Radio songs and Well-liked songs

Date: May 4, 2006

Radio songs and Well-liked songs

Date: May 4, 2006

I've often wondered that myself. Maybe it's my premature cynicism, but I get the feeling that a lot of judges (not just here, but anywhere) are really listening for marketability above all else. If it's marketable AND interesting, well, that's even better. But I got some comments that involved top-40 talk about hooks and things, and that's just not where I'm coming from nor where I want to go.

Of course, if those people are applying a radio-friendly bias, then I suppose I'm applying a pop-music-sucks bias to my own judgements. (Except that a lot of pop music really sucks.)

So the answer is that music is highly subjective, to the point that it's almost impossible to judge on any criteria OTHER than marketability. And marketability is formula, plain and simple. Verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-chorus, usually some arrangement of power chords, snappy production and it helps if you're attractive. Yuck.

Listen for what you enjoy. Listen for something that sounds organic, rather than something that was written to fit the mold. But hey- if you get your rocks off on marketability, then listen for that too. But as I mentioned to someone else, there is life outside of the radio. And it tends to be a lot more interesting.

Date: May 5, 2006

But can't the two coexist? I like a lot of songs. I buy a lot of music. Many of the songs I like are on the radio. Somewhere in there is an intersection of what I would call 'a good song' and what would be considered 'a radio song' (which means a marketable song). That's not a bad thing - it is what it is.

That's not to say that I don't like a lot of stuff that would never make it on the radio in a million years. But the 'un-marketable' song is not inherently better just because of it's un-marketability - it still boils down to the fact that a good song is a good song, period.

I totally agree that music is highly subjective, but I can say that for myself as a commenter and a member of judging roundtables, I don't look at marketability at all. I have said things like "I could hear this on the radio" in my comments, but that's merely informational. I know almost immediately if I like a song - it just hits me, or it doesn't. I like what I like, and sometimes can't even tell you why.

Case in point - the Appendix songs on the site. My mother would just laugh, and my wife would shake her head. A radio program manager would order me out of his office. But I really really like them, and would buy an Appendix album. Another case in point - the Adam Middleton songs on the site. They could be on the radio. They may be on the radio one day. They move me, too, and I would buy an Adam Middleton album. One is 'marketable' and the other isn't (we're talking in HUGE generalities here of course, to make a point) but one isn't inherently more artistic or real than the other.

So my answers to the original questions:

"If I sold a 100,000 copies of my song at MP3.com but it never made it on the radio is it still a good song?" - Of course it is, to the 100,000 who were moved to buy it.

"Are we, as judges, listening for radio hits or something that we like to listen to?" - for me, it's 100% the latter. Now, we do have industry people on the judge's panel, and some of them are quite focused on artist management and getting airplay so I can't speak for them. But as a core member of the Artist Weekly team, I can tell you that our commitment is to the song.

Date: May 7, 2006

You're right, 820.

A good song is a good song, marketable or not.

I have a lot of friends who've graduated with degrees in songwriting, and have passed on some interesting ideas to me; things like paring down wordy lines to keep the listener's attention, and why this chord works better than that chord in the chorus, and the extreme importance of a catchy hook that will latch onto the audience's minds like a lamprey to a ship's hull.

These are things that I don't like in contemporary radio music, because when I hear them I feel like I'm being manipulated. That's where my pop-music-sucks bias comes in. But I have heard pop music songs that I liked a lot, and I have heard more bad indie songs than I care to count. So it just boils down to what moves you.

Date: May 8, 2006

odd that you went with "lamprey" instead of "barnacle"....

that is all.

Date: May 8, 2006

Lampreys are far more predatory, which was the image I was trying to conjure up.

Date: May 9, 2006

I guess what I do not understand is why people shoot themselves in the foot. Basic verse chorus has been in use
looog before Corporate America started really digging for gold in its client's pockets. It's called a sing
along! We did it as children, the easy to remember and sing, little dirges of old. And some of us did it in
churches. So why the distaste for structure, memorable titles, catchy rhymes and melodies? Is it "youth"
turning their collective backs on the establishment? They same establishment they learned thier chops from?

A song, musically, has nothing but structure. Without it you would have a bunch of notes swimming like the
hopeful sperm. You have notes that make up scales that designate keys that are assigned to chords. These are tools we use because they work.

Successful(use your own definition) singer/songwriters develop songs using tried and tested methods or
"formula" because they work. Not one soul has written one song without first having heard a well written song.

If this were not true as I know it, each of us would be fine with just our listening to "it" or playing "it" to
the infrequent house visitor rather then attempting to bend the will of others to accept that we have something
that is very good.

I did not say marketed or marketable. I said "well written song."

Thomas A. Dorsey used the line "Take my hand, precious Lord, Lead me home" at the end of every verse, which was typical of the story telling structure of an "A/A/A" song, that was in 1932.

Rhyming in general has been around for centuries.

So why a bunch of long hair lyrical excrement? We have a very brief window to get a listener, make a connection
and hold on to those ears for a few minutes. If the music is boring, your time can be reduced drastically. If
not then you have to develop a persuasive way of saying something that has already been said a countless number
of times before. And if you begin to fail at that you just struck out.

I listened to both Bruce Springsteens "Devils and dust" and Neil Young's "Living with war" (I suspect neither of the two every owned a song writing book) over this past
weekend and came to a few conclusions. Both of these guys, who have nothing more to prove and no want for fame
or cash, still used the same time honored building blocks to develop their song lyrics. They still wrote
good songs and I still took comfort in knowing that I could expect the unexpected.

Some got it and some don't and for those of us that do not, we have a road paved for us. It helps to stay on it.

Jack