Writing Hit Songs - Myths

[edteja]

So Casey, just pick up that guitar and sing boy!"Cashing my ASCAP check down at the mini martGetting the Taxi folks some Sly Fox in my shopping cart.I can't remember all the Mexican food I ateWe are just gonna celebrate..."

[Casey H]

Quote:But I would say the Spice Girls are one LUCKY bunch of lasses!Talent and skill OR having the right product for the time or both combined with luck are often the key... The spice girls had the right product for the time. I'd say (getting back to odds), it's better to work on the talent and skill part...Pass me a burrito... Casey

[horacejesse]

It is a truth familiar to all that luck often plays an important part in making it Big in the music business.Luck cannot be controlled, otherwise it is not luck. There are many things you can control--your songwriting output, your upkeep of important relationships, increased networking et al--but luck is not one of them. You cannot have the least effect on luck; you let it take its course while you control as much as you can of what you can.You cannot make your own luck. Pure misnomer.When a hold'em player with a good but vulnerable starting hand bets heavy early to drive people out, he is controlling what he can of the situation. Some of the people who are driven out may see their cards come up and realize they would have won the pot if they had only called the raise and stayed in. They say what a lucky dog the winner is. But he got the people who were going to beat him out of the pot early. He played good and controlled what he could. That is called skill. But he did not control which cards the dealer dealt. That is where luck came in. If you can control it, is not luck and you have to find another name for it.Randomness has no formula, it is the antithesis of formula. If there is a shorter way to express a list of random numbers other than the list itself, then the list was not random anyway. The random number generators of computers are crude crunchers that only approximate randomness to various degrees of tolerance. Good enough to fool a human but not good enough to really be random. Randomness is like God--you cannot recreate or control it. It is, and all you can do is live with it while controlling that which is not random or due to luck as well as you can.As Ibanez says: that's my .02 cents. But it is probably more like $2 worth of the....whatever.

[Casey H]

Quote:You cannot make your own luck. Pure misnomer. Hi Horace...No argument... discussion...I shouldn't have phrased it as "you make your own luck", but it wasn't to be taken that literally. What you do is increase your odds. So, the great card player has no control over what card the dealer will deal. BUT with skill, he can do more with the situation.. e.g. what to do when the five of diamonds or the ace comes... The analogy is: You can't necessarily control whether you run into the right person or get an unusual chance to show your music to someone important. But, you can control what your odds are once this happens by having better songs. And if you are submitting songs to the industry, with incredible odds against you, why not maximize them in your favor? This is all assuming that commercial success is your goal.Cheers, Casey

[davekershaw]

Hey wow Casey, that's an analogy of an analogy!There must be a name for that.

[Mark Kaufman]

I might as well chime in about "Disco Duck" and "Muskrat Love" ...because I DON'T think those songs were about luck. In fact, this sort of speaks to the main topic here, about hits...I think those songs were very well calculated to the market. "Disco Duck" took a typical dance groove and added cartoon humor...people laughed at it, in fact they laughed at how STUPID it was...but they were laughing at it on the dance floor, and the whole mad scheme worked out pretty well. "Muskrat Love" is of course universally despised...but also very well-written, well-produced, well-performed...it sticks in the head like superglue, I remember every bit of that song ( ), and it made preteen and teens giggle and demand to buy the single...Point being, some of these songs (that drive us up the friggin' wall, believe me) are the result of very savvy teams and/or songwriters with a keen eye on the market. In fact, I think a song like that will have more "luck" going for it than a perfectly well-written, catchy, meaningful song...I think the odds of the sale from a home-based songwriter are in favor of the novelty song.Just keepin' a little heat in this debate, you know, before it turns all NICE or somethin'...

[squids]

Anyone willing to claim Muskrat Love was purely a marketing scheme........well, them's jes fightin' words, bubba.

[Casey H]

Quote:Hey wow Casey, that's an analogy of an analogy!There must be a name for that. "A squared"?

[jchitty]

Quote:I might as well chime in about "Disco Duck" and "Muskrat Love" ...because I DON'T think those songs were about luck. In fact, this sort of speaks to the main topic here, about hits...I think those songs were very well calculated to the market. "Disco Duck" took a typical dance groove and added cartoon humor...people laughed at it, in fact they laughed at how STUPID it was...but they were laughing at it on the dance floor, and the whole mad scheme worked out pretty well. "Muskrat Love" is of course universally despised...but also very well-written, well-produced, well-performed...it sticks in the head like superglue, I remember every bit of that song ( ), and it made preteen and teens giggle and demand to buy the single...Point being, some of these songs (that drive us up the friggin' wall, believe me) are the result of very savvy teams and/or songwriters with a keen eye on the market. In fact, I think a song like that will have more "luck" going for it than a perfectly well-written, catchy, meaningful song...I think the odds of the sale from a home-based songwriter are in favor of the novelty song.Just keepin' a little heat in this debate, you know, before it turns all NICE or somethin'... I would personally like to take an Uzi to the people who wrote Muskrat Love...'coz that is one song you can never get out of your head! Just kidding about the Uzi....well, sorta. Seriously though, no one I know ever liked that song....and they turned the channel every time it came on, so I'm hard pressed to understand why it was a hit....maybe it's just the novelty of it as you say.

[davekershaw]

Quote:A squared"?