What is "the perfect song"?

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mjr

ADD -- blessing and curse
Or is there such a thing?

In your opinion, what is the "perfect" song, if it exists?

Or, more importantly, what makes a song "timeless"? I mean, there are songs that might have been big in their time, that people just don't listen to anymore, and then you have songs like "Stairway...", "Free Bird", "Sweet Home Alabama", and such, and some artists who have lasted, even beyond their death or group breakup, to be listened to by new generations of listeners.

Take me, for instance. Hank Williams died 23 years before I was born, but I still enjoy his music. I was never around for the Beatles, but I like their stuff. Never really listened to a lot of rock growing up, but still enjoy Lynyrd Skynyrd. Things like that.

It's like, a good song is a good song, regardless of genre and when the song was recorded or does that stuff matter?
 
Easy, for me it's hands down "Would" by Alice in Chains. 17 years later I still get into it when I hear it.
 
...

theres a lot of things that I think make up a "perfect song", when we are talking about it becoming a "classic". Actually, I believe thats what they call "a standard". whn everybody wants to "do" a song long after its innitial run is over.

One thing I think goes into one, is it HINTS at sexuality, but doesnt blatantly SAY so. The younger listeners might not catch the references, as they are "veiled" in metaphor or tongue-in-cheek, but the older listeners do, and smile at the memory of warm, fuzzy, feelings from a youth gone by and remember those feelings.

Heck, I'm listening to top 40 driving a cab, 'cos young customers demand that (groan, lol) and I catch this "Party in the USA" song. Its a young girl, so she still has her "squeaky clean" young girl image thing going on... but, call me a pervert, but...

when you take the lines out of context...

Nodding my head, like, "yeah...!"
Moving my hips, like, "Yeah...!"

It HINTS at oral sex, and standard intercourse... yet it clearly does NOT say so... it's just a sideways HINT of it, thats it..



Go back to the great painters. When you examine individually the various smaller paintings that make up the cistine chapel, there's a LOT of material there. One author showed where sex was HINTED at. Heck, in the example, the man and woman are alone in the woods, practically naked. Their small pieces of cloth are held on only by the wind... The man is standing, the woman is sitting in front of him... her head turned gracefully away in some artistic pose...

I mean, NOTHING is technically going on, but...

1) a man and a woman are alone in the woods. He's a muscular young buck, she's a beautiful young woman. What are they there for, eh?

2) if that breeze stops blowing, or so much as changes wind direction, they are both buck naked.

3) whatever she "heard" or "saw" that made her turn her head? Where was her face just before the "snapshot" of the painting? Right in the mans crotch!


I had seen that painting many times before, and that never crossed my mind, until that author pointed it out. he also showed similar paintings of very similar scenes, equally lifelike... the artist was just as good, but... there was no HINT of sexuality to it. So, that painter didnt become a master. he didn't know the "secret" that older masters handed down to their star pupils.

He showed example after example, where one master trained the younger one that took his place, and you could suddenly SEE this technique was being handed down...

I feel a lot of good lyrics use this same technique.


Sex sells, we all know that. But, if you HINT at it, so slightly that almost no one gets it, it seems to sell even BETTER. people just generally "like it" and can't really say exactly why.
 
a perfect song to me is one that I dig the heck out of. There is no definition. It just sticks with me. i don't follow the music industry crowd, which in most cases defines the perfect songs. They decide the formulas and pump them down our throats till we say, wow that is a great song........ Been done since day one. Walter
 
What an impossible question to answer!

Well lucky for you...I know the answer.

It's "Stairway To Heaven" by Led Zeppelin.

A close second would be "Open Your Heart" by Madonna.
 
Couldnt name a perfect song, the best ones are just all up there around the same level for me. Maybe id say Imagine by lennon which is the cheesy obvious response, but i really think the meaning behind it pushes it up above regardless. Theres not a person on this planet who wont be made to think by that song.

For a song to be timeless its just good songwriting isnt it, great hooks in the song whether vocals/riffs or both. Lyrics people can relate with strongly, of all ages. Most importantly something that makes the song standout & different from the majority of more generic stuff around it. That'll build its reputation quickly. It has to be basic to id say, vocals/guitar/piano type setup. Instruments that will never go out of fashion, kids then learn the songs off their parents or tv & it goes on and on.
 
Tom Traubert's Blues by Tom Waits comes close. Good melody, excellent lyrics, strong performance.
 
That is an interesting question, I think that since music is a way of communicating human emotions, then the perfect song would be the perfect communication of an emotion. That is, the music would become the actual emotion. In a philosophical point of view I believe it exists and that all the music we create are approximations of that perfect music. The better ones are closer to the perfect one and the worse, farther. It is actually quite interesting thinking about this.

Do you know that in ancient Greece, a philosophical school believed that the perfect music existed and it was in fact the sound of the earth's rotation? This is the only sound that we are unable to listen because it is already there when we are born and therefore it is much like silence.
 
flickernever said:
Do you know that in ancient Greece, a philosophical school believed that the perfect music existed and it was in fact the sound of the earth's rotation? This is the only sound that we are unable to listen because it is already there when we are born and therefore it is much like silence.
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Most people don't know this, but the renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler actually wrote an entire book about the "music of the spheres" i.e. planets and their rotations causing frequencies and chords. Interesting stuff.
 
bassdweller said:
Most people don't know this, but the renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler actually wrote an entire book about the "music of the spheres" i.e. planets and their rotations causing frequencies and chords. Interesting stuff.
Click to expand...

The Sanskrit in India have been talking about that for a long time.

It's true, not cosmic theory crap and the science community accepts it. Why even the Discovery Channel has talked about it so dang it must be true!
 
answer, there is no perfect song......

and there is no answer to the question! each listner has different musical tastes and preferrences based on their age and the age at which they became interested in music. also their friends influence on them, other social and economic surroundings and basically their environment. what may be the perfect song to you may,(pardon the use of the current vernacular) suck to me. still there are some songs which can't be denied as great, but perfect..? the beatles, elonor rigby comes to mind, not just because of it's composition but the social and religious implications of the lyrics. the song says it all about the world and the people in it during the composers era.
it is so simple and to the point but it hits you in the gut and makes you ponder its meaning. that (to me) is the perfect song!!
 
I know it's the expected answer but I have to agree with Stairway to Heaven if I had to m.

An obvious caveat is that perfection must be defined if possible. Rather than leave it there, I'll try and explore this idea a little bit.

I think some might automatically relate perfection to epic. It's worth exploring why and Stairway is a great case study. Epic-ness is in a way a style of music, since one can attempt to achieve a quality of epicn-ess. I think it is easy to name songs like Stairway and Bohemian Rhapsody as perfect b/c there is a natural non-musical relation to epic-ness and perfection. Epic-ness automatically gives a song a sacredness, which is a close relative to perfection. Another related word would be 'transcendence' which obviously relates to the timelessness you ask about in regards to the era in which the song was made. Stairway transcends the early 70s b/c it has an ancient quality to the lyrics.

Interestingly enough, I think songs that try and fail to achieve epic-ness (I should really find a Thesaurus) come off as pretentious b/c any epic song is in a sense an attempt to achieve perfection.

Anyways,for the reasons stated above I think it is important to distinguish perfection in the epic sense from other senses of song perfection. Unfortunately, the other senses of song perfection really are much harder to define. One could be specific and say, the "I can't see the dual lead guitar work in "Boys Are Back in Town" being any better so it is perfect", or more generally, "There is nothing about Senses Fail song "Let It Enfold You" that could be done better." But that would mean likely that there are tens to hundreds of songs you think are perfect.

If THE perfect song existed, even if just for a given individual, you would listen to it and it only for you entire life (or at least always enjoy it more than any other songs). Since that is never the case, I'd say there is no such thing as THE perfect song in the non-epic sense of the word, at least not yet.

Kerrio
 
SEDstar said:
Sex sells, we all know that. But, if you HINT at it, so slightly that almost no one gets it, it seems to sell even BETTER. people just generally "like it" and can't really say exactly why.
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That seems like a contradiction to me. If 'almost no one gets it' how can that be the element that makes it sell better ? And who honestly buys songs coz of their sexual content or sexuality ? At the end of the day, one either likes a song or one doesn't. Then as you get to know it more, you might start working out what you like about it. Or not.
 
flickernever said:
Do you know that in ancient Greece, a philosophical school believed that the perfect music existed and it was in fact the sound of the earth's rotation? This is the only sound that we are unable to listen because it is already there when we are born and therefore it is much like silence.
Click to expand...
Does this mean that the perfect song is one that we can't even hear ??!!:D :rolleyes:
 
kerriobrown said:
If THE perfect song existed, even if just for a given individual, you would listen to it and it only for your entire life (or at least always enjoy it more than any other songs).
Click to expand...
But would you ? Just coz it was perfect, that's no guarantee that it would be liked !
 
mjr said:
...what is the "perfect" song?
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One that you, the songwriter, really likes...that everyone from your mother to the gothic crowd really likes...and that you sell a gazillion copies and make a fortune off of.


;)

:D
 
I know this is not what anybody wants to hear but the perfect song is probably "Happy Birthday".
 
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