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The Song (or Material)

In document Music Production (Page 106-109)

The defi nition of hit material varies widely from one genre to another, but there are consistent factors. Christy described the song as “the right melody, the right lyric that’s emotional—to me it has to be an emotional lyric.”

Simon Cowell said, “If you’ve got Max Martin as your writer, you have a better chance of having a worldwide hit than with anyone else.” 3 Martin wants to under-stand the artist he is writing for and before he starts, he talks to them, sees their shows, and fi nds out what they are listening to. He said, “I want the input because that makes the chemistry of the song.” He claims that less than one-third of 1 per-cent of his ideas are ever turned into demos, saying, “You have to be a mass mur-derer and kill your darlings.” He reputedly keeps reworking parts of songs until he is happy with them. 4

Dr. Luke told Matt Popkin of American Songwriter Magazine that in order to make a hit, he needs to make people go “Wow!” by creating a sense of “urgency”

and “musical moments that are ‘intrinsic and alarming,’ such as a sax player hold-ing a high note and a drummer playhold-ing a rapid solo across the kit.” 5

Working in entirely different genres, Rick Rubin is just as emphatic when he says, “I think the most important thing a producer can do is spend time getting the songs into shape before recording. The material is so much more important than the sounds.”

L.A. Reid, who subsequently helmed Arista, Island Def Jam, and Epic Records, said that, during his time with the L.A. and Babyface writing and production team, they were “not that into high tech” because they “concentrate on great lyrics and awesome grooves.” He thinks they would neglect “the most important aspect of a song”—the melody—if they paid to much “attention to technical tricks.” Reid said,

“The melody is what we pick up on when we’re listening to a song. And isn’t that what loving music is all about—being a good listener?” 6

Ron Fair, ex-chairperson of Geffen Records thinks that “the most absolutely critical production move” is asking, “ ‘what is the song?’ That is the most important thing. Everything else is secondary to me.”

In pop music, the song is the primary determinant of a hit. For those who are not fans of the pop charts, this statement can seem antithetical because of the apparent musical and lyrical simplicity of many big hits. However, that deceptive conciseness is a decisive factor in whether a song is a universal hit or not. Katy Perry and singer/songwriter Bonnie McKee wrote “Teenage Dream,” which spent more than 300 weeks on various international charts, ascending to number one on several. According to a Sound On Sound article by Paul Tingen, they had rewritten the song four times when they played it for Dr Luke, who did not think it was a hit yet and said that it needed to be “ ‘Benny-proofed’ because ‘if Benny doesn’t get it, America won’t get it.’ ” Benny, as in Benny Blanco, estimates that they rewrote the song seven times:

You keep cracking away at it, and you know when it is right. You really have to grab people. A song has to be captivating and it has to be relate-able. Nobody wants to listen to a song they can’t relate to. A  song needs to grab people’s attention within the fi rst 10 seconds, otherwise they’re going to the next song.

And you have to hold their attention for the entire duration of the song.

A song today is like an hour-long DJ set condensed into three minutes. You start, you build things up, you bring them back down, you build them up again.

There, continuously, has to be something exciting to the ear, and that has to keep changing throughout the song. The structure of the song: every time it changes—i.e., intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus—has to be signposted. You can’t just fl ow things, it has to be like “Bam! A new part is coming in!” Even if it’s not immediately apparent, on some level the listener has to go: “Oh, wow—

that sounds different!” 7

Many writers have diffi culty rewriting and reworking their songs. They would rather write a new one, but the iterative process refi nes and perfects every aspect so that it works the way it should. As a producer, you can spend much time massag-ing performances and arrangements, but a fundamental weakness in the song will limit the success of the record. The reasons for recrafting a song vary; pop writers do it for maximum chart impact, and others do it to make the statement they want to make, but in either case, the result is a more appealing song for the target audi-ence. Writers of the stature of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Rickie Lee Jones have meticulously rewritten songs to bring them to fruition. 8 Perhaps the most famous of all rewrites is Paul McCartney’s two-year struggle with “Yesterday.” Allegedly, he tinkered with the chords and for a long time was stuck on the lyric “scrambled eggs” that he had jokingly improvised. It was on a long drive that the words fi nally poured out of him. 9

Hip hop and some other genres do not always feature what many people think of as a melody carried by a lead singer. As Phillip Tagg points out, in the Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World , the defi nition of the term “melody”

varies. In some languages, it refers to the whole song with accompaniment. In gen-eral, it is a monodic sequence, or series of single notes with rhythmic profi le and pitch contour that we perceive as a musical foreground statement separate from the accompaniment and harmony. There are many other parameters associated with melody. The important consideration in this context is that hip hop songs can be considered as such, even if a lack of tonal articulation in the pitch contour does not fi t the standard description. Additionally, hit songs are not entirely reliant on a main vocal melody. Underlying harmony affects perception, as can the rhythmic structure or groove, additional rhythmic, melodic, and sonic hooks, and any lyrical content. Examples would be the guitar riff in the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,”

which may be more memorable than the vocal melody and the harmonic progres-sion in “One Note Samba” that sets off the single-note melody line. 10

A great song can be obscured by poor production. One way this can happen is if the accompaniment or overdubs are allowed to overpower or crowd the vocal melody; Jerry Wexler purportedly referred to this as being “track happy.” On exten-sively overdubbed projects, I always begin by laying a guide vocal. I have also found that having the melody sung is just as important when recording a band live in the studio. Without the melody, some musicians fi ll the holes they hear, forgetting how

their parts are supposed to fi t around the vocal. Guide vocals are far from a perfect solution because a great vocal performance can uplift the performance of all the musicians. Occasionally, the guide rises to that level but if not, the presence of the melody and lyrics still provides a focal point and creates a mood for the supporting elements of the song to accommodate.

Lyrics are also important in the success of a song, and the kinds of lyrical content in songs that sell well vary from genre to genre. But are there common-alities in the best-selling songs? In 2011, American Songwriter published an article analyzing the 17 number-one songs from Billboard ’s 2010 Hot 100 chart. They used the Flesch-Kincaid (F-K) readability test, which is embedded in Microsoft Word and used by the military to check the readability of training manuals. The results showed that 16 of the 17 number-one songs were written at a reading level of fi rst grade or below, and the 17th (by Eminem) was around second-grade level. The assessment of readability is based on the average number of words in a sentence, the average number of syllables in a word, word length as measured by letters, and the number of complex words (more than two syllables). All but two songs measured at 100 percent (the highest level of readability), and the two outliers were within 5 percent of the maximum. It should be noted that this test was designed for prose, not songs, and the resulting information does not constitute a repeatable scientifi c formula (i.e., writing a song that scores 100 percent on the F-K scale will not guar-antee a hit). Nonetheless, the consistency of the results does indicate a statistically strong correlation between the simplicity of a lyric and a song’s hit potential. 11

George Martin has the fi nal word:  “The most important person is the songwriter.” 12

In document Music Production (Page 106-109)