every inch of songwriting wisdom the hitmaker was so willingly gifting to me.
“When I was little, like two or three years old, my parents gifted me a red, plastic cassette player with a microphone attached. Little did they know, I could record over the cassettes and make up songs,” she said. “There were artists growing up when I became aware of myself as a young teen that really inspired me. So when I was younger and didn’t really understand what current music really was, you know, listening to Tina Turner and Whitney Houston, I didn’t know that their music was considered ‘the past.’ That’s kind of the beauty of it, I guess, we live in a society where trends are cycling so much faster- it used to take fifteen years for a trend to come back!”
This articulation burrowed the both of us into thoughts about music in perspective. Melanie said “It’s like, ‘oh this sound that was so uncool five years ago is now cool again,’ and I kind of love that because we’re all now allowed a personal identity that, at least growing up where I grew up, you couldn’t like certain bands that would make you uncool.”
When asked about what her personal definition of a timeless song, Melanie explained, “I mean, a timeless song used to generally be a song that everybody could listen to and relate to in some way. I mean, I feel like the more niche the song, the less generationally impactful it would have inevitably been, and that’s not saying those songs won’t last forever, but it’s usually a more generalized title.” After I mentioned that my group of high-school friends and I often sang karaoke to the sensations of my parents’ generation, she continued, “It’s so hard to put your finger on what made it so. It could just be that it flashed so hard into that generational pool that the ripples are still going out at this point, or that it just got so much radio play and so much global attention that we as music lovers have no choice but to regale it as timeless.”
But Melanie and I had more to discuss than just blasts from the past. In order to fully engage in the subject matter, I opted to converse about the ins and outs of music production. So, I asked Melanie how she approaches writing songs for specific artists knowing their personal styles and strengths in order to include records that fit them precisely.
“It’s intangible. There’s something, a feeling, that comes along with it, where you just get those goosebumps and go, ‘this person would sound amazing on this.’ I feel like I’ve been kind of writing it for them this whole time and then there’s times when you really go study that artist’s past work and you write what you feel would be the graduation from that work. Or, you write something completely different and hope that they’re adventurous enough to take a chance on it.” She also spoke on the more technical aspects. “Usually, when I’m writing for specific artists, they’re not in the room with me and I’m doing what we call pitch records and I’m thinking about what the music video will look like and how they will move to this. Sometimes it won’t necessarily end up with them.”
But one of the, arguably, most prominent aspects of Melanie’s career, is the K-Pop world. In modern art, where people prefer entrancing their friends with sparkly, expensive visuals and polished performances, we tend to forget about giving credit to the core constructors behind the scenes.
“Working alongside any K-Pop artist, you have to think about that aesthetic. I mean, for me, personally, I have to or else I’ll go crazy,” she said. “I think about how they can choreograph a lyric, but also, when I’m writing for an artist who is not going to sing in English, I think about bringing in some more global words that maybe fans from around the world can all understand. So yes, it’s higher pressure, but no matter what, the greater reach an artist has, the more pressure the songwriter is going to feel.”
This pressure, the perfectionism, and the drive to do something more keeps many of us lying awake at night. Melanie talked to me about what this looks like in the world of a songwriter.
“Sleep is so good for you, and some people can just thrive without it, but I feel like everybody needs it. At some point, whether it’s taking a longer break or sleeping, I need it. But I can’t take too long of breaks because I’m like, ‘oh, I’ve got to keep going. If I take one or two days off, I’m like, ‘okay, what’s next.'” As far as her experience with writer’s block, the writer iterated that she doesn’t experience that phenomenon often. “I’ve definitely had days where I just feel creatively drained, like I’ve reached the bottom of the well, but as long as I take a break I can usually think of something.” She continued, “We sometimes forget as songwriters, while it is our job, it’s something precious and creative that’s coming out of us. It’s not normal to write poetry for a living and then sing it. I have to remind myself that it’s a gift.”
No matter the field, much of society has bent their straws to their breaking points in work, and we all have our personal ways of repairing the restlessness. However, in Melanie’s profession, much of the fun part of the job is the challenge itself.
“I write everything mostly in English. If I’m writing alone in my studio for a market that doesn’t speak English commonly, such as Asia, then I’m just working away in English and thinking to myself, ‘okay, when a Korean or Japanese or Filipino songwriter comes in, how’s this going to sound?'” she explained. “I even try to make my English words go into the cadence of the language of the artist I’m shooting towards, if that makes sense. I understand the melody of the Korean language a little bit, so I try to write my English lyrics in phrases that would work for a Korean songwriter to come in and rework.”
Melanie’s German husband had a little bit to say about the process as well. Melanie said, “I was told by him that English is very dramatic because you can just say whatever you want, but in German, when you’re working with a German artist, it takes hours and hours to write those lyrics because it’s so easy to sound corny, apparently. Not that I’m the expert, but that’s how it goes. When we’re with a producer, the instrumentation gets started on some basic level, songwriters start writing, at least with me, in English, and then someone will come in after to translate.”
When I inquired about the amount of her personal songwriting process that is driven by intuition versus how much includes deliberate composition, she replied, “75% intuition, 25% deliberate action.”
Before I even knew, our time together that day had come to a close. So, I wrapped up our discussion with a question on the tip of many in her audience’s tongues. What advice would Melanie Fontana give to young writers?
“Well, for me, it’s saying yes to almost everything. Saying yes to everything that doesn’t make your soul cringe, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if you kind of don’t want to do it, even if it’s free work. When I first began as a songwriter in LA, I just visualized myself in a slingshot and I was just pulling it back, pulling it back, and I finally let go. I launched myself really, really hard into everything- and sometimes things didn’t work out. But that was absolutely fine because no matter what, everything has always worked out for the best. We’re all sitting here today, alive.” She paraphrased and said, “Just don’t ever stop writing. Even when the song feels bad, write it through, and if it feels really, really bad and you’re like, ‘I can’t write this through,’ throw it out and never think of it again.”
After our discussion, I felt inspired and just lucky to have experienced her mentality for a half hour. With that, we said our goodbyes, so that she could return to whatever hit record was in the making that day.
