Making Your Songs Immediately Appealing

What do you do to make sure your target audience feels compelled to keep listening to your music?

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The ease with which someone can remember a song is the most important part of that song’s commercial success. I say “commercial”, because there are many different levels and definitions for success in music. Some music is an acquired taste, not making a significant impact until the listening public has had the benefit of many listens, and help by others to understand what they’re hearing.

A commercial success (i.e., a hit song) usually requires the following:

1. Immediacy of appeal. It’s got to make a sudden impact as an attractive, and usually concise, work of art.
2. Polished musical arrangement. It needs to properly arranged, produced and recorded for a target audience, and it needs to be well performed.
3. Extensive distribution. The success of a song is meaningless, commercially speaking, if it’s not easy for listeners to stream or purchase the song.
4. One of many. A one-off success is good, no argument, but the success of future songs can be enhanced by the trust built up through past successes.

This blog has been mainly concerned about the first point: the immediacy of appeal. Immediacy of appeal is directly related to memorability. There’s a reason why hit songs are easy to remember, and it usually relates to the hook.

In addition to the hook, good songs typically have strong lyrics, and a good melody and harmonic background (in addition to the hook). How those various elements work together can all be summed up by the term “structure.” Songs with solid structure can even diminish the need for a strong, up-front hook.

In most cases, however, immediacy of appeal is directly related to the success of the hook. For every hit song, you can observe four stages on a timeline:

Stage 1: A short, catchy hook immediately grabs the attention of the listener.

Stage 2: The power of the hook (and then the strength of the song’s structure) compels the listener to keep returning to the song.

Stage 3: With each new listen, the listener feels more compelled to listen again, until the song naturally fades.

Stage 4: Whatever appreciation, or level of desire to re-listen, retained after the song fades, equals the longterm success of the song.

You can recognize those four stages with every song that makes it to any of the Billboard charts. Songs that make the biggest initial impact will be commercially successful, of course, but there’s no guarantee that songs that drive quickly to the top of the charts within a week or two will have longterm year-over-year success.

For example, the song “Convoy,” by Bill Fries (C.W. McCall) & Chip Davis, was a number 1 song on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Hot Country Singles charts in 1975. But you’ll never hear it played except as a novelty item on oldies stations. Once it faded, it faded hard.

“Philadelphia Freedom” (Elton John & Bernie Taupin), also a #1 from 1975, has much more staying power. While “Convoy” comes across as dated and quaint, perhaps a bit silly, “Philadelphia Freedom” has much more staying power due to its stronger lyrics and more sophisticated musical structure.

Both songs are “hooky”, but the excellence of the various musical elements made Stage 4 above much more significant for “Philadelphia Freedom”.

If you want your songs to have artistic and commercial success, you need to:

1. Give the audience something short and catchy to remember. They may not immediately remember your verse lyrics, however excellent they may be. But they will remember a strong chorus hook.
2. Strengthen the structure of the song. Support your lyrics with good melodies, and support your melodies with progressions that make good musical sense.
3. Get the advice of professional producers and other good industry personnel. It’s irrelevant how good a song is if it’s badly recorded and/or badly performed.

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Written by Gary Ewer. Follow on Twitter. “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle looks at songwriting from every angle, and has been used by thousands of songwriters. How to use chords, write melodies, and craft winning lyrics.  (And you’ll receive a FREE copy of “From Amateur to Ace: Writing Songs Like a Pro.“)