There is a theory that if you ask a crowd of people to estimate how many candies are in a jar, the average of all their guesses is likely to be closer to the correct answer than most people’s individual guess within that group. That theory has a name — the wisdom of the crowd — […]
Do you find that your songs aren’t really making a personal or emotional connection to your listeners? If that’s the case, take a look at the point of view of your lyric, and at least some (perhaps most) of the time it should be placing you as the centre of activity. In other words, writing […]
Believe it or not, the specific topic of a song isn’t all that crucial to its success. “Hotel California” is a hugely popular song from the 70s, and there were considerable debates at the time of its release as to what it was actually about. The confusion of listeners didn’t damage the listeners’ ability to […]
After all these years, love songs still work. You’d think songwriters would have run out of original things to say about the topic. If you expand the category a little more and consider the songs that are more generally about relationships, the majority of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 at any given time […]
For every song you love, you can probably name at least one aspect or element of that song that really clicks with you. In other words, even though all good songs are a partnership of good ideas, there are usually one or two that really stand out. It might be something basic, like the groove. […]
I read an interview with Paul McCartney once where he talked about the choice of words in “She Loves You.” In particular, he and Lennon considered it a bit risky to be singing a song about “he” and “you”, since most love songs put the singer front and centre. In other words, musical logic dictates […]
