I’ve been watching the British pop top 40. I do this every now and then.

Thie week it is very depressing – everything’s even more formulaic than usual.

There are two songs in the whole of the top 40:

The Dance Track - this has a disco beat and a synth hook. There are lots of these. They’re all at the same tempo, follow the same pop song structure, use the same synth sound and 50% of them feature the egregious Will.i.am.

The Rap Ballad - this features a rapper, probably a bad rip off of Eminem boasting about himself and a chorus hook sung by some pop singer that the rapper has most probably never met.

In both, lyrical subject matter is shallow, pointless, sex obsessed, materialistic, probably misogynist, certainly banal.

There is a 70 % chance the song will include the chord progression Am F C G (in various keys).

I know pop has always been bad. I know this is music for kids and I shouldn’t expect too much sophistication. But does it have to be this bad and this boring?

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted around here for a while.

There are reasons for this.

Indiesongwriter.net is one of several projects I run – I also have my own solo music endeavours and a rather demanding day job as a music teacher.

Doing all of these different things is rather difficult. In fact it isn’t possible if I carry on these projects as I have been. So I’ve decided to simplify.

To that end I’m going to amalgamate this blog on songwriting with my other solo music blog. It will still be called ‘indiesongwriter.net’ but as well as covering the musical songwriting technique I think is relevent to indie songwriters, it will also include blog posts on my life as a solo musician.

That still fits with the brief, as I do after all try to practice what I preach when it comes to songwriting.

So the blog over at www.tomslatter.co.uk is going to be no more and all my blogging from now on will take place here.

The Brief

Indiesongwriter will contain posts relevent to songwriting as practiced by the independent musician.

This will include:

• Songwriting ideas
• Music theory
• Tales stories and musings on life as an independent musician and music teacher.

The Schedule

There will be roughly one post a week, sometimes 2. This will usually turn up over the weekend.

This will be interspersed with the occasional ebook, such as those already available. I’m currently working on one about how to write riffs, and am halfway through working on the second edition of ’10 Tips for Songwriters’.

So there you go, that’s what’s going on here.

Do I write songs to express myself or communicate?

As much as I think the nuts and bolts of how music works should be discussed, the experiences it provokes are not expression or communication from the composer, because if they were I’d be able to say something more profound about my music than ‘just listen to it, maybe you’ll get it.’

It’s often taken as a given that songwriters write songs to express themselves. ‘I write to express myself’ has become a cliché and as such the phrase is rarely examined for meaning.

There are several similar clichéd ideas – Music is communication, songwriters express themselves, put their hearts on their sleeves, use their songs to convey emotions, are moved by spiritual and artistic forces that aren’t susceptible to reason or thought.

‘Expressing myself’ surely means telling the listener what I am feeling. Communicating surely means attempt to convey thought feeling or idea as clearly as possible.

I’m not sure that’s what we do.

Like I have a Choice

Songwriting is compulsive. Since releasing my first solo album at the beginning of 2010 I’ve started to develop a little following – not enough of a fanbase to earn a living or even cover the costs of what I do to share my music – but enough that I know there are people who are going to listen to my music.

But even if they weren’t listening I’d still be writing. I’ve been doing it since I was about ten years old, it’s a part of who I am and what I do and I couldn’t image not doing it. Whether there is an audience to hear it or not my music would be made.

That doesn’t mean thought doesn’t go into it. I’ve put a lot of years into studying music, into listening and practicing and honing my craft. Music isn’t a theoretical paint by numbers exercise, but I’ve developed these skills so that when inspiration comes I’ve the toolkit to make full use of it. I can take those seeds of inspiration and grow them in the directions I want. Partly the composition process is conscious, partly it’s letting music happen and making sure you capture them properly.

Writing music is part rational, part non-rational.

Does songwriting have an emotional facet? Yes, I have a deep emotional connection with my songs – they stir feelings for me and I hope they will stir feelings in the audience.

Is that the same as expressing myself? Is that the same as communicating my feelings to you?

I don’t think so. I’m not trying to make you understand what I think or feel about something. If I wanted to communicate my ideas to you I’d write an essay (or at least type something rambling and ill-thought out like this). If I wanted to communicate how I feel – well I’m not sure that would be a worthwhile thing to do. You’re not a close friend or a family member and wearing my heart on my sleeve would be self indulgent, presumptious.

And anyway, wouldn’t that require that I still feel the same every time I perform a song? Performing is more like acting – a lie that hopefully invokes a feeling in the audience member.

All about the Listener

Which brings me to the person who actually should be feeling something in this. The songwriter should be concerned about you, the audience member. What are you feeling? Because my song is here to invoke an emotion in you. Perhaps an easily articulated emotion, joy or bittersweetness, but more likely that indefinable moment of art-time where you are swept up on a wave of feeling, carried by the song and then placed down again. And if anyone asks you how the song made you feel the best you can say is ‘just listen to it, maybe you’ll get it.’

Am I trying to express myself? The music doesn’t represent me – I’m not trying to say anything concrete or easily spoken about. I’m not trying to tell you how I feel, that’s none of your business any more than the feelings of an actor are your business. I’m not trying to communicate an intellectual idea either, music is singularly bad at doing that.

No, what I’m doing is.

Well.

Have a listen, hopefully you’ll get it.

I’ve seen more than one blog post that suggests Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ is good pop songwriting.

It isn’t and I’m sick of people saying it is. It’s an awful song, but what’s worse is it isn’t exceptionally bad. It’s averagely bad, because the average in pop song writing has been brought down to meet the level of crap that this represents.

For

Randy Lewis for example suggests that it’s good because it uses tried and tested harmonic material – It makes use of the I vi IV V progression which has been successful in countless of songs.

Jay Frank points out the ‘engaging’ intro, simple repetition and walking beat as evidence if not of quality, then at least of craftsmanship.

Yes, it uses simple harmony, it has a very standard pop song structure and even uses the ‘What do we do after the second chorus? No idea? Get some bloke to rap badly, that’ll do’ middle 8 solution.

I might, if pressed, even be able to admit that Jay Frank’s ‘future hit’ short intro, songs-for-the-marketplace ideas might be songwriting virtues (They aren’t, they’re a path to anodine bland songs of exactly this ilk).

Against

But this song is still garbage.

The lyrics are awful. You might as well sing the phone book or a shopping list. In fact doing so would be more interesting than this banal idiocy. I often say that songwriting isn’t lyric writing – people often interprete that to mean I think lyrics don’t matter. This isn’t the case, lyrics do matter (they’re just not the only thing that matters) and the lyrics to this song are awful.

The most vile crime of this song though, is one that is being repeated over and over again. Gaga, Bieber, Rihanna, Aguilera, Spears and before them legions of other pop acts have sung songs that commit the same crime.

No Suprises

They never suprise you! They never attempt to do anything out of the norm, to confound your expectations in a pleasing, musical, artistic way.

Gary Ewer recently wrote that there should be an 80-20 rule in songwriting. 80% of what you expect versus 20% of what you don’t.

The exact proportion is debatable and depends on the context of genre and audience expectations, but the point is spot on.

The amount that’s original and unexpected in ‘Friday’? 0.

The same could be said of everything in top 40 pop – that’s why sales for this have flatlined. As both Lefsetz and Godin have said recently, there is a dearth of quality.

Pop music needs quality if it is ever to be viable again. Friday is the nadir, or the beginning of the nadir. The death knell, the sound of a nail hammered into pop’s coffin.

In the first article in this series I argued that those who say you should write songs for the market are wrong. They’re wrong because writing for the market makes you think about what will sell rather than what will move the listener. They are also wrong because the very idea of a mass market for music is simply out of date.

In this article I’m going to argue that most songwriters aren’t motivated by the need to write mass market songs. Instead their writing to express themselves, and that means a wholly different relationship with the listener. I’m going to argue that a song isn’t a product, and the listener is not a customer.

Why should you write songs?

If you are not going to write for a market, what are you going to write for? There are all sorts of motivations, both good and bad. Some people write songs to express a religious or political opinion. Some try to change the world and others to attract members of the opposite sex. Whenever you ask songwriter’s their reasons for writing, ‘to meet the demands of the market’ is rarely at the top of their list.

My interest at indiesongwriter.net, and I assume yours as well, is good songwriting. If you’re motivation is ‘let’s write something that will sell’ I’d argue you’re less likely to write a good song than if you have a better motivation.

A while ago I asked readers what motivated them to write. Here are some responses:

Jeff Shattuck said:

I started as therapy for my brain injury, but continued because I simply felt compelled to. Now, my strongest motivation is simply that I enjoy it.
Sure, I would love to sell some songs someday, but that’s not why I do it.

Susan Wenger from Cinderbridge said:

I write songs to make sense out of things that have happened.

I write songs to make connections with other people who understand.

Kerri Arista said:

I write as a creative expression. I write to understand myself and the world better.

Rose said

Its creative, great to be able to make something that didn’t exist previously.

Artistic fulfilment

What about the songwriter who writes for self fulfiment, for an audience outside the mainstream or for any other reason?

There are entire communities on and offline that exist to encourage and promote songwriting that have nothing at all to do with the music market. Edwin Songsville says ‘songwriting is a nourishing activity in itself, regardless of the output’, and that certainly is the case if you take a look at the flourish songwriting communities on and off-line.

From FAWM (February Album Writing Month) and 50/90 (The challenge where songwriters try to write 50 songs in 90 days) to the twitter songwriting community attached to www.songwritinglab.com, the web is full of songwriters, very few of whom are interested in writing the next top 40 hit.

Off-line there are countless songwriting circles and the newly accessible recording technology has led to an explosion in home recording and DIY independent artists. Most of these songwriters would never think of selling their work, and those that do aren’t going for a homogenised mass market. The relationship these indie artists have with the audience is something quite different to the relationship the mass music market had.

Product or Artwork?

We all know how products are developed. You start off with an idea of what the customer wants, then you test that idea with market research. You make changes to that product based on the results of that market research – what colour should the toy be, what sizes of coffee will sell the most, what shape should the packaging be? The motivation is to come up with the product that sells the most.

This creates a certain relationship with the customer – they are there to be catered to, but also to be categorised. Mass markets ignore individuality in favour of wide stereotypes – hockey moms, mondeo man, yuppies, tweens. Once it has categorised the customer like this, it works to create products for them. Everything is homogenised, dehumanised.

Can songs be created this way? Absolutely. You could focus group a song – get a bunch of teenagers in to listen to a draft of your RnB song and ask them if the hook is catchy enough, the lyrics interesting, the video captivating. Is this a song you would bluetooth to your friends? Would you download this, share the video on facebook?

You could do it, and I’m sure this or something very much like it does happen. It’s certainly true that record companies have a long history of releasing ‘me too’ songs that model closely recent hits, and there are plenty of music business ‘gurus’ on the internet talking about the web 2.0 methods of market research.

A song can be written as a result of market research and developed like any other product, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with doing that if you want.

It’s just that most songwriters don’t want to do that at all.

Most songwriters would like to think of their work as art. Not great art necessarily, not the songwriting equivalent of Michaelangelo’s David, but art nonethless. The ideal of artistic creation is the exact opposite to product development. Art is created for it’s own sake and presented to the audience to be enjoyed or ignored. Real art has to be able to fail, in a way that would not be acceptable for a product.

But that model of song as artwork ignores the reality that artists have to make a living. How can the artwork be free to fail if it has to sell for the artist to live? The good musician, even if they are an artist, wants to entertain and will be surely composing with at least one ear on how the audience will enjoy the music.

Should the artist be motivated by the need to sell or the need to express themselves? Should they worry only about entertaining themselves and their audience, and not on turning a profit?

The fact is, the majority of songwriters like you or I would never dream of creating a song in the same way a toy company develops a doll or a food chain markets a new fizzy drink. As we’ve seen from the quotes above, songwriter’s just aren’t interested in that kind of relationship with their songs or their listeners. That approach might work if you’re worrying about the mass market, but the mass market is all but dead anyway, and we’re writing for a different listener.

Being motivated to create a product isn’t wrong, but the necessary business to customer relationship this creates doesn’t fit with music and most songwriters practice it.

A better relationship is one of arts patronage, which is a theme I want to explore in the next article.

What do you think?

Are we better off thinking of each listener as a mini-patron who might enjoy our work, and might patronise us by listening to a song, downloading an album, coming to a gig or even (gulp) buying a cd?