About Irene

 

Many of the posts you'll see here have been in existence on my main website irenejackson.com since the late 1990's and early 2000's! For years many have perused my many articles and tips on the art and craft of songwriting, and although some of the info is now obsolete, there are still some good tips.

I am in the process of moving all of my songwriting tip posts here...it's the 3rd time I've had to move them all...all 160+ of them!

I no longer write songs myself, but I hope those of you who do will get something out of being here.  

And the articles will remain here for as long as I am...

IJ

Songs I Like - Constant Craving

Was it really 1992 when Constant Craving by k.d. Lang was released? That's more than 30 years ago! And that's also a sign that you really love a song when it sticks with you (or, in this case, me) for so long.

For many years brain researchers have studied the phenomenon of music and its effects on the brain. For some people, it can induce more powerful memories than taste or smell, which is saying a lot!

In my opinion, the lyrics for Constant Craving must have been particularly personal:

Even through the darkest phase
Be it thick or thin
Always someone marches brave
Here beneath my skin

I see this as the singer recognizing her own strength in the toughest of times. k.d. lang likely had to struggle a lot with herself growing up, as so many of us do for different reasons.

She was born in Alberta, Canada and came bursting onto the music scene as a young country singer in the 80's. Her first band was The Reclines and my initial memory is a vision of her in a cowgirl outfit, dancing wildly across the stage. The media referred to her as a Canadian Cowpunk. And...she had -- has -- a powerful voice.

But let's get back to the song. It was co-written with Ben Mink, another Canadian songwriter and producer. What gets to me in this song is the music...the chord progression, especially in the verses, married to the vocal melody, is magic. There is so much musical yearning and desire between the notes. Definitely a constant craving.

It is in the key of Fm, but I play it on my guitar in Em with a capo on the 1st fret. The bass is what gives some of the chords an unusual feel...playing a C or a G bass note over a D chord, for instance.

The background harmonies in the production of the song are also powerful. I can recognize lang's voice there in some of them, but I'm not sure if they are all her.

There must have been something magical about that song, because Mick Jagger and Keith Richards actually gave credit to k.d. lang and Ben Mink on the Rolling Stones song "Anybody Seen My Baby". Why? Because the three words "seen my baby" in the Stones' song are exactly the same notes as "constant craving". When it was pointed out, the Stones decided to share the rights instead of making a fuss.

What a breath of fresh air compared to so many other musical/lyrical rip offs and lawsuits!

Constant Craving has always been. On my playlist, that is. Here is the song followed by the lyrics:

Constant Craving

Even through the darkest phase
Be it thick or thin
Always someone marches brave
Here beneath my skin

And constant craving
Has always been

Maybe a great magnet pulls
All souls towards truth
Or maybe it is life itself
Feeds wisdom
To its youth

Constant craving
Has always been

Craving
Ah-ha
Constant craving
Has always been
Has always been

Constant craving
Has always been
Constant craving
Has always been

Craving
Ah-ha
Constant craving
Has always been
Has always been
Has always been
Has always been
Has always been
Has always been

A Song Is Just A Shirt

I started on the web in 1996, when websites consisted pretty much of only words on a grey background and there was no such thing as high speed internet, just dial-up connections that loaded pages literally at a snail's pace.

There were very few, if any, message boards back then. Instead, we had newsgroups that you subscribed to through your email software. I joined a group called rec.music.makers.songwriting in the hopes of connecting with other songwriters and maybe even exposing some of my own material. People would post things, just like on message boards, and others would respond. It wasn't as nasty as it is now on places like Twitter, most responses were cordial.

One day, however, someone was asking about song form; should all songs have choruses, verses, bridges? Something to that effect. There were a bunch of opinions. I posted mine. I'm going from memory here, but essentially what I said is that a song can be anything you like, but it still has to have some kind of understandable form if you want someone else to listen to it or buy it. I said that a shirt still has to have a place to put your arms and your head and the rest of you, otherwise, it isn't really a shirt. Someone responded pretty harshly, something I won't repeat here. I'd never experienced anything like it before. It is still nothing like the abuse you often see on social media these days, but it stung.

But the reason I brought this up is because I know there are songwriters out there who push the boundaries and try to do something different, and I admire that. However, I still believe most of us have to make sure our songs like shirts; there has to be some kind of identifiable form. Otherwise, nobody is going to buy, or even like, the shirt. You can try to find a way to make a really unique shirt. There are many, many styles and colours, sizes and shapes of shirts to experiment with. But it still has to work as a shirt.

What do you think?

IJ

Songs Of Love Foundation

I received this email from Anis A., the Director of Music and Special Projects for the Songs of Love Foundation:

 

"The Songs of Love Foundation is a national nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that creates free, personalized, original songs to uplift children and teens currently facing tough medical, physical or emotional challenges. Each CD is professionally produced with lyrics containing the child's name and references to all of his or her favorite activities, things, people, and pets. Songs are written and performed in any language in the musical style that the child likes best (pop, R&B, rap, rock, alternative, etc.), by a variety of talented professionals.

 

"Songwriters who have written for us have going to signing record deals and even winning a Grammy. Jason Mraz is just one of them. Not to mention Michael Bolton, David Lee Roth, Itaal Shur and many more.

"We are looking for songwriters that can help us, by giving back with the talents that they were given, to some really deserving kids and teens. If a songwriter feels they can create a one-of-a-kind song for a child/teen then we would greatly appreciate their talents."

 

If you would like to contribute to the good works of this organization, here is some contact info:

 

Email:

SONGWRITER@songsoflove.org
Anis@songsoflove.org
(Phone)718-441-4588 800-960-7664
(Fax)718-441-7372

Website: www.songsoflove.org
FB: facebook.com/songsoflove
TWTR: twitter.com/songsoflove
Instagram: instagram.com/songsoflovefdn
YouTube: youtube.com/songsoflovefdn

22 Writers for 1 Song?!?

The official song of the 2015 Pan Am Games, "Together We Are One" sung by Serena Ryder, apparently has 22 writers to its credit.

I can hear the jokes now: "Which word did you write?"

Seriously, this is the music biz at its worst.  Everybody wants a piece of the action so everyone has to have their name on the credits, even if you were just sitting in the room. It's greedy and ridiculous. And the songwriter who did the most work or who came up with the idea (we'll likely never know who that was), is pretty much ripped off because he/she has to share whatever income the song generates, along with getting lost in credits crowded by 21 other people.

The song itself is your standard pop arena anthem with nothing special to it.  Other than the fact there are 22 writer credits.

Honestly.

IJ

Songland Could Be Good If...

If you haven't yet heard about it, Adam Levine, Dave Stewart and the executive producer of The Voice, Audrey Morrissey, will be teaming up to produce a new series called Songland.

The whole idea behind Songland is that songwriters will get a chance to pitch their songs to a panel, very much like vocalists vying for a deal on The Voice, and the winner will, I'm guessing, get their song recorded by a big name artist.

It Ain't Right

One of my favourite songs a couple of years back was the song "Happy" by Pharrell Williams. I was grieving the death of my father who died at the age of 91 of Alzheimer's just before than and that song just perked me up out of my gloom.  I even wrote another post about it.  Well, I didn't write much, I just wanted to feature it.

It's no surprise that the song was an enormous hit.

What IS a surprise is an article I read just recently about the income it generated from Pandora.  There were 43 million streams.  And what did it earn?  A measly $2700.  Yes, to some of you $2700 sounds like a lot of money.  But 43 million streams?

This is why I removed my music from all of the music streaming services more than a year ago. Granted, I wouldn't have expected to have 43 million streams, but I did expect to be fairly compensated for the streams I DID have, and that wasn't going to happen any time soon.

Then I did a little research just for my own satisfaction.  It costs $4.99 a year to join Pandora at the time of this writing.  Let's just round that up to $5.  A website I stumbled across listed 37 "interesting" Pandora statistics, and they listed about 76.5 million active Pandora listeners.  That comes to about $382.5 million bucks.  But wait.  There are actually 250 million subscribers, so Pandora is making $1.25 BILLION a year.

So who is getting all that money?

There have been countless other articles lately bemoaning music streaming services, so I'm not going to tell you anything new here.  Those of us who grew up on radio got used to the idea of it being "free".  Well, it wasn't really free, it was just paid for by somebody else.  Advertisers paid radio stations to run their ads, and radio stations paid PRO's (performer rights organizations) to play their artists' songs.  Why shouldn't music streaming services pay the same per play?  I don't understand why fair pay was not implemented at the very beginning.

The fact is that it is really difficult to explain to non-musicians that artists and bands need to be fairly compensated for their work.  All music lovers want is free music.

But it is not hard to explain to a music streaming service that they should be giving a much larger slice of the pie to the people who created their content.  And no, that doesn't mean charging listeners more.  It simply means not giving so much to the fat, belching CEO's who could care less about the music.

Okay, rant over.

IJ

Plagiarism: What's Yours Ain't Mine

Bob Dylan

I remember the first song I plagiarized.  It was "Leaving On A Jet Plane" by John Denver.  I was probably only about 12 years old at the time because I had likely heard the song on the radio sometime in 1969 when it was first released.  I didn't know the word "plagiarism" then, let alone understand the concept of it.

I was in the middle of writing a song called "Home" (sorry, I took that title before you, Edward Sharpe and Phillip Phillips!).  Instinctively I came up with a little instrumental bridge, but then I decided to hum over top of it.  Part of the melody I was humming was the first two lines of the chorus of Leaving On A Jet Plane.  I remember the subtle feeling that the melody wasn't mine, but it didn't bother me too much at the time!

Every songwriter has occasionally come to the point in the writing of a song, or after finishing it, when they've wondered if it isn't something they've heard before.  I remember a few times later on in my songwriting life, realizing that I had unknowingly plagiarized something and being utterly disappointed in myself.  Damn!  And I really liked that one too!

It might help to know that even the songwriting giants make the mistake of accidentally plagiarizing from time to time.  One famous case was the Rolling Stones' song "Anybody Seen My Baby?", in which the chorus melody was pretty much exactly the same as k.d. lang's "Constant Craving".  Mick Jagger and Keith Richards claimed they had never heard the song, and that might be true. But practically speaking, they would have only had to be somewhere where that song was playing to subliminally pick it up.  You've all experienced how a melody can appear in your head, even when you don't recognize the song or where it came from.  Was it playing in the coffee shop when you were ordering your latte?

The result was that Jagger and Richards included k.d. land and her songwriting partner Ben Mink as co-writers on their song.  That way, any royalties earned would be split between all of them.  A nice, simple solution.  But it's not always so nice.

The case of Marvin Gaye's family vs. Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke lead all the way to court.  I wrote about this in an earlier blog. When Thicke and Williams were writing "Blurred Lines", they were deliberately trying to come up with something that sounded the same as Gaye's 1977 song "Got To Give It Up".  Well, it sounded SO much the same that they lost the subsequent lawsuit filed by Gaye's family.  Be careful what you wish for.

Bob Dylan was once called out by Joni Mitchell for being a plagiarist because of Bob's habit of "borrowing" from earlier folk songwriters and poets to craft his own songs.  There's a good article all about that here. He had no shame, however. That's Bob for ya. Actually, folk music songwriters young and old did a lot of plagiarizing, except the word used was "pastiche".  In the dictionary, pastiche is defined in one way as: "a piece of writing, music, etc., that is made up of selections from different works".  That's the way Bob thought of it I guess.

Many of you remember the art of "sampling", where a small section of a well-known recording was actually used in a newer recording.  In the beginning, the original artists were not paid any royalties for that little snippet, but eventually the laws changed and they were compensated.  Sampling didn't continue on very much after that, needless to say!

The truth is that when first we start writing songs we tend to repeat pretty much everything we've ever heard before.  Our lyrics can sound cheesy and boring, our melodies uninspired, all because we're simply regurgitating our past playlists and nothing is new.  How aware we are of that depends on the person.  Many realize when their songs sound dull and boring, but they often don't know why.  Plagiarism, then, is as natural as speaking your first words when you were an infant.  You repeat what you hear, and what's the harm in that?  It only gets sticky when the money starts rolling in.

My little song "Home" never made it any further than an old cassette tape, complete with the rip off section of Leaving On A Jet Plane.  I'll file that under "pastiche" :-).

IJ

Production Over Songwriting?

The question today is:  Has production become more important than songwriting in today's music?  It's not a new question, but it's important to revisit from time to time. I actually saw a discussion of this on Reddit and it got me to thinking about it again.

Let's first separate production from arrangement.  Arrangement involves the musical part of the song;  who plays what where and for how long, whereas the production is the more technical aspect;  volume, effects, mastering and everything in between.

Five Reasons Why You Can't Finish That Song

The hardest part about writing a song is finishing it.  Wouldn't it be nice if they all just flowed out of us in one, sweet sitting with no editing necessary?  More likely is the fact that we'll have to work at it to get it done.  When you find yourself struggling to finish a song, consider these five points:

Songs I Like - Under The Sea

Sometime in late December last year my family and I went to see the movie "Saving Mr. Banks" which was basically the true story of how the movie Mary Poppins came to be.  The most memorable scenes for me were when the two songwriters would come up with these brilliant songs for the movie and performed them for author P.L. Travers, the writer of Mary Poppins.  Travers was a reluctant (that's an understatement) participant in the whole process, with Walt Disney actually having spent 20 years trying to convince her to let him do the movie around her book.  The songs were an integral part of their attempt to persuade her, and she was a tough customer!

Disney movies have always had wonderful songwriting, right out of the old world of the Brill Building in New York where songwriters would go to work every day doing nothing more than write and compose.  And even if most of the time these songs were directed more at children, there is nothing "dumbed down" about them.  A great example of this is the song "Under The Sea" from the animated Disney movie "The Little Mermaid".  "De seaweed is always greener in somebody else's lake."

This song is a wonderful study in creative lyric writing.  For me, the bridge is especially brilliant;  imagine trying to rhyme all kinds of sea creatures with instruments and creating a whole band out of it!  "What do they got, a lot of sand? We got a great crustacean band!"  It's not often you see the word crustacean in a kid's song.  That's what is also great about this song, as I mentioned before, it doesn't talk down to kids.

Musically, the whole Caribbean feel is perfect.  The character Sebastian has a Jamaican accent, and the song's main musical phrase is all steel drums.   It's in the key of C with a pretty straight-forward chord progression, and in the last chorus, it modulates up for two lines, resolving back down to the original key in a splash (pun intended) of brilliance.

If you haven't heard it, or can't remember the last time you did, just listen again and enjoy (lyrics below). ~ IJ

The seaweed is always greener in somebody else's lake 
You dream about going up there 
But that is a big mistake 
Just look at the world around you 
Right here on the ocean floor 
Such wonderful things surround you 
What more is you lookin' for? 

1st CHORUS:
Under the sea, under the sea 
Darling it's better down where it's wetter take it from me 
Up on the shore they work all day 
Out in the sun they slave away 
While we devotin' full time to floatin' under the sea 

Down here all the fish is happy 
As off through the waves they roll 
The fish on the land ain't happy 
They sad 'cause they in their bowl 
But fish in the bowl is lucky 
They in for a worser fate 
One day when the boss get hungry 
Guess who's gon' be on the plate 

2nd CHORUS:
Under the sea, under the sea 
Nobody beat us fry us and eat us in fricassee 
We what the land folks loves to cook 
Under the sea we off the hook 
We got no troubles, life is the bubbles, under the sea under the sea 
Since life is sweet here we got the beat here naturally 
Even the sturgeon an' the ray 
They get the urge 'n' start to play 
We got the spirit, you got to hear it, under the sea 

BRIDGE:
The newt play the flute, the carp play the harp 
The plaice play the bass and they soundin' sharp 
The bass play the brass, the chub play the tub 
The fluke is the duke of soul (Yeah) 
The ray he can play the lings on the strings 
The trout rockin' out, the blackfish she sings 
The smelt and the sprat they know where it's at 
An' oh that blowfish blow 

LAST CHORUS:
Under the sea, under the sea 
When the sardine begin the beguine 
It's music to me 
What do they got? A lot of sand 
We got a hot crustacean band 
Each little clam here know how to jam here under the sea 
Each little slug here cuttin' a rug here under the sea 
Each little snail here know how to wail here 
That's why it's hotter under the water 
Ya we in luck here down in the muck here 
Under the sea!

Songwriting Topics

 I have written about this before, but thought I would do so again after reading another songwriting blog that suggested what the five "most successful" songwriting topics are.  They were listed as "love, country, religion, nature, sports".  I want to take each of those topics and discuss them a little further.  These are my opinions, of course, you might want to argue with me in the comments section below :-).

First of all, I'm assuming that the writer is talking about "success" in some sort of commercial way, or least in terms of popularity on YouTube or other digital means. Success can be a pretty relative thing, but I'll go by that assumption.

I can certainly agree with "love" being a successful topic.  I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I guessed that probably 75% of the songs you hear on the radio are about some aspect of love;  new love, lost love, jealous love, old love...the list goes on and on. You can't go wrong using love as your songwriting topic.

The second, country, was actually described as "about the country", basically describing songs about patriotism. I don't think you'll find too many songs on YouTube or on the Billboard Top 100 on a REGULAR basis, that are patriotic.  So I would broaden that topic to "places".  Places can be anything from a city (there have been lots of famous and successful songs over the years about cities!), to a spot where you used to meet someone (okay,  that's bordering on a love song, I know), to a neighbourhood you grew up in, to your room or even a job place.  Patriotism might feel good to you, but it can often become cheesy, so be careful with that topic on its own.

The next topic was described as religion and religion is a subject that is rather audience specific.  For instance, there are Christian songwriting websites and message boards out there, so I am certainly aware that there are songwriters who write solely in that genre, and it is indeed a genre.  Within the Christian community there are radio stations with hit songs and big name artists.  I do remember a time when gospel songs were occasionally on the playlists of mainstream radio, but that doesn't happen any more.  Country radio often has its share of songs with religious overtones, so a person might have some success with a country audience.  So I'm on the fence as to whether this topic can be potentially successful outside of its specific audience.

Nature is the next topic.  Oddly enough, the first song that comes to mind is an old one written by Eddie Rabbit and performed by Elvis Presley.  I don't know why, but "Kentucky Rain" just popped into my head!  It's really not about rain, though, or Kentucky.  It's an excellent title, but it is...guess what?  A love song!  Nature in and of itself seems a rather benign topic.  Another one that comes to mind (sorry, these are all old!) is "Rocky Mountain High" by John Denver.  It takes place in the Rocky Mountains, but it is really a coming-of-age song.  So I think that nature is probably used more as a metaphor for something else, rather than a topic in and of itself.

Here are the most recent (as of 8/20/14) Billboard  top 5 hot pop songs and their topics:

• Rude! by Magic - love song about a guy asking a girl's father for his daughter's hand in marriage
• Stay With Me by Sam Smith - love song
• Am I Wrong? by Nico and Vinz - about trying to stand up for what's right, a philosophical song
• Latch by Disclosure - love song
• Boom Clap by Charli XCX - love song

And the hot rock top 5 songs:

• A Sky Full of Stars by Coldplay - love song
• Habits (Stay High) by Tove Lo - love song
• Pompeii by Bastille - believe it or not, a song about Pompeii.  Imagine that!  You could put this under my category of "place"
• Come With Me Now by Kongos - a song about overcoming obstacles
• Ain't It Fun by Paramore - a "you're a jerk" song

The hot country top 5 songs:

• Burnin' It Down by Jason Aldean - love song
• Dirt by Florida Georgia Line - well, it's about dirt, but as a metaphor for "this is where I grew up and want to come back, get married and build a house" .  I like the lyrics. This fits in with my idea of "place" as a topic.  It's a bit of a stretch calling it a "nature" song.
• American Kids by Kenny Chesney - now this one definitely has religious references and patriotism like "We were Jesus-save-me, blue-jean-baby, born in the USA", but it's mostly about the past and growing up.
• Drunk On A Plane by Dierks Bentley - a breaking-up type love song
• Bartender by Lady Antebellum - a "pour me a drink so I can forget him" love song

Okay, so let's compare with the original list of five topics.  Out of the three genres with fifteen songs in total, I'll see which topics are included:

1. Country (patriotism) - 1 (well it wasn't the actual topic, but because it was referenced to, I included it.
2. Religion - 1 (I counted that too, in the same song)
3. Nature - 0
4. Sports - 0
5. Love - 9!
6. Other - 6

So what do we learn from this?  First my statistics were off a little.  I said that 75% of the songs out there are love songs.  Nine out of fifteen songs makes it closer to 60%.  But you're pretty safe writing a love song.  Religion, country, nature and sports, not so much.  And, there are a lot of other topics to write about...even Pompeii!  So push the envelope, be imaginative, write about what you know (or make it up!) and don't restrict yourself.  Your idea might be better than any other song idea on the charts!

IJ

 

Be Careful What You Read

Linda Perry

Here are a bunch of shocking headlines I grabbed lately from various web 'sources', emphasis is mine:

• • Beyonce's Songwriting Abilities Clowned By Songwriter Linda Perry
  • Linda Perry SLAMS Beyoncé For Taking Credit When She Shouldn't! - Perez Hilton
  • Shots Fired? Linda Perry Takes Aim At Beyonce's Songwriting - Lipstickally.com
  • Beyonce's Songwriting Credits are Questioned by Linda Perry But Do Fans Really Care? - Bustle
  • Beyonce Must Prove Herself As A Songwriter - spyghana.com
  • Linda Perry Calls Out Beyonce's “Songwriting” Skills - D-listed

...and most shocking of all...

• Linda Perry Drags Illiterate Porn Star Beyonce For Her Bullshit - arcadey.net

You can check the sources yourself if you want to, which is why I included them. And how did it all start? Well, songwriter Linda Perry, who has written for Christina Aguilera, Pink, Ariana Grande, Celine Dion, Alicia Keys and others, did a recent Reddit question-and-answer session, and one of the questions posed to her was this:

Linda, how do you feel about Beyonce changing one word on a song and getting writing credit. Does that bother you as a songwriter?

It's a fair question because songwriting credit is certainly a revenue source that artists (and their managers and record labels) have started to take more advantage of in the past few years.  Change a word here or there and ask for writing credits so you can get a bigger piece of the pie.

Let's look at that idea for a minute though.  If you had someone the caliber of Beyonce wanting to record your song and potentially making a lot of moola, what would you do?  I'm thinking a lot of us would day "sure, go ahead, whatever you want!" with great enthusiasm and flashing dollar signs in our eyes.  I'm also thinking that big name artists like Beyonce know very well that if one songwriter won't do it, another will.

From the headlines above, however, you'd think that Linda Perry was a self-righteous, nasty-mouthed, ungrateful be-atch.  This is the inter-web folks (yes, I know it's not called that) and you need to remember that every entertainment-related website is continuously looking for new ways to scream for attention, so I wanted to show you Linda's actual answer (which others did too, but almost as an afterthought, hoping maybe you'd click on an ad or two in the meantime):

“Well hahaha um that's not songwriting but some of these artists believe if it wasn't for them your song would never get out there so they take a cut just because they are who they are. but everyone knows the real truth even Beyonce. She is talented but in a completely different way.”

Utterly blasphemous, no?  No.  Just an honest response to an honest question.  I don't love Beyonce, and neither do I hate her.  Sometimes it's just the web I hate.

IJ

Ringo's Stars

I had the privilege of seeing Ringo Starr and his All Star Band this past Tuesday at the Hard Rock Theatre in Coquitlam BC. Some of you may have already seen one version or another of this tour over the past 20 years or so since Ringo has been doing this.

The idea behind the All Star Band is that Ringo invites other artists/musicians/songwriters to join him and it literally becomes a kind of songwriter/performer-in-the-round event, with each taking turns to do a song they're famous for and the rest of the group being "the band".  Ringo himself didn't have a lot of solo hits compared to his band mates John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, so what he has done instead is brilliant.

The All Star incarnation that I saw the other night consisted of Steve Lukather from Toto on vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, Gregg Rolie from Santana and Journey on vocals, organ, keyboards, Todd Rundgren who was a successful solo artist along with being in other bands, on vocals, lead and rhythm guitar,  and Richard Page  from the 80's band Mr. Mister on vocals and bass guitar.  Warren Ham provided vocals, saxophone, percussion and keyboards, and Gregg Bissonette was on drums, percussion, and added some backing vocals.

Aside from Ringo's hits like Yellow Submarine, Photograph and It Don't Come Easy, there were great songs like Africa, I Saw The Light, Bang The Drum All Day, Rosanna, Evil Ways, Black Magic Woman, Broken Wings and Kyrie, among others.

It was such a great throwback to the 70's!  What it reminded me of was just how much I was influenced by songs, not only artists.  I've mentioned many times the artists that have impacted my own songwriting like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell.  But the fact is that individual songs can do that too.  What I appreciated most about my teenage years was the fact that you could hear all kinds of music on the same radio station, not just one genre. You were just as likely to hear, for instance, a gospel song from "Hair" as you were rock or country or pop ballads.  So it seems to me the emphasis in those days was on the songs first, artists second.

In the late 70's (and according to one article I read, because of Peter Frampton's enormously successful album 'Frampton Comes Alive') the focus of record labels started to shift from singles to albums.  At the same time radio began narrowing its playlists to one or two genres and because of this paradigm shift, a lot of songs that would have deserved the radio exposure, didn't get any.  No longer could you buy singles, you had to buy whole albums.  Today because of YouTube and mp3 players, we've come back to that notion of single songs which is really how it should be.  As I've always believed, the song is the thing.

And listening to all of those songs played the other night because of Ringo's clever notion of an All Starr Band, I realized the impact of single songs on my own songwriting.  For instance, Todd Rundgren's song I Saw The Light had that mixture of major 7th and minor 7th chords that I loved to use, and so I did, ad nauseum!  He also wrote simple but powerful melodies, exemplified in his song Love Is The Answer, which I recall the England Dan and John Ford Coley version of more than Rundgren's.

So from now on I'm going to focus on remembering the SONGS that influenced me, not just the artists.  Which songs influenced your songwriting?  Post yours below!

IJ

 

Songs I Like - I Saw The Light

1972 was a memorable year for me, but not in a good way.  In May of that year, my mother died.  I was 14 and devastated, but one of the ways that I found to express my grief was by writing songs.

Whenever I see the song title "I Saw The Light" I'm reminded of the old bluegrass song, but there is actually another song that was a hit for Todd Rundgren in 1972 by the same name.

The other night I was in Vancouver watching Ringo and His All Star Band, and had the pleasure of seeing Rundgren perform his song live along with Ringo and members of Toto, Santana and Mr. Mister. Funny thing was that back in 1972, I didn't know it was Todd Rundgren who wrote it because I didn't pay as much attention to artists as I did to songs back then.  I do remember the song Hello It's Me being attributed to Rundgren, and he performed that one as well the other night.  But I can't say that I knew Bang On The Drum, It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference and Love Is The Answer were Rundgren songs either. They were all on the set list that night.

I Saw The Light and Love Is The Answer, which came later, definitely had an impact on my early songwriting, especially because of the major and minor seventh chords in each of them.  When I discovered those chords and moved between them on my guitar, I was utterly hooked and ended up writing quite a few songs with those chord combinations.  It wasn't until the other night, however, that I made that connection and realized those songs came from the same person.  So thanks, Todd, without question you inspired my songwriting.

The genre of I Saw The Light was called "soft rock", which was how I described my early songwriting.  You don't see references to that very much these days;  it was a 70's genre for sure. There was even a Soft Rock Cafe in Kitsilano, a suburb of Vancouver, where I occasionally performed in the late 70's and early 80's.

Whenever I'm meeting new guitar students, I inevitably ask them what kind of music they like.  It occurs to me that more often than not, the younger ones have more trouble defining a genre or an artist, and simply go by the song.  That's probably the truth of it;  songs by themselves stick with us and early on in our lives we don't pay much attention to anything else.

I Saw The Light is so very 70's :-).  Beyond that, I will just let it speak for itself! 

~ IJ

Writer's Block - No Such Thing?

I came across an article the other day where the author insisted that writer's block really didn't exist. My guess is that he was trying to draw attention to his blog by coming up with something that might be, in the songwriter's world, considered "controversial". Like a sucker, I was drawn in and I protested his claims, and therefore I guess I did exactly what he wanted. I engaged.

There's more advice on songwriting on the web these days than there ever has been. If nothing else, MY only piece of advice to you is to consider who is writing this stuff before using it. Or believing it.

Writer's block exists. I know, because I have it. In a bad way.

I have been writing songs since I was 12 years old. I'm not saying I wrote every day, or that I have a thousand songs to my credit. But I was consistently inspired and if not coming up with something new, always working on something unfinished. A couple of years ago, I finished my last song, and that was a laborious task because I had been working on it for some time. My excuse might be that I have had a lot of personal things to overcome, one being the death of my father last December after a long battle with Alzheimer's. It wasn't fun and it shook me to the core. I kept telling myself that eventually this would give me fodder for more songs, but so far it really hasn't.

I was, however, inspired recently when I read an excerpt from an interview with Sting, who had a very long dry period until he went back to the town he grew up in, and found that writing in someone else's voice was his cure. He wrote from the perspective of the people who lived in his home town, past and present. I think that's a good idea. Not just the idea of going back to your home town, but trying to write in someone else's voice. I've rarely, if ever, done that. So I'm going to try.

I have written several articles on finding inspiration but when I wrote them I was having no trouble myself. I had a muse or two back then, but they have long gone. For awhile I told myself that maybe I just wasn't going to write any more, and I haven't pushed it. But since reading that little snippet by Sting, I have found the odd line or phrase or verse coming out. My intention is to continue to explore that.

I'll let you know how I'm progressing.

No such thing as writer's block? Yeah, sure.

IJ

Songs I (Almost) Like - Soul Meets Body

I have no idea what this song is about, and so if you think this is just going to be another gush about another song -- it isn't.

I really don't like it when songwriters just meander on in their own minds and then put it out there for others to try and swallow.  I think it's selfish and lazy.  And so, with apologies to Deathcab for Cutie (another conundrum, what the heck does that mean??), I love/hate their song "Soul Meets Body".

Musically, it is great, it is fun to play on guitar and the production and arrangement are excellent.  Lyrically, it is none of these things.  It starts out promisingly enough.  But how did you go from this beautiful, earthy description to a greyhound station?  And then back to the dirt?  And then "roads left in both our shoes"?  And eventually to a "brown eyes" that you want to hold near?  Come on, man, obscurity is no excuse for laziness!

Here are the lyrics for those of you who don't know the song:

I want to live where soul meets body
And let the sun wrap its arms around me
And bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing
And feel, feel what its like to be new

Cause in my head there’s a greyhound station
Where I send my thoughts to far off destinations
So they may have a chance of finding a place
where they’re far more suited than here

And I cannot guess what we'll discover
When we turn the dirt with our palms cupped like shovels
But I know our filthy hands can wash one another’s
And not one speck will remain

And I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
So brown eyes I hold you near
Cause you’re the only song I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

Where soul meets body
Where soul meets body
Where soul meets body

And I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
So brown eyes I hold you near
Cause you’re the only song I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

Some of you may say "who cares?  It's a great song!"  Yes and no.  Some of you might think you know what it means.  Maybe you do.  And the songwriter is counting on you coming to his rescue that way.  "You see?  People know what my song is about!"

If songwriters actually spent more time thinking about what they're actually saying instead of throwing a few obscure lines out there like feed to fish, we'd actually have something worth singing!

Here's the video:

Good Things Come In Threes

There's an expression that people often speak of when bad things happen;  bad things come in threes.  Whether that's true or not, I suppose people tend to look for and count "bad things" when they happen in order to prove it to themselves.

I am also finding more and more evidence that when it comes to songs, good things also come in threes.  Let me explain.

I wrote in another article years ago called Self-Indulgence about repetition; how some songwriters repeat things too often, and others not enough.  At the time I didn't come to any particular conclusion other than the fact that I often would repeat things three times and that seemed to be enough.  The elements that I referred to were things like melodic phrases, or lyrics that repeated, often in a chorus, but also in other parts of the song.

Lately I've been paying attention to how many times certain things are repeated in popular songs, especially melodic phrases since most of us tend to be drawn to the music first.  When I was playing a song with a young guitar student last week, Coldplay's "Paradise", it occurred to me that this song had that very type of repetition:

Dreamed of para- para- paradise
Para- para- paradise
Para- para- paradise
Every time she closed her eyes

The "para-para-paradise" is repeated three times in this chorus before it changes in the last line.

I recently posted in my blog about a song that was a recent Academy Award nominee, "Happy" by Pharrell Williams.  I think it's a great song and should have won, but what do I know?  :-)

Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do

Ah, but Irene, you'll say, the line is repeated FOUR times.  Yes, but.  The melody isn't quite the same in each repetition, is it?  You have to listen to the song to see what I mean if you don't know it.

Repetition is an interesting phenomenon.  You'll notice it with very young children, the desire to have something repeated, especially something that makes them laugh.  Human beings are wired to want to experience something that gives us pleasure over and over again.  And there's a psychological reason for that!  It's called "Mere-Exposure Effect".

Wikipedia describes the effect this way: "The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle. The effect has been demonstrated with many kinds of things, including words, Chinese characters, paintings, pictures of faces, geometric figures, and sounds."  The emphasis is mine.

Pop music is notoriously repetitive...the choruses in pop are meant to be memorable and originally titles (or the "hook", if you will) were specifically placed in the chorus so you would remember the name of the song in order to either request it on the radio, or buy the record.  Yes, manipulative, right?  But people wanted to hear those songs again and again, and the mere-exposure affect partly explains why.  We like what we know.

But how much is too much?

Today I saw an article about another remix of the Academy award-winning song "Let It Go" and the article began with "You're probably sick of 'Let It Go' remixes, but...".  We've all had the nausea-inducing effect of hearing a song or something in a song, once too often.  Even Taylor Swift chooses the songs she's going to include on her next album by weeding out the ones she gets tired of first.

The Perfect Three Effect, which I am now going to call it just because I can, refers to how many times in a row something can safely be repeated without tiring the listener.  This includes lyrical and/or musical phrases.  If you look at your own songs, can you find any that include this phenomenon?  Sometimes these things come out of us without much thinking, and that's the way it should be when you're first sitting down to write.  But when you go back to re-write a song, that's when you have to scrutinize it for elements that have to be fixed. 

Watching out for how many times you repeat something, is an important part of that process.

IJ

In The Thicke of Things

I was pretty curious when I first heard about the continuing lawsuits that have been flying back and forth between Robin Thicke and his label and the children of Marvin Gaye.  The suits (I don't really know how many!) are because of Thicke's song "Blurred Lines".

I think what really might have sparked this whole fuss was when Thicke gave an interview in GQ Magazine where he said:

“Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got to Give it Up.’ I was like, ‘Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove.’ Then he started playing a little something and we literally wrote the song in about a half hour and recorded it.”

When the Gaye family started to make noises about the similarities between the two songs, Thicke actually threw the initial punch by suing the Gaye family FIRST, claiming that there were no similarities.  I can't say that I've ever heard of anyone doing that before.  It was supposedly to "protect" the song, which was was No.1 on Billboard for 12 weeks in 2013, and a huge hit for Thicke and his producers Pharrell Williams and Clifford Harris Jr. It was also up for, but didn't win, a Grammy for best song.

Since then, the accusations have been flying back and forth, with the Gaye family also accusing Thicke of copying Marvin Gaye's song "After The Dance" for his song "Love After War".  But instead of talking lawsuits for a moment, let's have a listen.

If you haven't already heard it, here is Thicke's song "Blurred Lines":

And now, here is Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up":

The usual elements that are brought up in song copyright suits are melody and lyrics, which is why those are the parts that you submit when you are creating a documented copyright for a song.  You can't copyright a chord progression or a title, although occasionally they have come up as part of a suit.  In this case, the issue is the feel and/or beat, which is created by the percussion, drums and bass.  The chord progressions in each song (and the key, for that matter) are different.  The lyrics and melody (where there is one) are different.

So has there been an infringement?

For what it's worth, here's what I think.  They are an awful lot alike because of that groove. Whether, technically speaking, a similar groove will be enough to claim copyright infringement, I will leave that up to the courts.  I've read arguments on both sides, one claiming that Pharrell, who I admire a lot, likes to pay "homage" to those who influenced him and what harm is there in that?  But that groove is really, really similar.

I could almost write the whole thing off if I thought to myself that Thicke had subliminally come up with that groove because the song was 'way back in his memory somewhere.  But his interview says it all.  He liked the groove in that song and they (for the lack of a better word) copied it.  It was, in that respect, intentional.

What do you think?  Where do the lines get crossed?

IJ

Songs I Like - Happy

This song just does the job.  It makes me happy.  I think it reminds me of the vocals in those 70's R&B songs, the same way the vocals in Get Lucky do.  I'm a sucker for the 70's.

There is nothing pretentious about this song, the production is somewhat simple, there's no instrumental or middle-eight, it's just straight up, happy pop.

Instead of trying to pick it apart, if you haven't heard it, here you go:

Get happy :-)
IJ