Anatomy of a (bad) pop song.
Back in the day, when I was merely a grasshopper taking songwriting classes at the Old Town School, The Master had an infamously tough assignment he'd give the class: write a bad song. It's a great exercise, forcing the songwriter to introspectively learn about their own songwriter compass by consciously choosing the opposite of their instinct towards what makes for a good songwriting decision. Let's not introduce the hook until the bridge this time, just for kicks. Of course, since the class famously had a "no rules" rule, you didn't know when someone played the next week whether they'd been writing a bad song or just a song. That there were plenty of purposely-bad songs that turned out unexpectedly-good was a strange and wonderful phenomenon to behold. Knowing that I've been trying to reproduce The Way The Story Goes more than A Moment Like This in my writing, I also knew that entering the AI Songwriting contest meant that I'd be doing that exercise once again.
Knowing that I'd be entering this contest against songwriters who (a) were going to take considerably more time crafting a perfect song, and (b) were more likely to be in their comfort zone writing a pop ballad, my intentions when I sequestered myself to write were more to exercise the songwriting muscle than to emerge a champion. Nonetheless, it was clear to me that I'd have to break out of my normal habit of writing very linear melody lines (i.e. with few big jumps between notes), for example the verse and chorus sections to Immigrant Blues, depicted below (ignore the note lengths, folks, this is just illustration):
Not a lot of peaks and valleys there - very Iowa-like. Let's contrast that with, oh, Norah Jones' Don't Know Why, which if I remember correctly goes more like this:
. More like Montana. Why is this good for pop and not so important for folk? Energy. Ever seen a cool, could-care-less performance on the AI finals? Nope. Is this the year for them to throw us a curveball? Something tells me nope again.
So I went into my songwriting with the intention of, first and foremost, writing a big chorus. That didn't mean I was going to mail in the opening or the music. Frankly, I find the opening line to be anything but disappointing - starting out on a challenging hypothetical isn't a bad way to go, hard-core songwriter-wise. But I did focus on getting peaks and valleys into the melody line. Here's what emerged:
It was most enlightening to see the waveform of the recording and how unusual it was compared to my typical song.
1. Hook first appears 6 seconds into the song (ok, you can't tell that from the waveform)
2. BIG chorus
3. Bridge? Contest-winning pop songs have no room for a bridge.
4. BIG chorus + gratuitous modulation + extra-gratuitous holding an extra-big last note = fighting chance in contest.
This, of course, is where it breaks down and I realize my fighting chance is a mere delusion:
5. That's the guitar track. And that is what it looks like when you only strum down. Very cool if you're my good (according to myspace) friend Rhett Miller and you're doing mini-windmills and making the girls swoon. Pretty cool if you're playing Killer Queen at an open mic. NOT cool if you're trying to win this contest.
6. That ain't Norah Jones singing.
Enjoy the new songs, folks. Something tells me they'll be on my next album, and not an American Idol winner's. Jeff Vezain, on the other hand, hit a home run with his entry and I won't be the slightest bit surprised if he wins.
