Quote:

... I am intending to pitch this tune through Taxi, so I would really like some feedback from my peer group here - anything that doesn't seem quite right in the backing tracks or confusing in the story line. ...



I thought I had commented on this one before, but I guess I haven't. It is a pretty good little rocker, that was a fun listen. Now for pitching ....

In my opinion, a song being "good" is different than being ready for commercial pitching. I have never pitched a song before, so take my advice with as many grains of salt as possible! So here are the things that stood out to me.

1.) The intro is too long -- here's Ralph Murphy's study of hit country songs from 2009: http://www.taxi.com/transmitter/1003/country-music-charts.html . There are no hard and fast rules -- only guidelines. But it seems that in 2008 and 2009 (by Ralph's studies) no one had an intro as long as you did (except Brad Paisley & Keith Urban trading licks -- but guitar playing is part of their schtick). Break this "guideline" at your own risk.

2.) The resonator guitar and brent's solo work were fighting for attention most of the time. I would scale back on Brent's solo -- it also competed with the lead vocal.

3.) One of the reason I have never pitched a song is that "outside" demos need to cut through the other 1000 songs the publisher/screen is listening to. You gotta have a top notch demo and top notch vocals. Sorry, I just don't see it happening any other way. Get a demo singer.

4.) Lyrically, you are pretty stuck on the "broken" word with not much story development that I can tell. You never established what was actually "broken". Without that there is no song "depth". The "yanking my chain" line jumped out as too out of character with the rest of the lyrics.

... and again I liked the song. But competing for commercial pitches is a different animal. I'll be interested to hear what the Taxi reviewers will say. If it is a Yes/No pitch with no taxi feedback, I would skip it.

Kevin

Now at bandcamp: Crows Say Vee-Eh @ bandcamp or soundcloud: Kevin @ soundcloud