09/23/2024
A very talented young songwriter sends me new songs occasionally. I don't even know exactly what she hopes to gain from my opinion or my input, but I try hard to give advice where I can. Yesterday, being a Sunday afternoon, I took a little time writing her a few details that may help any songwriter out there. Just thought I'd share what I wrote her here so anyone can consider these words, from a songwriter who has done it for a very long time, which, could be good for advice or it could be bad for advice. Feel free to decide.
"As you know, I have been a songwriter since I was in high school, but full-time and professionally since 1994. Perhaps all of that experience makes me know a few things? Perhaps all of that experience makes me know nothing. Hard to say. But let me just tell you how I think things are these days. And in some ways, they have probably always been. My hope is that this helps your vision of what you can do to find success with your songs.
BALLADS are hard to get cut (meaning, hard to get artists to record). Unless you write a ballad WITH the artist OR unless the song is just so unusually amazing (such as "The House That Built Me”, “I Can’t Make You Love Me If You Don’t”, “The Dance”, etc.) Most artists, producers, A&R and managers are thinking of how to get the artist into the Billboard Top 10, or to have a song react so strongly on socials (streaming, etc.) that it drives people into paid concert seats in droves. Most artists and producers consider ballads something that every album needs, but a bad way to make an impact, since it's very hard to have a ballad get a major reaction these days. Why? Because the world’s attention span is down to next to nothing, and a ballad usually takes someone living with the song longer than 15 seconds to really "get it". So, artists usually write the one or two ballads on their album as something they really want to say and just consider it “furniture” for their album repertoire.
Ironically, the top three “Songs of the Century” for the 20th Century were 1. Somewhere Over the Rainbow 2. Bridge Over Troubled Water (Paul Simon) 3. Yesterday (Paul McCartney). All Ballads. But, people’s attention spans were seemingly longer in 1938, 1970 and 1971. Less digital “noise" to muddle perhaps.
MID-TEMPOS are hard to get cut, unless they are so unusually hooky in groove and or lyric. Heck, any song is hard to get cut. But it is not very often that a few hit songwriters get together and say, “Hey, today let’s write a mid-tempo this morning”. Although many mid-tempos are massive hits, when they are, they usually have a lyric that is so clever, so unique and so “something we haven’t heard, at least in a very long time.”
UP-TEMPOS - are probably the best chance to get an artist to record. IF the melody is insanely hooky, the track is undeniably unique and the hook of the song is so something the artist wants to say, needs to say and has not written themselves so far. If they have time for writing sessions between the day that they hear your UP-TEMPO and the day they are scheduled to go into the studio and record, usually they go into their next writing session with the goal of writing something like the song they love that you pitched to them. And most are savvy enough to steal without making it recognizable. They have talent-a-plenty with switching it all up with the goal of accomplishing the same result. No way to really stop that. It happens.
Every hit artist has a stable of hit songwriters that are their “safe place”. Their "high score" on the law of averages, meaning, since they have a track record with these writers, they know the chances are much higher that they will write something that they like and has a chance to make it onto their album with these hit writers that they are familiar with, with which they "know the process”. Familiarity and track record matter to artists. These things brings comfort to an artist’s very limited time to be in a writing room if they are successful touring artists. Remember, they may lose five figures or sometimes six figures by scheduling a day to write instead of a tour date. Who they write with and how they spend their time matters to them.
So, an up-tempo pitch has got to be a unique, hooky, melodic, coming hard with a groove and a beat that simply makes you almost immediately say “Holy Dang! That is the best thing I have heard in a LONG, LONG time", or "Holy YeeHaw, I wish I would have written that!” Then, you’ve got to hope that the artist you are pitching it to will have the same reaction. Remember, the artist and/or their gatekeepers that you are pitching it to has to be healthy that day (no stomachache, no hang over, plenty of rest, eating well, clear headed and relatively happy and optimistic). They have to be “unbusy" enough to concentrate and give a rip. They have to have just NOT enough going on that they think about the song again later in the day and listen for a second impression, and then have the same reaction that they did the first time they listened. Then the list of trusted people around them that they play it for have to all agree with equal enthusiasm with the artist, because most artists are so insecure in the process of picking songs for their album that they drive themselves mad day by day. If all of those factors happen to add up to the artist still being convinced that it is a song for them, then those who have the money (those paying for the sessions) must agree with the artist. Because, in the end, the “man, woman or company with the gold makes the rules” and can squash a rising wave of possibility with one simple hushed “no”. And remember, all of the factors for the artist (no stomach ache, no hang over, plenty of rest, eating well and clear headed, etc.) have to apply to the minute, second and day that the money folks hear your demo as well.
And believe me, artists know that if their name is on a song they will potentially make a pile of money from streaming and/or radio play that they will never make if their name is not on it. So, why would they ever cut a song that their name is not on? Because they are convinced, or someone in their “camp” is convinced, that your song, just the way it is, will garner MAD social engagement, and will put MANY sets of buttocks into paid concert seats like no other song that they can find, write, cleverly copy or effectively steal.
Now, does all of this sound like a dismal downer? It may. But on some level, it is how it has always been.
Today it just seems slightly more complicated, in Nashville at least, because networking is slightly more complicated.
When I got to town in 1994, every moving part of the music business, from a pencil, paper & guitar in a lowly-lit writer's room to a mastered single on a record executive’s desk ready for distribution, was all on four streets in Nashville (16th, 17th, 18th and 19th). Kind of like a small college campus. If you worked hard and networked hard, (and your background and/or personality didn’t naturally have a propensity to make most people dislike your very presence) you could know everyone, everywhere up and down those streets. I used to spend money I didn’t have to get the cheapest lunch I could afford at Sammy B’s on 16th or Longhorn Steakhouse on Lyle, just because Harland Howard would be sitting in his usual booths at one of those two establishments, enjoying a drink and saying "Hi" to those writers and industry folks he knew who walked by his mid-day “throne”. I waited patiently for months to have a mutual friend introduce me to this songwriting legend Harland Howard, so I could become one of those people that he at least raised an eye-brow to and waved a drink-filled hello hand to when I walked by him. In those days, if you simply knew who the players were, you’d eventually be face to face with them for your shot of somehow gaining a moment of their attention. Eventually, your face and your name, if it was associated with a few great pieces of musical art, could get you the doors open, the connections and eventually the friends that you needed to start to move the needle. Today, it’s more like LA was in the 90s. Spread all over the city. The process takes longer and you can only do so much in a day, making it a little more challenging just by geography alone. The same game, just a little trickier. I say trickier, but I don’t see these youngsters doing it today seeing it as trickier. Heck, it’s the game they know. They didn’t know the river I was swimming in through the 1990s, just like I didn’t know the river my older co-writers in the 90s knew in the 1970s when I was watching "Land of the Lost" on a black and white TV in my Six Million Dollar Man pajamas. We know what we know, we see what reality we see, and either we work hard at the craft, network our wits out and go at it hard until it happens, or we don’t. It’s probably all the same.
One more thing that comes to mind. When I arrived in Nashville in 1994, there were many publishing companies developing, growing and breaking songwriters, and hundreds of talented individuals that were specifically in Nashville to be songwriters. The business (specifically the mechanical royalties earned from songs on albums) in those days supported that high volume of songwriters to develop and hone the craft under the tutelage of experienced and skilled song pluggers and publishers. There were certainly writers around who were future artists, and there were artists, but there were lots of “songwriters”. Living here in the songwriting capital of the world, just to become the best songwriter they could possibly be. Some would surely later become producers, publishers and/or music executives, but most were songwriters at the core. These days in Nashville, everyone is an artist. Everyone is trying to write a song and program a track that makes a brush fire…makes some smoke on the horizon. Record labels simply watch the horizon and send some intern runmimg over to take a look at the fires when they become big enough to really see by anyone with at least one working eyeball. Then the labels execs hope to fight off other label execs by swinging bigger sacks of money and eventually buying the right to place their logo on the artist’s digital release. All to hopefully make that fire that the artist started become so big that the song either can be pushed on to radio and/or can fill auditoriums by the heat of social and streaming rocket fuel.
The days of labels signing talent and developing the artist's skills and promoting their name, likeness and talents seems to be long over. Building houses from the ground up is not the business. Buying desirable homes that already have a steady and growing Air B&B income is what the money folks want to buy. In the money folks' minds, this is business that is already proven before they invest, and the investment just needs structured, big market trading and expertise to drive the artist into “Headliner" status.
That seems to be the game today.
The pressure that I see this is putting on artists is tremendous. I imagine being in the 11th grade in my high school and someone that I respect comes to up me in the hall and says, “Jason, if you want your dreams to come true, you must BE POPULAR. Ready? Right now, let’s go. You gotta do it. BE POPULAR!” I would think to myself, wait, these fellow students who I have known since kindergarten, I have to manipulate how they feel about me? Manipulate them into wanting to all be with me on a weekend night and convince them to give me some of their hard-earned money?” Ugh. That would not add to my confidence or my high school happiness.
I see this demand of artists today being overwhelming for them. “BE POPULAR! GET FOLLOWERS! GET STREAMS! BE INTERESTING! LOOK INTERESTING! And do it now. Ready? GO!” Artistic people already have a tendency to be insecure by nature. This social media world may well be developing self-confidence disasters for everyone on some level, but I truly believe that it is extra hard on songwriter/artists who have to navigate these pressing demands. Merl Haggard wouldn't have a chance in this environment. His laid back personality, backed by insane talent, delivery and vibe, would never have captured 10 seconds of BOOM on Instagram. It makes me want to hug artists tight when I see the strain in their eyes. Consider that, when you have boiling disdain for an artist who has stopped answering your texts regularly or never responds to a song pitch you sent to them.
They may be in a tour bus bathroom franticly trying different cell phone angles to make their face look more interesting than it was in yesterday’s Tik Tok post.
Now, what does all of this mean? I don’t pretend to know anymore than anyone else really. A GREAT song is the only kind of song that has a chance. But if a GREAT song is in a drawer, or in a computer folder or isolated in your head, it will never be heard and never have any chance! People that we have networked up, and have become our friends, are usually the vehicle by which songs get into notable artist’s hands that can make a difference in our careers. And if we are fortunate enough to have a successful artist become our friend, to consider us a trusted place to spend their valuable time when they write songs for their next album, then we have the best chance indeed to become a writer with copyrights that the world knows and hopefully make some money along the way.
"God bless the boys [and girls] who make the noise on 16th Avenue" (and every other street across this ever spreading and growing city today).
May all of your dreams come true! And may some time soon, you stumble upon that melody, that lyric or that hook that makes every person that hears it say,
“ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??? That is the best thing I’ve heard in a LONG, LONG time.
Jason"
