Waiting and Writing Songs
Written by Daniel Nicolas. Posted on August 12th 2008
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?
Made in the Dark
Written by Daniel Nicolas. Posted on August 5th 2008
Have you ever just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and then had your morning change completely? This particular morning I had to take my brother to the train station and I wasn’t all that happy about waking up early. Now as I am not a morning person, waking up early is a rather laborious task nearly equivalent to the Twelve Herculean Tasks, but with less horses and hydras and more grumbling and griping.
This particular morning I had been woken up, moaning about how bright the sun was and how I might melt disappear in the fog on the way home. On the way out the door I spotted a CD from the night before and instantly a song stuck in my head, and I just sorta jammed along in my head and danced as my morning began to turn around. I grabbed the new Hot Chip album and shuffled to the car.
My brother yawned and asked what CD I grabbed. I just turned it louder, selected track 11 of Made in the Dark, and grinned. The road screamed as the car flew down the highway to catch the train, and hypnotized by the strangely fresh music he lost it. I laughed as my brother moved his arms and tapped his feet, bobbing his head and singing along as if he’d heard it a million times. After arriving at the train station exactly on time, my brother rushed to buy his ticket and I sat in the car laughing.
Hot Chip’s Made in the Dark is one of my recent favorite albums and it’s held up against time. After constantly listening it as it leaked, then buying and still listening for weeks after the official release, I took a break and gave it some time to age and realized that I would come back to it eventually and just totally dance and grin like that day. In late July, I put that notion to test and brought the album to work. It turned out to be nearly the best day of work ever (almost as good as the day I brought Daft Punk’s Discovery).
