But I'm not one to completely disown any idea, so as an opportunity to expose my pre-existing biases, I submitted one of my songs in a contest recently. The songs was Do You Still Love Me Now from the We Three album I released a couple years ago.
You can here it at mrprimitivemusic.com; go to Albums and Music, click on We Three, and scroll down to the song. You can also hear it on Spotify or Apple Music, if you prefer.
The Music City SongStar Awards was the event and I am sad to say I did not win, or the song was not chosen. I was informed that a critique would be sent to me in the coming weeks and I received it a week or so ago.
I was so close!
I had to laugh at that, but I was not surprised. Here are their categories and comments:
Clear theme or cohesive idea; I scored well on this.
Clearly identifiable sections (verse/chorus,etc.); good job.
Lyrics evoke emotional response; another good job (I've had people tell me the song makes them cry!)
Lyrics are singable and memorable; good work.
Music/melody adds to the theme or emotional impact of the song; they reiterated the category and said to keep it up.
Music keeps listeners engaged; well done.
From here it gets more to the heart of the matter.
The dynamics take the listener to a satisfactory climax or conclusion; they felt I had but I should play with it a little more.
The song expresses the theme in a new or fresh way; they felt I was successful, but added I should go further with lyrical pictures that might capture the meaning of my idea. I thought this ironic in that there's no way you could misunderstand what the song was about.
*The song has commercial potential*; here they stated I should be lyrically precise, keep the intro short, play up the dynamic changes, and have hooks o' plenty.
Some final comments reiterated keeping the intro short-country especially, but they liked the song-good melody, lyrics worked well with the song; it comes across as heartfelt.
They had category levels as follows: "less than good", "on the right path", "so close", and "nailed it". In every category listed the song was ranked "so close". Now I could be snarky and snide, but in truth, given the market-country especially, it would be better to argue that rather than so close, the problem with the song is that it's 30 to 40 years too late. I wrote it as I remembered country songs from my youth when those songs appealed to a much wider age demographic that they do now. People in their 20's and early 30's aren't going to get the song and classic country is content with hits of the past.
Still, it's nice to know they liked the song.
This week's song, is Life Without Chickens, from the album of the same name:
It is, on the one hand, the oddball of the album, a long, 15 minutes, instrumental in 3 parts, each with a nonsensical title, while on the other, it sets the tone for the rest of the songs.
The 3 parts are:
A. A Ticket in Bill's Shirt,
B. Martians With Guns,
C. A Hymm to Life Without Chickens.
The inspiration came from too many hours listening to Miles Davis' work from the 60's and 70's; he had long pieces that moved from theme to theme. In the case of Life Without Chickens, the connector is the bass track and the idea was to move from different rhythms within the framework of a simple drum pattern for each section, the bass, 2 guitars, and the synth. Simple as that. It has a lot of open space that allows the different instruments to be heard, which is a theme throughout the album and its successor, Apologia.
It can be heard at the same places as the about noted song.
©2018 David William Pearce
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