What makes a song good?
Or more specifically, a recording of a song.
After more than three decades of experience and analysis, I have developed a theory on what makes a song good. I believe there are essentially three categories from which a good song is created. A good song does not have to contain all three parts or even two. A few good songs have been produced with only one overwhelmingly powerful part.
The four categories are: (in no particular order)
Rhythm, Tone, and Message.
RHYTHM : A killer rhythm is innately infectious and will make a good song even if the tone is less than stellar and the lyrics are unsubstantial. Examples: most Bo Diddely classics, many Buddy Holly standards, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, and Ray Charles "What'd I say". Though these examples included killer tones, I will think of tone-deficient ones and update this treatise soon.
TONE : I include the sub-category of Dynamics within Tone though it has become one of the most conventional, standardized, and processed of musical tools. example: all the copycats of Led Zeppelins/The Who's pioneering of acoustic intro's followed by thunderous electricity. My favorite examples of the power of Dynamics in song recording is the DOOR'S "When the Music's Over".
TONE was most often derived from the combination of a particular brand of guitar with a particular brand of amplifier. To a guitarist/artist/producer with a highly trained and talented ear, the power of that simple combination could be revolutionary. Again, to my mind, the most important example would be that of Buddy Holly's stratocaster in 1957/8. Then came the 60's and new analog effects which opened a whole new ocean of tones to choose from as Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton of Cream demonstrated.
Then Tom Scholz standardized everything it seemed, for good and later bad, with the Rockman in 1975. The combination of that particular chorus/delay/reverb has become the most overused TONE in guitar-based rock music. And the electronics of guitar signal processing now multiplied by digital recording's re-processing has all but moved the TONE making power from the musician to the producer.
But overall, TONE is a function of the musician's instrument, amplification, and his ear. To which has been added the mixer/producer/sound engineer. The total of interactions of the instrumentation with the vocalist's particularly unique sound and style still make up the largest percentage of commercially successful recordings, regardless of the convention of the message and the standardized rhythms employed. Check any BillBoard Top 100 singles list from the last 50 years for examples.
MESSAGE: The Wordsmith's playground and pulpit. Bob Dylan's voice has a tonal quality that to some is an acquired taste, while to others irritates like fingernails on a blackboard. But with MESSAGES like that, so what? Mr. Zimmerman almost singlehandedly injected the entire genre of storytelling message songs into rock'n'roll.
Ironically after going electric in 1965. Inter-breeding and transplanting the styles of country music's Hank Williams, Blue's Willie Dixon, and Folk music's Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan's most overlooked and least known contribution to the evolution of pop music into a powerful teaching tool was his lambasting of John Lennon and Paul McCartney when he first met them in the fall of 1964. Bob is reported to have yelled at them, in reference to their many hit singles about girls, hand-holding, kissing, dancing, and general love-la-la, "but you're not SAYING ANYTHING".
Which prompted John Lennon to begin writing songs with MESSAGES that began a few weeks later with my all-time favorite "You've got to hide your love away", a very dylan-esque departure from the year's previous efforts, and culminated in Beatles standards like "Let it Be" and "Hey Jude", as Mr. Mcartney got the message as well. Many singer-songwriter-wordsmith-troubador-stringbending-strummers followed in the huge wake of the message tidal wave.
Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty to name a few, but also acoustic urbanites like Paul Simon and Neil Diamond as well, demonstrate the fact that the MESSAGE does not have to be intellectually deep to be extremely powerful.
Stephen H. Smith
4.17.03
