Game-Changer Music

There are moments in music history that can be described as game-changers. Whether that moment is a song (“Like a Rolling Stone”), an album (“Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”), or even an event (Woodstock Festival), most things that present as a game-changer in the arts happen almost by accident. No one can predict, it would seem, that something is going to change the world. It often grabs a place of importance in spite of itself.

It would be wonderful if you could be responsible for changing the direction of music, but it’s not something you can usually successfully aspire to. We travel forward in time with no clear view of the path ahead.

We ride backwards…

It’s as if we’re facing backwards in a car traveling down a highway. We can see clearly where we’ve been, and if we look to the sides we can see where we are. But the most we can hope for is to predict the future based on where we’ve been and where we are. No one, not even the most experienced or informed, can clearly predict the future of music.

That makes the quest to write “the next big thing” little more than a shot in the dark. And it’s even tougher than that: most game-changer songs or moments don’t immediately present themselves as game-changers. It takes:

  1. follow-up;
  2. discussion;
  3. time.

What it takes to write a game-changer

The follow-up simply means that a game-changer needs to be followed by other artists trying to do the same thing, or at least what they think is the same thing. A game-changer song or album needs to be followed by a large section of the music world trying to sound like that.


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Nothing is a game-changer if no-one is discussing it. In June of 1987, practically every major news organization started off their evening broadcasts with the anchor saying, “It was 20 years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play…” – such was the powerful game-changing influence of that 1967 album.

There was little to no media attention on the 20th anniversary of Englebert Humperdink’s “Release Me” – not a game-changer. That 1967 recording kept The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” (a game-changer) from the number 1 spot on the U.K. charts. So you can have a  ferociously successful song without it being a game-changer.

It takes time and history to be a game-changer. History has a way of filtering out garbage. What’s left after we forget the garbage is the good stuff, and taking the place of importance at the top is usually some sort of queen bee: the game-changer.

There needs to be something unexpected, as far as public perception is concerned, about a game-changer. Game-changers often appear out of thin air, with their powerful impact being a bit of a surprise. And that gets me to why I’ve been thinking about game-changer music at all these days.

Don’t be so fearful of bad opinions

It surprises me the number of young songwriters who – usually online – solicit the opinions of others regarding their songs. They covet the approval of others. It’s as if the final step in writing a song is the positive opinion of others.

I see the value of getting help when you’re stuck in the songwriting process. Having an experienced musician offer their thoughts on how you can get through a tricky spot is invaluable, and you may someday be that kind of help to someone else.

But writing a song, and then going on to an online forum and asking, “Hey, what do you think of my new song?” – I sometimes ponder the purpose of that question.

Is it really important to you? I only ask because if you find that you’d change a song based on someone’s negative reaction to it – I wonder why you’re writing songs at all?

Most game-changer music will come out of the dark like a shot. And at the moment it appears, it can often be beyond what has been previously written, and have an immediate, negative impact on the audience. Nik Cohn of the New York Times described The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” as “An unmitigated disaster.”

If you really want to write the next best thing, just keep writing and releasing tunes. Do the things that make writing great music more likely: listen to music daily and write music daily.

But nothing becomes a game-changer unless you’re courageously innovative, and get your music out there for others to listen to.

And though you shouldn’t totally ignore public opinion of your songs, you shouldn’t keep changing your musical direction based on an online opinion. Innovation is scary, and sometimes it’s lonely. But every once in a while, innovation will propel your song to the top of pubic consciousness, and that’s when it becomes a game-changer.


Gary EwerWritten by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.

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5 Comments

  1. What I took away from this article was that Gary was advising us to question our intentions when seeking the opinion of others. It’s so important for us, anywhere in life, to be aware of our motivations. So, Philip, getting the opinion of other musicians is great, so long as you don’t “need” it or treat it as gospel and change your music to suit their tastes at the expense of your own.

    I appreciated this part of the article so much. I had recently written something and performed it, and got positive feedback from everyone except someone whose musicianship I respected, who said nothing at all about it, which is worse than criticism.

    This article made me realize that I don’t as much as I thought that this person didn’t respond to my song. I write for me, and will continue to write. This will never be a paying job for me, I’m not trying to sell my music. I feel free!

  2. Gary, you have really hit the nail on the head.

    I am scared and lonely. I have indeed asked for opinions of my songs in public forums because I was looking for some positive reinforcement to encourage me to continue writing. The truth is that most of the feedback I’ve gotten (with a few notable exceptions) has been utterly useless. Yeah, I like hearing that someone listened and got something out of my music, that is extremely important to me, however, if I am looking for praise then I’m really just doing it for my ego.

    When a fellow serious musician chimes in and says, “your song might be better if you” (for example) “change the lyrics on the bridge to the words you originally used in the third verse” or (something like) “your verse rambles on a little too long there”, then I gain something I could never get on my own…objectivity.

    I can take or leave the advice that people give me (and there have been occasions where the feedback from others has improved the songs I’ve written) but most of all I need to use the information I get as inspiration to move forward, rather than quit working or change the direction of my creative flow. This craft is all about effective communication and I am unable to do that alone.

    Thanks for putting out some of the most helpful and well organized content on the subject of songwriting.

    • Hi Philip:

      I should say that I’m not against getting opinions about songs, I’m more talking about the people who see the soliciting of opinions as part of their songwriting process. John Lennon weighed in all the time on Paul McCartney’s music, and most of the time he was severely critical. But if Paul acquiesced every time John said what he hated about this or that song, close to half of The Beatles’ catalogue would either disappear or be something different.

      Every song can be “fixed” in some never-ending process of trying to improve it. There’s no right and no wrong in the sense that there is never a point that we listen to our music and say, “There – it’s perfect.” As with people, the warts, bumps, freckles and scars are all part of what makes a song unique. Because of that, all you can ever get from others is an opinion. It is hopefully an educated, well-meaning opinion, but we should always treat them as opinions. If you feel compelled to change a song based on someone else’s opinion, only do so because you can hear that the opinion improves your song and gets it closer to what you had in mind in the first place.

      -Gary

    • What I took away from this article was that Gary was advising us to question our intentions when seeking the opinion of others. It’s so important for us, anywhere in life, to be aware of our motivations. So, Philip, getting the opinion of other musicians is great, so long as you don’t “need” it or treat it as gospel and change your music to suit their tastes at the expense of your own.

      I appreciated this part of the article so much. I had recently written something and performed it, and got positive feedback from everyone except someone whose musicianship I respected, who said nothing at all about it, which is worse than criticism.

      This article made me realize that I don’t care as much as I thought that this person didn’t respond to my song. I write for me, and will continue to write. This will never be a paying job for me, I’m not trying to sell my music. I feel free!

      • Yes, that’s exactly what I was trying to say, Chris. Getting opinions when you need help with something is great, and I encourage it. We all need to help each other. But simply getting an opinion to make you feel more secure in what you’ve written… I don’t see the need for that. Everything you write will please some, and displease others. That’s life in the arts.

        -Gary

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