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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
What Makes a Hit Song?
What Makes a Hit Song?
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nacoran
5845 posts
Jun 13, 2012
7:58 PM
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Slate has an article on the shift from major to minor and the slowing of beats per minute in hit songs since the 60's. It's not a long article, but it has some interesting implications for those of us who would like to write a hit song.
Pop Songs are Getting Sadder
(It's actually a rehash of an article over on WSJ, but the Slate one has videos to demonstrate the difference. If you want the original, here is that link (it's also linked in the Slate article.))
WSJ
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Nate
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jbone
957 posts
Jun 13, 2012
8:31 PM
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according to a guy who has worked in nashville and memphis and had some success promoting bands, artists, and songs, a song "must be main street usa. it must tell the universal story but in a unique and attractive way". so we have a cd of ours in his hands, we're hoping he can shop some of our material to known artists and maybe sell a song or two.
i hear some pop stuff in recent years that does tell the story- of heartbreak or learning life's lessons and getting stronger, and that seems to be true. it's always been true in blues i think.
but having come up in the 60's i remember how huge the beach boys were with their simpering surf songs. sugar coated unreality but a dream that teen america was addicted to and didn't eve know it. at the same time the brit invasion was brewing and the beatles were poised to take the world by storm.
there is to me a curious combination of music and lyrics that hook an audience. we've seen it hundreds of times here. most intriguing to me is how a crowd responds to the bass and drum beats esp if they are drinking or maybe smoking something out back. i have been in on 15 to 20 minute jams on say a wolf song. as long as the beat is solid the crowd is sucked in. there is a true form of hypnosis that happens and it's not just to the audience, the musicians are drawn in as well. it's part of why i do this.
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nacoran
5846 posts
Jun 13, 2012
10:58 PM
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Jbone, your comment made me wonder. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on how different drugs effect musical tastes. They'd probably have to do it on legal drugs, maybe somewhere where a lot more drugs are legal. It would be hard to control for cause and effect. Acid rock, the rave scene.
Beat does seem to be important. I noticed in the video of 'trash blues' that Adam posted a few days ago that the one performer, Molly Gene, with her foot drum was producing sort of a live version of dance scene drums, very bass driven. There are who genres where you don't even need to understand the words, everything from heavy metal to Italian opera!
Destin, yeah, but you need the right sound too. I have a friend who recorded a really awesome track with a 'somethings gotta change' lyric that would fit right in at a Tea Party event or an Occupy Wall Street event (it complains about angsty problems without offering a partisan solution). He's really busted his hump trying to market it, and I love the song. I think if he'd recorded it as a country song it might have hit with the Tea Party, and if he'd made it more Reggae sounding he could have hit with the Occupy crowd. He recorded it with an 80's early 90's Don Henley sort of sound though and as great as it is it doesn't seem to get traction.
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Nate
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jbone
959 posts
Jun 14, 2012
4:36 AM
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i imagine the best people to ask this would really be those who have written, performed, produced, hit songs.
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waltertore
2338 posts
Jun 14, 2012
4:55 AM
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the makings of a hit song is simple if you have the right people behind it. Remember the pet rock? It all is a very precise, thought out, controlled, process. Having the money and the people in control of the music industry equals a hit. Don't fool yourself into thinking there is anything more to it. 99.9999999999999999999999% of people making music, writing music, support the .000000000000000000001% that are making all the money. For small examples look at all the songwriter seminars, music seminars, etc, that countless people dump tons of money on to attend. Who gets the $?? Not the attendees but the ones that control the music business. Who pays for their instruments? Ones that aren't in that small %. The small % is paid to play on free instruments. These people live off the masses that dream of a hit song and in reality will never have one. Their fantasies are preyed upon/exploited. It is all business. Rape the market in as many ways as you can for as much as you can. The better you can disquise this raping the more money you make. The music industry has done a fantastic job at this with the millions of musicians who dream of fame someday.
I was courted by the president of BMI for several years. For signing with them, dropping spontobeat, allowing my songs to be edited/shaped by nashville ghost songwriters, only sing, have a band picked by a major label behind me, I was guaranteed a hit record and fame. It is that simple. All I had to do was abandon me and become a puppet on a string. This happens from pop to blues. The same thing happened when Robbie Robertson and Martin Scorcases courted me to play on the color of money movie soundtrack with clapton. So don't fret too much about what you do because it is basically out of your hands with making it and until you are willing to do whatever that small percentage of music people that run the industry wants of you, you will almost guaranteed be not making it and be supporting their livelihoods. On a positive note I plan on being the one that breaks this syndicate with SPONTOBEAT! Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
4,000+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jun 14, 2012 5:06 AM
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nacoran
5849 posts
Jun 14, 2012
1:54 PM
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Walter, then let's frame the question slightly differently. I know getting famous is tough. You have to play the game (although I think the internet is helping people become famous in new ways now). Let's say I want to play the local scene and I want to play to a specific age demographic, whoever is most likely to turn out for my shows. I really like playing all sorts of music, and I don't have a day job, so I need people to turn out for the show. What do I play? How do I right a song that will be a hit at shows?
I listen to a lot of local artists, and there are a couple things that make me notice a band. I'm not going to lie and say a cute girl up on stage doesn't get my attention, but that's useless to me since I'm not a cute girl. On the open mic scene at least, being approachable is important. Fans like to connect to the performer.
I personally liked catchy lyrics with some thought behind them. Often, in a noisy setting it was hard to hear the lyrics. Performers would rotate their set lists from week to week, but they'd bring fan favorites back more often. Sometimes it wasn't until the 3rd or 4th time I heard a song that it would really start to sink in.
I've got pretty modern tastes. I'll listen to rap if it's got good lyrics. I'll listen to techno if it's got a good melody and isn't JUST a drum beat. I'm still a traditionalist at heart though. I like guitar and vocal. I like slow, sad songs. They work well in a coffee house. There needs to be a line that keeps repeating in my head after the song is over.
My car stereo has been broken for years. I think I vaguely remember though that car radio listening really lead to me listening to a different style, more Radar Love or Nirvana than Ani Difranco.
Bars seemed to need more uptempo stuff too. Clubs probably even more-so.
So the question is, looking at the scene today, if you wanted to write a song that the powers that be will promote, what will you write? I'd probably prefer to be a hit on a college station rather than the club scene, but to the extent there is crossover...
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Nate
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waltertore
2341 posts
Jun 14, 2012
2:26 PM
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write songs that sound the same as whatever the bands that come through play that fill the place. Be an imitator of this and you will be successful on the local level if you have a musically competent sound. Look at classic rock bands. They get most people smiling and rocking to the songs they know from the kazillion plays they get on the radio. If you write songs that sound like what I just said your odds are a bit better to make a little money on the local level. The industry is still controlled by the big guns. Very few youtube sensations will fill madison square garden and many get no attention from record labels.
One of my autistic students loves tim mcgraw. She writes songs and poetry and I back her up musically. She is a savant in the areas of music, television and film. She did a cd of songs about tim. I used some of my still remaining music contacts to reach his manager. He had me send the cd right to him. Within a few days we recieved a signed copy of tim's latest cd with the inscription - Gwen I am your biggest fan! Tim McGraw". If I sent that cd in cold it would have gone in the garbage can. These music festivals like SXSW claim unknowns will be heard and discovered by industry giants. These poor bands pay big bucks to travel to austin and play for free. I use to run in the big gun circles and those people knew just who they were going to see beforehand and each of the bands they were seeing were ones they planned on signing or signed. Because they were in the audience it got lots of publicity for the public to see who is the next cd to buy. I say play your music the way you like and let it unfold. The odds are you will have a satifying life this way because trying to calculate msicial success is higher odds than winning the lottery. Right place, right time, same interests, willing to compromise to whatever for a hit song, are the things you will have to do and in reality it will more than likely never happen. Walter
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walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year.
" life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
4,000+ of my songs
continuous streaming - 200 most current songs
my videos
Last Edited by on Jun 14, 2012 2:34 PM
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nacoran
5853 posts
Jun 14, 2012
8:36 PM
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For the purposes of this thread I'm trying to focus more on the music end of it than the industry end of it. I have a wide range of stuff that I like to play. I'm really sort of interested in analyzing the actual music that makes it big. Like the article says, there has been a shift from major keys to minor keys and the beats per minute, on average have come way down. That's all the article analyzes though. I know the Music Genome Project has done a lot to try to figure out the common theme running through different types of music. That's sort of what I'm after here. What effects to use on the vocals and guitars, what sort of rhythms work well with what. It's not just about writing popular music, it's about being able to write popular music. It's just a tool I want to add to my toolbox. If I wanted to write Baroque classical I'd need to know what defines that genre (lots of ornamentation if I remember my music theory class from 20+ years ago...)
You imply that what gets popular is picked by the bigwigs in the industry, but they go to someone to write the cookie cutter songs, and those someones that write the cookie cutter songs use a formula, just like blues so often uses 12 bar. Soft verse, hard chorus is another formula that has been used in rock. I'm trying to drill down to find the formula. I don't like a lot of pop, but there are pop songs now and then that I do like a lot. What's different between them and songs I loathe? I don't know, but I'd like to figure it out.
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Nate
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jbone
961 posts
Jun 15, 2012
4:07 AM
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i know one of the first gigs i played with Bluesboy Jag we did mostly up tempo 50's blues. and we basically sucked people in the door. tempo and tone are 2 musical qualities that seem essential. choice of material may or may not matter if it's done with conviction. in other words you may be able to get away with mumbling into the mic if you do it with real feeling and conviction. i sing into my cm bullet through the silvertone 1482, it distorts a lot, but it also puts that tone out.
truthfully, a lot of songs on pop radio i've heard- and i'm talking since i was a teen- i have not understood most of the lyrics, they have been lost in the music. but it did not prevent me from buying the album, cassette, or cd.
i think a hit song must resonate a certain way in one's body and psyche. there is certain set of frequencies which the body and emotion responds to, and this will sell a song.
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