I heard someone say at a songwriting event... might have been our very own David Snyder .. that Nashville was looking for the short songs again. Many writers have a hard time writing anything complete, that's less than 2:30 total. It takes much thought and a bit of expertise to tell a story in that time length.

BUT.... if you still have any 45's from the 60's.... pull them out and look at the song lengths.... many of them were in that magical 2:30 to 2:45 area and varied by only a few seconds one way of the other.... and I'm talking about the big #1 hits we all (us older folks anyway) grew up listening to on the radio. Almost nothing back then ran much past 3 minutes and when Hey Jude came out running over 7 minutes, that was a wall breaker.

In fact, many songs from that era had 2 versions. The radio version, and then the song they sold in the stores that was permitted to run longer. Album cuts became common. Even Margarittaville had 2 versions, of course, that was a bit later as well.

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The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.