I’ve been reading a book I received as a Christmas gift: “Let’s Do It – The Birth of Pop”, written by Bob Stanley, a writer, musician, DJ and film producer, and I’m really enjoying it.
In the book’s introduction, Stanley reminds us that what we call ‘pop music’ has more to do with sales than anything else. Mass printing of sheet music in the 1800s, followed by mass recording in the early 1900s, were responsible for starting the pop music industry; without sheet music and recordings to sell, there would have been little opportunity for a song to become a hit in the way we’ve come to use the word ‘hit’.
“Hooks and Riffs: How They Grab Attention, Make Songs Memorable, and Build Your Fan Base” shows you how a good hook can make the difference between songwriting success and failure. With great examples from pop music history.
Of course, pop music needs to be “good” if it’s going to sell. Over time we’ve become aware that one song being good doesn’t mean that other songs must be not good. It’s possible for many songs, though completely different, to all be good, and the industry mightily depends on that truth.
This brings us to the tricky issue: what makes a song good?
It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about music that was written centuries ago, or songs that are being written right now as you read this, good has always been a necessity. But if we think about Bob Stanley’s reminder that pop music needs sales, it more specifically was “…music that was intended to be heard by the largest possible audience.” (p. xi)
When J.S. Bach composed his greatest works, the size of the audience enjoying that music wasn’t in any meaningful way a part of what made it good. Bach would no doubt be amazed that people today are still not just listening to his music, but considering it some of the greatest music ever written. The fact that his compositions weren’t immediate “hits”, but rather mostly heard only in his own small church, is irrelevant to their excellence.
But pop songs — the kind of songs that you’re writing if you’re writing pop, rock, country, metal, reggae, etc.– do have this extra responsibility of being immediately appealing. It’s not enough to say, “Someday people will like my songs.” That may be true, but you’re missing part of what makes music successful: sales.
And of course, in today’s lingo, the word “sales” is more and more being replaced by the word “streams”, or “clicks” or “plays.” But the sentiment is the same, and it’s undeniable: the success of a pop song is measured by how many sales, streams, clicks or plays it’s getting.
You may be writing songs that are good, but simply not getting those clicks. And true enough, it may be the case that in fifty years, the world will discover that your songs are far better than they considered them to be fifty years earlier.
But there is an immediacy that’s part of the success of pop music. And it’s so common that it’s easy to say: if your songs are getting ignored by others despite your good efforts to get them out there for others to listen to, you need to take a closer look at what might make them more appealing.
“Good” (or “great”) in songwriting is complex, but most of the time it means:
- Your song has something catchy (a “hook”) that people want to hum to themselves long after the song is finished.
- Your song keeps pulling listeners back for another listen.
- Your song contains a musical energy that ebbs and flows several times throughout the length of the song.
- Your song’s lyrics are universal, and touch the emotional heart of the people listening to it.
- The recorded performance of your song is on some level exciting and engaging.
How you achieve this depends on the genre and on your own personal style, both writing and performing. So thankfully, what makes a song good is different for every song, and it’s true to say that though “good” may be hard to define, you know it when you hear it.
As you make your way through 2024, and you work on improving your songwriting and polishing your craft, try using those five observations listed above as a kind of troubleshooting list to see if your songs have the ability to create or build your fan base.
Those five points won’t necessarily show you how to fix what you’ve written, but should give you a good idea of where improvements can be made.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter
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