Please critique-Country/Pop Crossover

[pesmitty]

Deleted from here and from my memory

[hummingbird]

Hey Perry - how are you doing. Great vocals on this demo. IMHO this lyric would be more alt rock than country. Unfortunately country is really hard to pitch, and the lyrics here don't seem to be the conversational country style that is so prominent right now. Lines like "My heart you did break" are going to work against you every time. In addition, the Title/hook would actually be "my heart you did break", not 'you know damn well'.In this verse there is a mixed POV--is the "you" in this...You know damn well that it hurts like hellBut you ask me anywaythe same as the "you" in this...Are you okay and the "you" in this...what do you think when it'sMy heart you did breakI really think the singing & playing & production on this are pretty good. But I strongly urge you to work on the lyric writing aspect. One of the best exercises you can do is go to hit country lyrics ( http://www.hit-country-music-lyrics.com ... yrics.html )once a dayclick on "top 20"choose a lyric - and write it out, long handif you do that every day for a week, you will start to see the form and the method of story-telling employed by top country writers.You don't have to just do this with country, you can do it with pop and rock as well. I have to say, that the last time I did this exercise, at the end of the week I wrote the best two lyrics I've written in my life. It's a worthwhile thing to do.Beyond that, I'd pick up Jason Blume's "6 Steps to Songwriting Success".I know it's really tough when you've spent time & money demoing a song only to be told it needs work... I know, I've been there. But please don't be discouraged. Work on the lyric writing and see if you can get some feedback on the new lyric before recording anything again. This is just my opinion, feel free to keep or sweep,warmlyHummin'bird

[michael11]

Quote:Hey Perry - how are you doing. Great vocals on this demo. IMHO this lyric would be more alt rock than country. Unfortunately country is really hard to pitch, and the lyrics here don't seem to be the conversational country style that is so prominent right now. Lines like "My heart you did break" are going to work against you every time. In addition, the Title/hook would actually be "my heart you did break", not 'you know damn well'.In this verse there is a mixed POV--is the "you" in this...You know damn well that it hurts like hellBut you ask me anywaythe same as the "you" in this...Are you okay and the "you" in this...what do you think when it'sMy heart you did breakI really think the singing & playing & production on this are pretty good. But I strongly urge you to work on the lyric writing aspect. One of the best exercises you can do is go to hit country lyrics ( http://www.hit-country-music-lyrics.com ... yrics.html )once a dayclick on "top 20"choose a lyric - and write it out, long handif you do that every day for a week, you will start to see the form and the method of story-telling employed by top country writers.You don't have to just do this with country, you can do it with pop and rock as well. I have to say, that the last time I did this exercise, at the end of the week I wrote the best two lyrics I've written in my life. It's a worthwhile thing to do.Beyond that, I'd pick up Jason Blume's "6 Steps to Songwriting Success".I know it's really tough when you've spent time & money demoing a song only to be told it needs work... I know, I've been there. But please don't be discouraged. Work on the lyric writing and see if you can get some feedback on the new lyric before recording anything again. This is just my opinion, feel free to keep or sweep,warmlyHummin'bird Blimey(good old English expression there! ) where do you get em from Vikki?What a fantastic site.Love Race Up The Beanstalk BTW.

[pesmitty]

Hummingbird,Thanks for the thorough review. I definitely departed from my "comfort zone" on this one and took some risks. You are not the first to say it simply does not have a country flavor because of the writing style. I think I will probably leave it alone for a while and come back to it fresh in a few months. I will check out that website and try the exercise you mentioned. If you get a chance to listen to some of the other stuff on my myspace, you would probably wonder how I ended up with You Know Damn Well -- definitely a different song than the others. But with my attempt to "cross over" I may have gone too far!Thanks, again.(BTW, I doi like the track and may end up doing a rewrite to it, which could be done simply by a new vocal. If I do, I will drop you a note and see how you like it.)