Perfect Rot

Despite Eddi Reader’s great vocal for Fairground Attractions’ hit song, Perfect, being perfect ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. That terribly effective chorus is a curse of an earworm if you’re at all susceptible to perfectionism.

While I totally get wanting your work to be good, better or even best, there’s a downside to over polishing or waiting until ‘it’s just right’ before sharing or releasing a song. There’s also a potentially shady side to repeatedly comparing your music or your performance with other artists.

Sure, anyone involved in creative work is prone to losing perspective. Being fully immersed in a project or a production is a fine thing, but when you’re never satisfied with a job well done to the best of your abilities, then something’s amiss.

Songwriting is wildly subjective. There really is no single formula to follow for a hit or a magic pill you can take to ‘make it’. Yep, there are fairly generic songwriting conventions, sometimes misconstrued as ‘rules’ or ‘absolute truths’. But a song can technically tick all the boxes and still not appeal to an audience.

Terminology - perfect fourths and fifths, being ‘in tune’, having perfect pitch, perfect rhyme, hitting the ‘wrong’ note – applies a little pressure! And the countless mathematical qualities in music from time signatures to the number of accidentals in a key can also put you into ‘gotta get it right’ mode.

Arming yourself with great technique and theory is hugely useful – a lifetime resource. But, and there is a big but. If you feel you always have to ‘get it right’, you never give yourself permission to fail.

That’s a worry because songwriting is asymmetric – an astronomically high number of misses for every hit. There are cul-de-sacs and dead ends, ideas that don’t fly, songs that people like more than others, duff records, bombs, flops and things that seemed like a good idea at the time! Madly imperfect!

You need to fail to make your best work. And have fun doing it! You actually need
to enjoy the process (intrinsic motivation!) or your sense of play, your creativity – the very fuel of your fire - is stifled. You procrastinate, fearful of critique. You ruminate, pointlessly. You become resistant to risk, feedback, new suggestions, collaborations or live performance. You shut the shop on yourself.

To turn this around, know these things:

1. Perfectionism is an abstraction. It is like infinity – you won’t get there because there is no there. Set benchmarks for yourself you can imagine and party hard when you meet them!

2. Shit happens – the things of life that look like accidents or bad luck. No, the world doesn’t hate you! It’s just a case of being human. Prepare a little for inevitable setbacks – cue checklists, insurance and spare strings!

3. There will always be people better than you. And worse! The reality is that your songs won’t connect with everyone. So find your audience, your own artistic niche and your tribe – supporters, colleagues, your natural network.

4. Listen to the positive as evenly as the negative feedback. Keep a success portfolio to track your progress (things you did better than before). Then you can balance rumination with hard evidence when things go awry.

5. If you can’t get perspective, get diverted. Sleep, exercise, take a bath, hang out with (non)musical mates, talk to your kids, volunteer somewhere. Regroup, shake it off and go write a new song.

Talk soon

with very best wishes
Charlotte Yates  

ps We had a great time at the NEXT LEVEL Songwriting Retreat in Tahora over the weekend. Thanks to all the songwriters that came and gave it their all:  Juliet McLean, Nick Feint, Farley Hokopaura,Tim Jardine, Hanne Jøstensen, Nycki Proctor, Rachel McAlpine, PH Lim, me and Nancy Fulford. Love your work! Thanks to Debb Stewart, Kerry Turner and their mate, Alix for the lovely catering and cossetting at 3 Bullock Farm, Tahora. 

​The next event will be a FIRST LEVEL Songwriting Retreat
over Labour Weekend,  22-25 October 2021. And you can book now!

pps Songwriting School, my online songwriting weekly tuition session, is on it's way next month! Get into it here. 

Illustrations by Leanne Shapton ​

ps the Next Level Songwriting Retreat @Tahora 22-25 January has sold out. However, you're welcome to contact me about going on the wait list.  It's gonna be a great start to 2021!

pps Songwriting School is coming soon!!
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When you start to write your own songs, you may think that because songwriters have been using many of the same words in so many songs,  there’s no room at the table for anyone else. 

Important words - especially those simple, clear, really useful ones -  like love, you, I, us, me, heart, always, eyes, night feel well thrashed. How on earth do you make your mark?

Strategy Two is to use words differently. There are many ways to do this but here's three.

1. Context

How you set common conversational phrases up in a lyric can make them virtually pop. The lyric immediately before or after becomes almost a wrap-around balance of familiar vs. surprise.

Exhibit A - Fiona Apple

In her song Shameika, the first line sounds utterly conversational and normal usage but it's a great set up for the second line where the lyric come alive with the unexpected postpositive adjective (invisible) and an internal rhyme (teeth with streets). Both lines scan exactly the same, rocking along at 4 dactyls apiece. 

I used to walk down the streets on my way to school
Grinding my teeth to the rhythm invisible

Exhibit B - Prince

The phrase 'moon-June lyrics' is a dig at the Tin Pan Alley perfect rhyme pair that stumped songwriters resort to. But it depends on the context. Here's Prince using it in Sign O' the Times and you barely notice because the set up is so deft.

Sister killed her baby 'cause she couldn't afford to feed it
And we're sending people to the moon
September my cousin tried reefer for the very first time
Now he's doing horse - it's June.

2. Imagery

The power of metaphor can revitalise words you need to use. Finding new ways to describe love is always a challenge!

Exhibit C - Lori McKenna

Here Lori McKenna creates a pretty picture in her song Rocket Science.

Love is rocket science
What comes up it must come down
In burning pieces on the ground
We watch it fall
Maybe love is rocket science after all.

Exhibit D - The Weeknd

And The Weeknd is so struck he can't feel his face in this memorable love twist, Can't Feel My Face

I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh

3. Rhythm

Singing and speech have a great deal in common but melody allows the extension, compression and dilation of words to shift emphasis and underline emotional impact. Singers spend lungfuls of time on vowels and luckily 90% of contemporary songs are in the first person, so that's a lot of chances to sing I!

Exhibit E - Whitney Houston with Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You.

Greatest vowel allocation rhythm presentation ever!
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Nothing but a polite smattering of claps - a fucking clap smatter! A response so spectacularly underwhelming, it leaves you with nowhere to run.

Meanwhile, another songwriter wipes the floor with a song that sounds like it fell from the sky. WTF!

Where does this leave you? I got three words.

1. Apples
2. Horses
3. Divorce

1. Apples

Comparison, for example apples with oranges, can be a strenuously soul-destroying occupation. It's a right royal joy robber and if there's one thing that little undie-packer Marie Kondo has taught us, it is to do things that spark joy. And music is a place of enormous joy! Think of the most fun place you have in songwriting and go there. Often.

There will always be better songwriters, better songs and better musicians than you. And in turn, you'll be further down the track than countless other folks. Reframe comparison into admiration, a spur to up your own game.

Relish the influences and interactions you have with other songwriters and musos. It's a grand party to be at and you'll learn far more from rubbing shoulders than isolating yourself. Ask other songwriters how and what they go through. Most are happy to share their stories.

Use close listening to your favourite artists to dig deep into subtleties and nuances in their songs because now you have experience of buckling down to write your own, with variable success, you have a stronger appreciation of how much it takes to cut through the noise.

Use selected reference tracks in your recording process to support and extend your decisions. Be influenced by music you love and stretched by practitioners more advanced and experienced than you.

2. Horses.

I was on the same bill in a concert that the Topp Twins were MC'ing, where Linda told the highly excited audience they would be handled like horses. My, how the audience loved it! Being told what to do and how to behave by confident consummate performers - also expert horsewomen in their own right!

Do the same with your songs. Any time you play a song - live or recorded - for an audience, your song either will or won't connect. It's not the audience's fault if it doesn't.

The audience needs to be able to relate to your song, to feel something that you've encapsulated and delivered musically. They need to get it and you need to lead them, like horses, to where the 'it' is.

Finding out how to clarify your ideas and communicate them effectively in song is your job, and if you are not getting the impact you want, then luckily, you - the songwriter, can try other techniques. The onus is on you and your writing. 

So write, write often, write with other people, learn as much as you can about songwriting, and use a feedback loop to improve and make adjustments. 

3. Divorce.

You are not the song. If a person doesn't love - love - love your song, it doesn't mean they hate you. Some songs are strong and some are dogs. Build your catalogue and acknowledge that while your personal experiences and values may be tied up in artistic self expression of songwriting, to an audience songs are theirs and all about them. 

Plenty of songwriters write about characters and mashups of their own and other folks' life events. The balance is the level of specificity of detail to create clear, unique images against the universal emotions and topics of the human condition. Too specific can get bogged down in lyrical minutiae while too universal can often come across as bland or inauthentic. 

The more you get involved in songwriting, the more objective you can become about which songs land and less defeated by the ones that don't.  Remember, it's a highly asymmetrical business with gazillions of misses to a hit single, so volume is key.

Thanks so much for all your questions and queries. Keep them coming and I'll do my level best to answer.

Talk more soon
Charlotte

ps if you want to take your songwriting to the Next Level, please join us at the Next Level Songwriting Retreat this summer in beautiful Tahora. There are only five places left!!

pps if you struggle with singing or can't play for peanuts, don't let that stop you writing a song. Read this.

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The consequence of being stuck in that bog is stasis. All that energising momentum lost.

Luckily in the same interview, Elliott hands you the secret sauce - the very thing he was great at,  which was creating interesting, heartfelt and unique sounding songs. Not talking about it  - strangely involving though he could be, but doing it and what he spent the most flying hours on was playing guitar and piano, singing, writing and recording music and schlepping it. 

While I don't advocate his model of self care, his suggested ethos of unleashing your imagination, listening to what it has to say and turning that into your own big beautiful songs makes a great deal of sense to me.

For those of you all bogged down, come back to fundamentals - play a lot, write a lot and make the strongest set you can.

Or take one step towards that.

Talk more soon
Charlotte Yates  
​ps application are now open for the Next Level Songwriting Retreat Jan 22-25 2001

But like any rule of pop music, there are always exceptions and when the rule of common time is challenged, it makes the song stand out instantly. There are two main ways of doing this – one is to set the time signature of your song in an unusual (for pop) time signature like Pink Floyd’s Money which ticks along in a groovily unsettling 7/4.

The other way is to change part of the song into another time signature for a short while and that’s what I want to point out today. This is like changing the key of the song – it’s just as attention grabbing for the audience - and it also has a great musical theory handle. It’s called metric modulation when the songwriter changes the metre or ‘beat' of the song from one time signature to another within the song.
 
You’ll be completely aware of this when it happens -  it will literally make you move differently and a cracker example of it is in Hozier’s Take Me To Church.
 
The song starts off in a lilting 3/4 for the verse but when it gets to the line
                     
                          We were born sick – You heard them say it, 

we jumped into one bar of 4/4 before switching or modulating back to 3/4 for the rest of the verse.
 
Further metric modulation happens at the chorus when the song rocks out in pop’s standardly glorious 4/4.
 
Now why do this mucking with the timing? Well, it’s a great lever to pull because it grabs the audience by the scruff of the neck and says listen to this! That element of surprise can highlight a particular lyric line (which is what happens in the verse) or it can create real contrast between sections (which is what happens when we reach the song’s chorus).
 
Another example is in Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, where she jumps from 4/4 to a bar of 2/4 on the verse lyric 

                                             I hated you, I loved you too, 

which snaps us to attention.
 
And in the chorus we jump bar by bar almost imperceptibly from 4/4 to 3/4 to 2/4 to 3/4 underneath the lyrics
 
                                       Heathcliff It’s me I’m Cathy I’ve come home
                                         and I’m so cold let me in your window.
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