Bongolation - would you mind listing some of music you found the most interesting, well-produced, or otherwise worth of putting on heavy global rotation, through your career? I'd love to see if I could hear the differences between what the pros consider good, and all else.
I won't do that exactly, because as soon as I do, invariably the asshats who are already trying to pick a fight always howl, "Oh, you think
that's great? Haw, haw, haw! You're so lame! They SUCK! That chick has fake tits! (or the singer's a junkie, or someone's a homo, or [X genre] blows, or whatever)."
It
always happens.
I will give you a rule, though (one of many I formulated and used), and you can apply it to stuff you hear. I know you'll recognize it and its value when you encounter it and think about past songs that got your attention -- and that's what it's all about.
My broadcast producer used to jokingly call it my "Get to the point or get out of my office" rule.
You have ten to fifteen seconds (maximum) to hook the listener. A good song will do it in as little as two notes. It doesn't matter
how you do it, but you have to establish your link with your listener and get his attention.
I'm thinking of two cases at the moment, one a female vocalist with an incredible, evocative voice. In one of her hits, the first two or three ascending notes of her a capella intro consistently stopped people in their tracks. I would watch it in businesses with the radio playing in the background. People who weren't even listening would unconsciously stop talking and turn their ears to the radio, if only for a bit. It had that power.
Another was an alt-hit with a
great, rasty bass intro. In two seconds, that just dropped-kicked you in the gut. When it was on the #1 station in the city I was in, I'd watch while at stoplights at major intersections and I could see bored people instantly come alive when it came on after a commercial break and lean over to turn up the volume and started bouncing their heads to the rhythm. It was beautiful.
Think back throughout your life, like driving around aimlessly on a Saturday night when you were seventeen listening to the radio with a bunch of your knucklehead friends and "that" intro came on and everyone in the front seat lunges for the volume control at once.
OK, as an asshat-proof example, what about (as perhaps the greatest example in recorded music) THE CHORD at the beginning of "A Hard Day's Night"?
I don't care who you are, you want that power over a listener's attention.
That's gold. Artistically and financially.
All the snotty little twerps with their homemade shoegazer drone crap would in their hearts of hearts sell ten years of their lives for something like that.
You make songs like that and you'll get heard. You almost can't help it. That's what production and material are supposed to do for you, that moment of perfection, the perfect intro hook.
OK, so you're not quite in that class...but whatever you have, give it up fast before the listener has his resistance up or gets bored and punches the button. "Bite and Hold" was what I called it. Get the listener's attention and build from there, or at least don't let go.
Listeners owe you nothing. You have to make them want to listen to your song. If you don't clinch the sale in the first few seconds, you're toast.
As an addendum, I can assure you that I'm aware that MOST charting broadcast music doesn't do this and is essentially junk in all ways. Listeners listen to it and buy it because the record companies invest hugely in selling it and buying the airtime through direct and indirect payola and endless hype in the trades and fan mags, blah, blah. But a new breakout act that suddenly makes radio sound good usually has this.
“shoegazer drone crap”
