Creating an XmlNode/XmlElement in C# without an XmlDocument?

I would recommend to use XDoc and XElement of System.Xml.Linq instead of XmlDocument stuff. This would be better and you will be able to make use of the LINQ power in querying and parsing your XML:

Using XElement, your ToXml() method will look like the following:

public XElement ToXml()
{
    XElement element = new XElement("Song",
                        new XElement("Artist", "bla"),
                        new XElement("Title", "Foo"));

    return element;
}