And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Bonus Episode: Who Are The Picassos of Pop? (with Switched On Pop's Charlie Harding)

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

Last month Ross got back together with Charlie at Vox's Switched on Pop; this time to discuss everything from classic songwriting techniques, the happy accidents behind pop songs, and good listener habits. Dive into the conversation with this special BONUS episode, and boy does it have it all! Many thanks to our friends at Switched on Pop for always being down to nerd out with us. Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Season 5 of And the Writer is with your host, Ross Golan. Before I get my spiel, I want to acknowledge the music army that listens to this podcast every week. Since starting this, the And The Writer is community has literally changed the history of the music business by helping pass the music modernization act, gotten songwriters added to album of the year for the Grammys, and still is advocating for positive changes for our industry. industry on a daily basis. So thank you and congrats. Now, as you know, I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning

why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs. I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, Big Deal Music Publishing, and mega house music management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear, go to our website www. And The Writer Is.com. Hey guys, we did a crossover episode with our friends over at Switched on Pop.

They are one of the best podcasts about podcast. pop music. So I've been a guest on theirs before, and we talked about doing one together. So this one is one where I talked to Charlie about a bunch of things, you know, unplanned moments we've had in the podcast, you know, surprising things we've found over the last few years, so on and so forth. It's, it's really just a conversation between the two of us about our podcast, about music, about all of those things. So enjoy. Here's our crossover episode. No. Hi. Hi. I'm Ross. And I'm Charlie. I'm from And The Writer Is. And I'm from Switched on Pop. And we are doing a podcast together because we think our podcast together makes sense.

I think they really complement each other really well. I do too. Why do you think they compliment each other? Well, because I love how you dig deep into the personal life of a songwriter. Like what does it take to be a songwriter? Where do you come from? What is the story and all the anecdotes from the very beginning? It's kind of like fresh air for musicians. Like I really feel like I get to know people. Yeah, and I think yours is interesting because what you guys tackle is much more into the mechanics of how music works in a way that ours doesn't. So I feel like together they really both address pop music in the way that pop is consumed right now. Yeah. And it requires ongoing conversation because it's one of the fastest moving art forms. We've both had this awesome privilege to have a

microphone that we get to share with other people and an opportunity to investigate how other people work in the world of pop. And so I thought it would be fun to share some of our top learnings in getting to do these projects. Cool. Yeah. You want to go first? Sure. Yeah. People often ask us, why do I love this song? What makes this song brilliant? And I love to analyze music. I love to really sort of break it down and see what works. And in so many conversations with songwriters, the thing that happened in the room just happened to be a beautiful moment. At one point, Sia was accosted and was said, you know, it's absurd that you write a song in 20 minutes. How can that be any good? And she says, well, yeah, it took me 20 years to write a song in 20 minutes. Well, plus she writes five

songs in a day and there are a lot of days where all five are not great. Sure. And, you know, and it's really interesting the idea that people think that when they write a song, it needs to be the hit. Sure. And some she, you have to be unafraid. Yeah. Go somewhere and not feel so restricted with your time that you can't take a risk and fall on your face. So how about you? One of the top things you've learned to do this show. I've spent a lot of time on the introduction. And we've done 60s, episodes now, maybe 70-something, I don't know. But the intro and the outro for me are really important

because I think we don't often tell each other in our art forms how we really feel. I guess what I've learned from it is to not be afraid to tell people how appreciative I am of their work, regardless of it. It's an interview. To be able to compliment and that you only win by being supportive and not to You don't need to hate on somebody's achievements or how good their song is or they got the single or whatever it is. None of that matters going through the exercise of researching these people's history and recognizing how much they've influenced me and currently influenced me. And to be able to tell them to their face from the outset, this is some of the things that you've accomplished.

And I'm going to say this to the world. but I wanted to make sure not to record the intro without them there. I really wanted them to experience it. We're so used to not hearing from our peers how much you're loved by your peers. Yeah. I really admire that about your show. I think your introductions are not just generous.

There are more than I expect from a greeting in an intro. It's not here's a list of the things that someone has accomplished. It also humanizes that. It tells a bit of their story. Well, and I've gotten more comfortable as an interviewer. And I've kind of taken on a role of less, you know, this isn't necessarily a collaboration. This, you know, this is a chance for me to just blow up his spot or her spot. One of them that's really funny that's for this next season is with Paul Anka.

I think we have an idea of our predecessors. but I always talk about how I think legacy is sort of stupid because I don't think anyone really remembers anyone you know if I'm talking about 1830s and I'm talking about Schubert there's a very small handful of people who give a shit about Schubert and the guy died in his 30s and whatever

it's like people people don't know I'm going to see Paul McCartney on Saturday people want to go to that oh yeah like there are kids who don't know Paul McCartney is it doesn't matter what I do in my life you know but every once in a while You know, I'll interview someone who is undeniably at the very highest ranks.

You know, and the guy was 15 when he broke in. And he was one of those people who broke in with the Ed Sullivan show. The guy wrote, like, my way. Do you know what I mean? Like, the guy wrote, like, you know, when he was 15 years old, he did, Put your head on my shoulders. He was 15 when he wrote that. Put your head on my shoulder.

He wanted to start a record company with Buddy Holly because they were best friends. His story is just so awesome and so rad. And I met and hung out with a lot of people, but he's as authentic to his brand. And he's probably almost 80 years old, mid, late 70s. Most of people who broke in the 50s aren't with us anymore because they were 20 or they were 30 years old.

What about you? What's an episode for you that you feel like is different than all the others. You know, I try to be exploratory and constantly change my format in order to keep myself entertained, but also to keep people on the edge of their seat. I just did a piece on how ought I listen to BTS. I felt like as a musician I can listen to BTS,

who, for better or worse, are often a sort of a stand-in for all of K-pop, just because that they have the largest audience and the largest media attention. Now, a lot of people would suggest that BTS are very different than the rest of K-pop. And I had felt as a U.S.-based listener, not adept in Korean culture or K-pop music in general, I just had no idea what was the best entry point into that music. I'm so curious about what makes something work for other people and try to just put my taste at the door.

But in this case, I didn't feel like I could trust my ear. And so I went and talked with this brilliant professor at UCLA, Dr. Suk-Yung. Kim, who is a theater performance professor who wrote the book on how to listen to K-pop. For me, K-pop is so complex that the best way for me to rephrase it is to think it as kaleidoscopic pop, keyboard keypad pop. Sometimes I call it Kleenex pop because, you know, it's so disposable. Excellent songs are used once and they're forgotten the next week. And Korean pop in a way. and corporate pop as well with K. Two notes about K-pop.

One is that this was what happens when you have a nation, South Korea, that funds entertainment. Right. And our largest export as a country, compared to any other country, is entertainment. We have a vast amount of world entertainment that goes out. And yet we still are an industrial revolution type country that spends all the money on science and math and not on art. And we're making a giant mistake because when you see the success of the Korean entertainment, it's directly related to their government.

It is not just happenstance that Korea creates this music. They're actually subsidized and funded. When you see the success of Canadian artists in the United States, it's because 40% of Canadian radio needs to go to a Canadian artist. So if they start blowing up there, they can come south when you have the weekend, Bieber, Selindian, Michael Boubley, you know, Carly Rae Jepton, John Mendez. It goes on and on, Drake. All this is because there's a government-funded source for art. So we should learn from that. People also often ask us why is it that Scandinavians are so popular in music music.

Incredible state-sponsored music education and support throughout. The other thing I was going to say is that music has moved west since Vienna in the mid-18th century. So if music continues to move west, whether it's 1900s in France or it's 1950s in London and New York and the 2000s in L.A., it would make sense. if the next move is going to be in Asia and it's going to be in India and once they figure out how to monetize their music industries there's a reason why there's so much investment

in the DSPs in Asia and in Eurasia because there's going to be an insane amount of money because there's such a huge population and a crazy amount of art that's going to happen west of where we are now. So it makes sense why K-pop would be next. How about you? So number two. You learn how to listen differently when you listen to yourself speak.

And I can't recommend to any listener of any podcast. I would imagine if everybody were to take their phone out, pick up their voice note, and record their next conversation just for an hour, whoever it's with. At first you'll feel uncomfortable, but you should do that 10 times and listen back and find out how you actually communicate. anybody who's hosted a podcast or who's edited their own podcast or anything like that and I don't edit ours but I've listened to a lot and the first 10 episodes are vastly different than the most recent 10 episodes and a lot of it is just from listening and I don't think I knew how to listen when I started this

but I think I'm learning now how to hear and actually pay attention to what other people are saying And I just would imagine most people who listen to podcasts when they communicate to people, they may not be communicating how they think they're communicating. So something is amazing, amazing magnifying glass. Well, stepping outside of what we've learned about music, but just more generally about, I love that your lessons are about essential qualities of being human in many ways. Yeah. Finding emotion and how we communicate with our peers. I love this format that we have because I think it's one of the few formats where people stop and think and consider and maybe even propose, hey, have you thought about something this way? Oh, no, I hadn't.

I have done this project with my collaborator Nate now for almost five years. The only dispute we've ever had has been about an Ariana Grande lyric. And everything else happens on Mike in an honest dialogue and discourse, which is so different. than the majority of our media landscape. So I love that this format allows for... What was the lyric? And break free when she sings, now who I've become who I really are.

Huh. Do you know this? No, what was the debate? I mean, I know the song. Yeah, so, well, it's a public debate in which Max Martin wrote the lyric, and Ariana Grande didn't want to sing it because it was grammatically incorrect.

And they had a dispute in the studio about... And this is, they had, there's interviews that were around and talked about this. And she said, I don't want to sing it that way. I don't want to sing the wrong word. And he's like, no, but he wanted the rhyme. It sounds right. He wanted to get the rhyme with the previous line. And vowels matter.

Yeah, totally. And so when she sings the line, it kind of sounds like now who I've become who are really, uh, and I think there's like, she closes her mouth and gets a little at the end. Just as a like, you know, F you, I'm going to do it right. Well, let me tell you, like, in that world, because my main collaboration home is MXM, if there's an M at the end, they know it. And they discussed it and everyone in the room discussed it. And my assumption is that I would assume Peter Carlson did the vocals on that.

My guess is that we could, we're one text away from knowing the answer. Maybe we could cite all this dispute. But if there's something like that, that's a choice. only hip-hop and country are really art forms where they speak to English-speaking audiences only, you know, specific dialogue. But when you're doing pop music at the level that Ariana has been doing in that specific style of that song, it's built for people around the world to sing along to. So sometimes lyric can be secondary to the sound of the word. And that's okay. Part of what is so compelling about her is, there's so much, but the way in which she pronounces her words is incredibly idiosyncratic.

It can only be sung by her in her unique way of saying that word and forming that vowel. No doubt. I love it. Yeah. So that's our biggest dispute we've ever had. I like that dispute. We have all sorts of other, often just sort of musical logical questions that occur. And we're constantly trying to convince each other of things.

But I don't think if we were on shock jock radio or even on YouTube that it would allow for that back and forth in which we all get to engage in hearing from different perspectives. One of the thing I've learned from and the writer is, is when I prepare for these interviews

and I was alluding to this earlier, I'm going through somebody's discography. And Ali Willis talked about it in hers. She's the one who wrote the theme from Friends and, you know, amazing writer. But when you look at somebody's discography, when you see all these hits coming out, that's the easy time to ask questions. The hard part is when there's this what looks like a two-year lull, three-year lull. And anybody who's listening to this when you're going through a three-year lull, it's excruciating.

You don't know what's going to happen. But I can guarantee almost all of them are building something. That's when they're writing those hits. that's when they're figuring out what the next sound is that's when they're writing their musicals that's when they're writing their long form whatever it is that's when they're writing their TV show or their book it's always in this lull and then when it comes out

it comes out in 2022 and all of a sudden it's like wow what a year all these things happening for you what's it like and that's really just a celebration of the struggle from the previous three four years and it's so easy to ask people questions about the years songs are released just because of logic of course you're going to ask that but the real questions aren't what's happening in the years that are good but i'm so interested in the years where it seems like nothing's happening to the outsider i want to ask you about this

i was asked recently about do artists have less room for reflection and the opportunity to develop new work in that there's such a demand for ongoing content release, constant single drops, album after album, get right on tour. Well, okay,

so this depends on who the artist is and not to segue it, but I'll just mention it. So my day job is so much creating a song on Friday that comes out on Friday to be done on Friday. It's a two-week song cycle.

You know, in the best case scenario, it's something they go to radio, and they're willing to spend six months on, but the cost of radio is increasingly expensive. The artist cares less and less about how much they're making on any of these given things because they're making money on touring.

You know, the artist who's patient, who comes out with art, ends up being the Bruno Mars's. You know, it ends up being the Adels. It becomes these artists that are the ones that are constantly self. celebrated. The ones who come out and try to play the content game, they're successful for a while. And if they have the correct amount of followers on their DSPs, the algorithm will work in their

favor and they'll make money regardless of the quality of the music. But if you're trying to break in the business, more is not more. To me, less and way less is more. If you spend a year, five years, 10 years working on a project that's truly worthy of word of mouth, you are more likely to have the success of Switch on Pop because it's word of mouth, as we were discussing, then it will be being successful because of the amount of content. This is something I've really noticed is that there has to be a real relationship. I don't think you develop a fan base off of, as a fine song. you have to have some relationship there. There has to be a real emotional connection

that people have to with a thing. And when songwriters ask me for advice, who is your community? Who are you communicating with? Why do they need the thing that you're creating? Why does it matter? And if you can't answer those questions very well, what are you making?

What are you doing? You're probably doing it for fame alone. Well, and the discipline of the job is really important. And I talk about that a lot where treat it like it's a job. you know show up study your craft all the great artists in all different genres

all different art forms studied unless they were prodigies and those exist too but maybe for most of us who are in the world we're probably not prodigies we probably had to work at it and had to learn and you might have all the instincts in the world

but assuming you weren't 14 when you had your first major hit and you were you know your whole youth was not in the limelike because of your prodigious ways. You have to study and you have to keep studying. You have to keep working on it. And your only job is to entertain your audience. It is not about you at all as a writer. Stop showing me that you know how to write. Write so that way as a listener, I'm affected. Make it about the listener, not about yourself. So this is a sort of a segue to one of my other favorite moments, which was a conversation

that I had with Mike Posner, who I believe you've also had on your show, and who's kind of the sage wisdom of the songwriting world. I love the opening of his new record in which in the intro he basically says, if you don't have time to listen to this all the way through and just listen, that's fine. Just don't listen right now. Come back to it when you have time because I'm trying to, I want to share something with you and it's going to be a magical thing, but just let's do it together.

And I think that was kind of a bold choice. In speaking with him, I feel like I learn constantly all the ways which the rules apply until the rules don't apply. And I had a great conversation with him about his song, song about you, which was a hit a few months back. And there's this wonderful little line in there where he breaks all of your expectations.

I was really into like not rhyming. You know, a lot of, I didn't like a lot of rhyming in my career. And sometimes it gets in the way. You know, I did a book of poetry. and I found in some ways poetry was a lot more real or like harder in like a Detroit sort of way it's harder in that I don't mean more difficult I mean it's like grittier because you just say it

so we're playing around with not rhyming a lot and I think that's really what makes a song dope to me still is when I listen like in the first verse and say since you've been gone ain't got nothing to do I sleep until noon I wake up and feel bad That should rhyme

But it doesn't And that's really awesome to me That's also a Ricky Reed song Oh is it? To Ricky Reed's credit He wants to work with artists Yeah And doesn't necessarily think about

Songs as the priority Even though he respects a song And he came from writing hit songs And producing hit songs He's so into the idea of an artist and an artist palette. And I think that that's interesting that the things that you've brought up

have been from what seems to inspire you specifically are artists. Yeah. From a podcast that's often about pop songs. What is it about artists that inspire you versus pop songs, or is it just coincidence? I feel like I'm always wrestling with this tension that pop music is both industry, it is commerce, and it is pop art.

Both these things are happening. Sometimes in very unequal measure, these scales are balanced very differently per song and per artist. You know, I love work that like a great pop song just grabs you by the collar and the earworm is immediately in there and you're singing it after the first listen. I love a good hook, but I always want more. I want that song to just evolve and go deeper and have more to offer the more times you listen to it. There's a lot of pop that can be saccharine. You get a taste of it, and then on the second or third list,

and you're just like, it was great, super sweet, awesome. And by the third year listen, you're like, ah. Too much sugar. Yeah, too sweet, too sweet. And so with all art, I want things that have those qualities of both, there's something immediate there. Whether you're a musician or not, there's something that just grabs you.

And the more you know, the more the thing unfold and there's more beauty to the thing. Whether the composition and the things that I love about the song are intentional or not, right? Like, I love, for example, breaking down Julia Michael's melodies.

Her melodies are brilliant. They oftentimes have these sort of like internal logic to them where she'll do this tiny little, stepwise motif in the verse that then comes back in the post-chorus but then gets expanded upon. And when I talked with Justin Tranter a few months back, he's like, yeah, that's just stuff's happening in the room. It's not intentional. But I love the way in which there can be that beautiful compositional logic allows a song to blossom and blossom and blossom.

Well, and another thing is that Lizzo, Mike Posner, and Julia Michaels are all writers in the room who tend to be off the cuff, tend to freestyle. Sure. Obviously, they each understand craft as well, but all three of them really freestyle a lot. And what you get is what they spew out into the microphone,

almost more in a jazz sense. Sure, yeah. Versus and edited, you know, Max Martin sense. And I love his kind of work as well. I mean, breaking down, oops, I did it again, and looking at the complimentary choruses and counterpoint that, you know, know is like up there with Baroque style counterpoint is brilliant. I love that stuff. I think he

almost has the inverse where, you know, someone who's so detailed and exact in his composition, and yet the first time you hear it, it feels light and obvious and just, it like it just came out of anywhere. And then you go deeper and deeper, deeper, deeper. It just, it has more and more to offer. One of the things that Kanye's did on the last album where he would adjust the mixes once they were released. That's something that I think we'll see more of. I mean, right now, just working on the show part of The Wrong Man, there's 25 songs in the show, and they're different songs than the album, like massively, like the shows, the thing is different. It's still growing. And that's a way where obviously not everybody's trying to do like an album into a show.

But the idea that art is not done. We get it often when people do a remix where they have somebody else coming on the song a new feature that they'll re-release the song with the new feature. But I like the idea that I don't know why artists can't go back in and rewrite a verse or rewrite a pre-chorus or a chorus. Why they can't, you know, all the artists talk about after they've toured how, oh man, if they would record it now, it would sound so different because they've recorded it. They've performed it 200-something times in front of thousands of people. You have a whole other perspective.

So I don't know why we don't go in and rewrite songs that have been released. Why just because it's out in the world can you not adjust it to make it better? I would imagine if Taylor Swift went back and was like, you know what, I could probably syncopate one part of this new song besides the pre-chorus cool really fast,

but I could probably make that a chorus a little more exciting if she decided to do that. And I'm not critiquing her because I don't, you know, whatever. But my point is, I bet she couldn't. I bet everyone would listen to it and be like, wow, I like that version better. We just did a piece about Aladdin and how there has been a very strong response to Prince Ali in particular. A lot of people have been complaining that it doesn't sound as good, the new version as compared to the old version.

And one thing we noticed that it's a lot slower, actually it's a little bit slower. It's 8 ppm slower and it's a half step down. And maybe people are sort of feeling sluggish. And so we did this piece and then we got super. so much male about how they hear the song in a myriad of different ways, including different emphasis, different levels of swing in the music, and these subtle differences that I hadn't heard the original in a long time. I hadn't seen Aladdin since I was an adolescent, and so I didn't pick up on these. It's not music that was particularly important to me. I thought, the new one

sounds fine. You know, maybe prefer Robin Williams to Will Smith, but people develop such strong relationships to a recording that I think that it's there's also a danger in going back and touching it up because but man there's like Malcolm Gladwell has a podcast call revisionist history and the I think the very first episode of all of them was this idea that you know if and I refer to this a lot in our podcast like the Benny and Julia and these those people are the prodigies right those are the Picasso's they're super prolific it's so easy for them to do their sound and their sound is just the sound and

you know the way Picasso would be sitting at dinner and would just draw a sketch and trade for food like he didn't care about the abundance of music or you know his equivalent of art and then there was someone like Cézahn who wouldn't ever sign his name and he would go and to somebody's kitchen

later on pull down the painting and fix it 40 years later because he was like you know I think that Could work. Well, I love this prediction, though, and look forward to hearing things that, why not revise things? Punch them up. I think it's a, I do think it's a really fun idea. I gave a speech recently about, you know, it was more legislative stuff with songwriters in the state of the industry.

Which you advocate for heavily in your work. Yeah. Yeah. And songwriters have to know that just because the way things are now doesn't mean it always has to be that way. This industry is so young. The burn convention is, I think, 1886. So the copyright, internationally speaking, is 130 years old. In the U.S., really, 1909.

And really, the idea of recorded music happened around that time, but that was in reference to sheet music. We didn't have television really prominently till the 50s, and you don't really have the record business until Elvis, which is mid-50s, and then you get all these other guys like Paul Inko, you know, and you get the beginning of the record business. The record business is super young. It's not even 75 years old.

As far as the mass consumption, I mean, sure, jazz first record is 1917, and that becomes all the rage, and there are different moments in history where we have the record business has blips. But really Elvis and then the Beatles and all this, this is the beginning of what we know of as the record business. Yeah. That's not even two generations away. That's our parents.

You know, that's maybe our parents, parents, if we're talking about, you know, kind of Elvis, if you're really young. But you're talking about a really short-lived history in what we think of as, you know, the way things have to be. Yeah. It's okay for you to ask for things that aren't in contracts. Just because they aren't there doesn't mean that they'll never be there. it's okay for us to advocate for each other in a way where we change you know the last year and a half

so much has changed and what we're about to deal with so much is changing for the music industry and it's partly because we're asking for things i think that's just important for all of us to look at our industry and say yeah you know what sure would be better if songwriters could split a point you know it might be nice if we created some sort of you know you know know a living wage where where record companies release your music that they pay the statutory rate in advance like they would you know the producer fee like X amount of dollars it's okay to ask for some of these things it's okay to ask the PROs the performance rights organizations ask at BMI to help find use their collective bargaining of sorts to create

healthcare yeah you know the Grammys should have a songwriter of the year all the other ones do. We got songwriters added to album of the year. So why can't we get a songwriter of the year? Why is it that pop songs, why you can qualify for country song and then that also qualifies for song of the year. Why is it that pop songs don't have its own category? It's just really interesting. I just think it's important for us to all to look at the industry, the state of the industry, and continue to talk about how we can find equity for songwriters other than just complaining about the way things are. Well, maybe we could both do one more quick favorite moment.

And I have one that I'd like to share, which is in response. We've done some reporting recently on how the change towards a streaming-based music economy alters composition and songwriting. And we first found this material through some great reporting by Dan Koff and Ayesha Hassan at Quartz. I want to play you a clip from our conversation. So the way that many music streaming services work is that songs generate money per play. That means every time that they're streamed, they generate a certain amount of money, and that's very little.

So it ranges between $0.004 to $0.008. And then if you don't play it to the very end, and that rating goes down, meaning that people don't listen to the song through as much, then the song is less. likely to make it into Spotify's really lucrative playlist, which get them streamed more. And because the amount of money is so little, volume is really important. I think it's important to note that artists right now, according to a report in 2017, they're only getting about 10% of the music industry's total revenue. But streaming is so important because that's how they're going to break out, right? And if they're not going to be heard by audiences, then less people are going to buy their tickets

for their concerts, less people are going to buy their merch. So to be visible, it's really important to sometimes game the streaming system so more people listen to their stuff. You know it's cool? Yeah. If you listen to all the, let's say Beethoven's Fifth, it starts with the hook. You know exactly what it is right away. All those great classical songs started with the hook.

And then they spend the whole piece referencing that hook. What we have in Spotify is actually that. Right now, we're going back to the idea of. often starting with the hook or starting with something like the hook. So that way the listener knows exactly what they're getting into. They can hear the refrain. They can hear the main part. The greatest songs in history that we talk about often start with the hook.

Yeah. And, you know, maybe when we get into these long form albums and there's still a desire to hear that stuff, and obviously as an artist, that's my whole MO. But in those long forms, you can go wherever you want musically. But something really exciting right now is that there's no patience for the listener. So we're not going through these long extended verses hoping that they're hanging on. Instead, we're starting with the hook. Maybe the way songs are always meant to be.

We're starting with twinkle, twinkle little star. Right off the bat, you know what the song is called. You know the hook. Yeah. It goes ABA, super simple, done. Yeah. We're doing that right now. Yeah.

That's what the DSPs have brought up is maybe we're going back to what songs were in short sonata form. Huh. Maybe we went into the wrong way for a while. Maybe we're back. And the view that change is a positive thing. It's really exciting. One of the neat innovations in composition that I've heard has been what we call, we've been calling it the pop over. which is give someone a taste of the hook up front.

Maybe it's just a four bar, eight bar, little intro. You have some sort of like reverberated or filtered out lead synthesizer, which plays the hook and gets you in your ear and then drops you into the verse as a way of giving you a taste of what's to come, but not blowing out the entire climax right at the start. And that's a cool new song for. I hadn't heard that until the last couple of years. We've all gotten used to the, you know, you start with the verse. you know and there's a place for that but it's okay to start with with hooks and hooks are man that's that's what makes songs fun why are we shying away from less like more hooks more hooks more hooks just make them unique hooks and don't make them stock hooks but folks are your friend

there there's a lot of reporting i've seen about this anxiety that our song's getting worse because they're getting shorter or our analysis of lyrical content and suggesting that lyrics are becoming more A lot of like large data set analysis to make some sort of qualitative statement about music and the journalist Aisha Hassan I think addressed this beautifully on our show. I think that anxiety is tied to like brevity in popular culture or digital platforms as a whole People are concerned about you know light culture where we just respond to everything with a thumbs up Or just an emoji And we're just like scrolling through Instagram videos or snap chat videos kind of numbly and I think the This anxiety over shorter songs or maybe the diminishing quality of music because of shorter songs

is actually tied to maybe the diminishing quality of our communication or interaction with each other because of the way that social media has pervaded like society. Hell yeah. Right? It's not the song's fault. It's not the song's fault. It's not the writer's fault either. No.

And again, if you're entertained, then they're doing their job. Totally. I think one of the mistakes that a lot of musicians and artists and songers, are doing right now. The trend right now is to do this, I'm going to read my diary to you. And I'm going to avoid all the math as much as I can, you know, to just make sure that I, so I sound cool because I'm avoiding it. And I like that there's starting to be this pushback to some more like songcraft. I actually don't think things are really repetitive right now. I think K-pop really has it right. Oh my gosh. It's part of the reason why they're succeeding so well.

You're surprised every five seconds. But the idea of mumbling through a song and saying what's off the cuff is not as exciting as when you give somebody help set up some expectations and throw them for a loop and, you know, like, or throw them whatever. It's exciting right now. If you bring in your songcraft right now and you really do your diligence as a writer, I think you'll actually win better in the next year and a half. than you have in the last two.

Makes me think of, I mentioned break free that R. Enz did. I love that song in particular because there are so many points where you think something's going to happen and it doesn't happen and you're surprised. It has an introduction that sounds like it's going to drop into some kind of like dubstep thing. That goes away

and only returns in the outro. After the post chorus, there's this crazy riser that happens and you think again there's going to be a drop, no drop. And you keep getting led in these directions that ultimately go in somewhere where you are totally surprised. And when a song does that to me, it's the best. But that's the difference. And, you know, I talk a lot on the show about how recorded music is an illusion.

And it's not dissimilar than how you guys talk about it. But a good songwriter, if they're a magician, if we're going to use magic as the metaphor, the magician can do a lot of cool tricks and you may look at that and be, you know, impressed with all the tricks. But one trick in particular is the one that everyone talks about. Can't necessarily control that. As a magician, you're going to do 10 tricks and they're going to like most of your audience.

If you do your job, they're going to like all 10. But that extra one is the one that has like the... Jeunise qua. You know, it's going to have that... That break-free moment where you think it's going to go somewhere. And if the writer and the artists and the producers are all in sync, it's possible that that illusion music really shines where you as the listener have certain expectations.

The writers gave you the journey and entertained you appropriately. They took you for a ride and you want to hear it again because that ride was so fun. That's the magic of music. That's the magic of a good songwriter And a good producer is someone who can do that You can take you the listener on a journey That's the goal is to find out who the magicians are for me

And for you is to find out How the magic tricks were done Yeah I think it's a beautiful place to it And you have this show coming out And where should people go to check it out The first single off of The Wrong Man is called Stay Positive The Album is called The Wrong Man that you can get at all your DSPs.

You know, we have a movie that's coming out. We did an animated movie that was in the Tribeca Film Festival. And then it's opening in New York at MCC Theater on October 7th, directed by Tommy Kale, who did Hamilton. Alex Lachamore was the music director for Hamilton. It's their first show since Hamilton as far as musicals. So come and see the show and let me know beforehand. Maybe I can give you a high five if I'm there. I cannot wait to.

experience all of this. This has been a pleasure. And we can find, And The Writer is. And all the same places you find, switch down and pop. Anywhere you get your podcast. Exactly. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist or visit our website and and the writer is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. And The Writer is is is, is Produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Berg's Mo, and published by Big Deal Music. A special thanks to David Silberstein from Mega House Music and Michael White.

Until next time, this is Ross Golden.