It’s been a while since I did one of these ‘Stealing ideas’ posts, so let’s correct that and get back to stealing songwriting ideas….
The Police – Message in a Bottle
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJJgM23gLh8]
The Police wrote a hell of a lot of catchy pop songs, and whether this is the best or not (I certainly like it) there’s a lot of stuff to steal here.
1. The Groove
One of the wonderful things about London is the cultural mix: countless nationalities have made a home here over the years. The clear reggae influence in the Police’s music is no accident. It probably results from the mixing of Jamaican culture with white English in 1970′s London.
That mixture of straight rock with hints of reggae isn’t unique to the Police, and the mixing of different grooves can be a very effective way of livening up your own song. Why not think about what drum beat you’re going to use before you start writing?
2. Chord Shapes
-|——————————–|
-|——————————–|
-|—–8——-4——-6———-|
-|—6——-2——-4———6/7|
-|-4——0——-2———-4—-|
-|————————2——-|
The tab above is the main verse riff. Andy Summers uses 9th chords in several songs, and here we have the simplest way of dong it: root, fifth, ninth and nothing else (except the final note, which puts in the 3rd of the F sharp minor chord)
There are two ideas to steal: the chord voicing, and the idea of using the same chord voicing/shape in different positions to create a progression.
3. The Structure
This song is very simple, and makes use of a standard verse, pre-chorus, chorus structure (the post I’ve linked to here expresses confusion over the lyrics of ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’, a song that I thought had a very clear meaning…).
The Police have cleverly decided to repeat a lot of things and get a lot out of a little. That’s definitely an idea worth stealing.
There’s also a nice coda: the verse riff with the line ‘sending out an SOS,’. It’s a mixture of old and new ideas. Ending your song with something the listener hasn’t heard before can be very effective, particularly if it isn’t completely new material.
In Summary
There’s a lot that could said about The Police, who managed to have hits with catchy but deceptively sophisticated songs. It’s always useful to work out what’s going on in your favourite Sting or Police songs.
And stealing the ideas is a good idea too.
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Great article. I love when songwriting bloggers break down songs like this. And lest anyone think it is bad form to steal ideas, I wrote an article last year about this very topic:
Good artists copy, great artists steal. So do songwriters.
Hi!
I’ve heard a lot of songwriters say “take a song and change it a bit” to make it your own but I think that would be pretty cheeky of me, don’t think I could pull that off, but I often take one little nuance of a song and build a whole new one around it. And when I point out to friends that’s what I did, they usually don’t even recognize the lifted bit. So that’s good.
Luckily we can steal as many chord progressions, rhythms and basic bass lines as we want so writing a melody on top becomes pretty fun.
I do like The Police a lot, been a while since I listened to a whole one of their CDs.
“I hope that someone gets my… I hope that someone gets my..” Catchy indeed.
Write on!
Jannie
You can steal any idea you want in music, there’s no copyright on ideas, just riffs, melodies, hooks and lyrics. I’d never say ‘steal this melody’, but I would say ‘steal this idea’.
In fact, I’d be suprised if you could get anyway without stealing ideas. Complete originality is almost impossible, and never popular. People prefer gradual, subtle novelties, not revolutions.