PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Why do some songs succeed?

Hi folks,

Just wondering about this today, why do some song succeed commercially and most don't. Is it all down to the artist singing them or does the song have that "little extra" that makes it stand out. Or is it a combination of song artist luck etc.

To put it simply if you have a great song and plug it to enough artists will it usually succeed in end?
Or is it one of these questions that there is no real answer to?

musiclover

I hate to be so cynical but I really believe it's basically the same question as:

"Why did that guy win the Lotto and not me?"

There's so many great musicians, performers, singers now that who know's what makes one successful and not others. Just look at Youtube, Facebook, tons of music sites, university music department sites. I was just randomly surfing around and found a link to the Berklee School and found a clip of a truly gorgeous 20 something girl playing her guitar and singing just in the classroom being critiqued by her professor. She was awesome. Great voice, great playing and she could be on the cover of Maxim. Just one of the kids in one of hundreds of schools all over the world.


Bob

I'm no professional, but my ears tell me a good one when I hear it. Music is subjective. Eye of the beholder kind of thing, but if it sounds good played on just a guitar, it usually is a good song. A good singer helps

My twenty-five cents worth.

What an open question... I certainly don't have a definitive answer but here are a few of my thoughts:

1) Target audience. E.G. would Bob Dylan, if he were starting out now instead of in the 60's, make the same impact? I'd guess not... "The times, they are a'changin'".

2) What does the public expect? This seems, in large part, to have been directed by the major recording labels so if you aren't pumping out a 3 or 4 chord wonder that is right in the middle of the "cultivated" (read programmed) mainstream genres then bad luck.

3) Sex sells. It seems it doesn't matter how good or bad a song is, if the show that goes with it has plenty of sex then it's automatically a winner. Well, almost... If it's truly awful you probably would end up losing out anyhow.

4) How good is your marketing machine?

5) How good is your signal processing? There are some attractive female performers who can't carry a tune in a bucket but get away with it because of things like autotune. Hear 'em unprocessed and you wouldn't look twice. All same supermodels - see 'em without their make-up and you wouldn't recognise most of 'em.

6) How many listen to lyrics anyhow these days? A good, solid, driving rhythm gets into the emotions very effectively, hence why drum solo's can work so well.

7) There is one genre that does use lyrics very effectively: Rap (or Hip Hop if you prefer). However this seems, in the main, to depend on anger, profanity and shock value to have an impact. This profanity is also finding its way into other genres which seem to be benefitting, at least in the short term, from it. Very sad IMHO as the roots of this genre, as I understand them, are a legitimate call for help in an opressive social structure - but it's become so offensive that I turn it off and won't listen.

If you want to move away from the mainstream, away from the "business of music", and get into the the "art of music" then there are a whole lot of other factors involved. This is the area where true merit will shine and songs will be judged on their quality and the way they are performed.

Then you will have factors like the message in the lyrics, the melody, harmonies, chord progressions, tensions and releases, rhythmic patterns, hooks, format... You guys know all the things I mean. This is when they will have room to be valued properly.

Interestingly, I believe the audiences for this approach to music are much smaller. How many listen to symphonies these days? Yet the most powerful and beautiful musical expression is found there. So are some of the worst too... And what about opera? Same deal.

These days, in the commercial arena, Country and Western, IMHO, is far more a rock sub genre than it's own genre. Yet, outside the commercial world C&W seems to be alive and well and true to its roots. What about Bluegrass? Limited audience sure, but that audience loves it. Not commercial in the sense of Madonna or Michael Jackson though.

How about jazz? I've long held the opinion that jazz is music for musicians. The complex chord structures that often (usually?) exist in jazz simply do not seem to appear in most commercial music. I play in a number of performance and rehearsal groups, all amateur, and love 'em all. Brass band to jazz big band to musical orchestra to modern gospel (church band) to small jazz ensemble. I love 'em all, but I get the most pleasure from the small jazz ensemble. We play a fairly traditional format, head, solo's and head out. Great fun and I've played some very satisfying solos in this group. I've also played some terrible things that I wish I could just hide in shame from

What makes a song "special"? Songs have been analysed to death over the years and there are all kinds of things that have become formulaic, and therefore expected by the audience.

IMHO, as a listener, what makes a song or piece of music special is if it moves me emotionally. Things like hooks and reprised sections etc. help to do this by emphasising things that speak to the emotions.

As a musician, it should be enjoyable to play, perhaps have some challenging passages, leave room for me to express myself in the music - let me "sing" through my horn - to let me demonstrate my skills (or lack thereof ) Let me tell the audience how I feel.

Ultimately, if the song and the performer can draw you inside the emotional story then it's done its job and can reasonably be called good.

Sorry for the length of the post, it just kinda grewed...

Lawrie's $0.02 AUD (and that's worth more than $0.02 US at the moment )

There used to be an advert for a chocolate biscuit in the UK a few years ago. A band were doing an audition for an agent. His comment ?
" You sound dreadful & have absolutely no talent. You're going to go far "
Funny but sadly true.

A lot depends on good marketing as Lawrie quite rightly pointed out. I've had one tune recorded by a few people because I made some effort and simply passed it around. Getting airplay goes a long long way to helping any material. Don't bother trying for mainstream radio, they'll only play major artistes. Get a song / tune into small independant radio stations, and try and go in person with it if you can.

Success of a song is measured in sales, and sales are directly related to how many people hear the song. A mediocre song that gets air time will sell more copies than a masterpiece that never gets heard.

Successful songs are generally presented to the public by well-known artists. The unsuccessful songs may be as good or better, but you never hear about them. So the core question here is how to gain success as an artist so your songs get noticed.

In a world of many performers competing for the same audience with approximately the same quality of performance, the common denominator of success is sponsorship... someone to drive the business, create the image and market the product.

The people who win American Idol were talented before they won.. but afterwards they have sponsorship, and that's what sets them apart from everybody else with approximately the same talent.

"Success happens when opportunity and preparedness meet." -Unknown

From my perspective a lot of songs are written and recorded by folks like us all over the world, they never see the light of day other than a few hundred listens on a website. Why? I feel it is basically for a few simple reasons.

1. The market is flooded with that sort of thing, there are thousands of them, how does one shine through?

2. They are not commercially marketed and therefore only partially heard, by a select few that actually are there to promote themselves for the most part and not you. I remember being on acid planet a few years back, and to get listens you had to give listens, the more songs you reviewed the more reviews you got, but it was never in your favor, you could review 30 and get 10 back. It was also very clicky, if you were one of the "cool" artist, or flavor of the month you would stay at the top of the heap for ever.

3. Some are badly recorded, performed, and even just sang. I have heard folks have a full on website and every song on it is badly sang, with pitchy vocals and mostly off key.

4. The songs themselves are sub par, lyrics are maybe clever to a point, but very unmusically written, badly tied together, and very over personal. People IMO want to be reminded of things, taken somewhere, or amused by a song, and if the song is only familiar to you, then it will not be interesting to most. Bad cliques and hooklines, poor phrasing, can kill a song quickly.

Great post, Lawrie!


Related, and troubling:

http://www.bombhiphop.com/newbomb/bombpages/linernotes.html

...

If I could answer that question, I'd go into the consulting business and make some serious money.

It's the question every artist/producer/record company exec. would like to have the answer to.

I've been playing music for a living, and watching the crowd's reaction to songs. For the life of me I can't figure out why one song gets them excited while another that has the same rhythm, same chord progression, and similar melody doesn't work.

My own take - magic.

Notes ♫ Norton

I think there was a line in Spinal Tap where Michael McKean's character (was he Derek?) said something close to "There's such a fine line between creative and stupid."

This is such a subjective field.... a lot of it depends on the age of the listener too. I will be 60 very soon and my tastes are different from people not yet 20.

When the movie about Buddy Holly's life came out in the late 70s, a young kid that I worked with commented that "He did a lot of Linda Ronstadt songs!!"

For my money, the best guitar player ever was Chet Atkins. Now that doesn't mean that everybody else sucks, just that I think he was the best. Les Paul, Steve Vai, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, Randy Rhodes, Alex Lifeson, Joe Bonnamassa,...the list goes on. All great players, not interchangeable parts. Brent Mason, Brad Paisley in the country arena.... And I haven't mentioned Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian.... It's all subjective.

When you add in the hype machine... Someone mentioned Bob Dylan in an earlier reply. I don't own a Bob Dylan recording, I will never own one. I had one girl go on and on about "people steal his garbage to get discarded lyrics...." My reply? "Sure. Because nuts like you would pay money for Bob Dylan's garbage...."

As long as it will be subjective, we will see atrocities like Daughtry not winning American I'm-Dull when he was FAR AND AWAY the best talent that year. And Carrie Underwear winning over Bo Bice on the babe vote.... Now what they have accomplished SINCE is what matters, as Bice has vanished and Underwear has flourished, but to address the days they were on the show, she won on looks because at that point she was just "very good". (Disclaimer: I will never be a fan of hers because she sang that song promoting domestic violence about smashing the guy's car with a baseball bat. Even in lyrics, that is a serious subject and not to be trifled with.)

With the advent of MP3s and no album info, it's becoming much harder to find out who the musicians are on a recording, who the arranger is, or even who wrote the song. Since those are the things I do, it's particularly annoying to me.

This question has always fascinated me and I realised a while back that it's why I have loved, and been curious about, popular music all my life. I think marketing money can only help to a degree. I believe quality will out and songs will succeed if they touch an audience in a significant way by exciting in them emotions, memories or physical reactions.

I agree with jazzmammal and also must point out that success in today's media no longer means having to have a bonafide commercial 'hit'.

Does everyone know what a Pareto chart is? If not, reference here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_chart

In today's music sales, the right end of the pareto chart goes out almost to infinity. In the past, there were limited sales outlets, limited play outlets (radio with payola), but that has completely changed in the last 10 years. All of us reading this forum can put our music up for sale at iTunes.

There's a book on this phenomenon called 'The Long Tail'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail

Right now, there's a fairly young local guy (early 20's) named Tyler Ward who has worked his way from the far right end of the tail to showing up in the Billboard charts; not through a record company; not through payola, but through hard work, talent, some good looks and good fortune, skills at audio and video production, and an innate knowledge of how to use social media. I know this Tyler personally and have watched this happen over the past 12 months; going from just a few in Colorado knowing who he is, to a guy with over 500,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. Needless to say, the record companies are now courting him. He and his band go on a European tour soon - immensely popular there without ever having visited nor had his songs played on Radio 1 or any of the other national broadcast stations over in Europe.

Niches are the way to notoriety - not to the masses in the print and pressed world, but to the smaller sized worlds opening up due to the flattening of the world with the ubiquity of the Internet.

This bringing up of talent from the far right fringe to the left side masses is not only happening online, it's happening with shows like American Idol, X Factor, the Voice, America/Britain's Got Talent, etc.

Right now, someone is poo-pooing this latest comment because they think that it's the image that sells on those shows. I've watched every season of American Idol, and perhaps the only person that could be put on would be Carrie Underwood. Every other season, there were more attractive male/females on the show that were voted aside while the last 3 or 4 standing may not have had the best looks, but they were the most talented. Not all of them have been commercial successes however, mainly because they were niche player/singers (Think Taylor Hicks - just wasn't going to happen mainstream).

There's a belief out there right now that in order to have 'success' in media, one only needs to have '1000 True Fans'. There's a reasonable economic model behind it. See here: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php

In that article, it talks about the Long Tail as well as new funding mechanisms to get one's art in front of more people. It specifically references www.fundable.com but there are other similar sites now: www.indiegogo.com www.kickstarter.com which each have a slightly different take on how to take in pledges to get a project started.

Anyway, in summary, becoming a 'success' today depends much more on YOU than the MAN.