Waking Ideas

Some people often complain about the length of time between albums or new releases from their favorite artists. While I understand this perspective (I am, after all patiently waiting for a 2008 release of both a Doves and Third Eye Blind release), take for a moment that music is not a pure capitalistic consumption - some of it is actually art. Imagine an old school artist who after sketching, painting, and repainting for months, even years. Do people ask to see the work in progress, and lightly mock that the work would be seen only after the death of the artist.

Writing a song isn’t hard. Anyone can write a song - you’ve probably already started in the back of your head and you might not even know it - but, not everyone can write a good song. With enough effort, a good song can be worked into a great song. There are much fewer great songs compared to all the songs in the world, which probably grow at an exponential rate, with bad songs making little baby bad songs. But where does that song writing stop? Can a musician take a great song a re-work it until it’s moved back into the ‘good’ category?

I would argue that musicians need to stop and get a set of trusted outside options that will be brutal enough to provide criticism in both improving music but also to stop them and kick them out of the studio once they have a great song. The producer of an album may provide this extra insight to the songwriter or musicians. Some producers even have the reputation of working with a band to take good songs and make them great and cut them off once they reach the great mark. But the question remains: How long should a writer work on good songs?

At what point does the song stop being a “new” song and become a “old” song that’s been killed by the tinkering and tediousness over the years? When does a song stop being fresh? If it’s not an “instant classic” that stays fresh for months and years to come, can an unreleased song lose it’s favor in the eyes of the fanbase and possibly the songwriter?