There are so many things I love about music. I can’t claim to like all of it — most of country music and a lot of what passes for modern day Hip Hop and Top 40 hits leaves me, I suppose, as perplexed as anyone else from older generations that shockingly doesn’t find any connection to music that never intended to include them in the audience to start with.
The voice of the singer doesn’t need to be perfect, but needs to match and express the emotion of the song. It helps if the recording of the song demonstrates that the musicians involved are strong players, or, at the very least, devoted to their craft. Most of the time I prefer songs with a measure of complexity, the kind that sound either like the lyrics are raw with feeling and were bled out of the writer, or the music was meticulously composed so each note would be as thoughtfully placed as all the others, or both. Which isn't to say I can’t appreciate a simple and nasty Def Leppard guitar hook, either.
If I think of the songwriters I respect the most, for whatever reasons, I find they share a lot of the qualities I’ve listed above. Granted, songs and recordings of songs are two different things; this is why the Grammy awards have had prizes for “Song of the Year” to recognize the songs and “Record of the Year” to recognize the performances. When I think of peak songwriting, I almost automatically think of Bruce Hornsby. I suspect most people reading this would either think (a) “Who?” or (b) “That guy who did 'The Way it Is' and maybe three other pop hits in 1988?” Yeah. Him. If you only know him from his radio hits thirty-five years ago, you’ve missed out on much of a remarkable music career. The guy is not only a sickeningly talented multi-instrumentalist (he’s likely a true genius when it comes to the piano), but his writing builds songs into living things that almost feel like novels. He may not be the only songwriter perched on the apex of any pyramid representing songwriters from the past fifty years, but he has his share of the real estate up there.
If, or really when, the day comes when I attempt to write at least one honest to goodness song, I know his work is going to be the direction I try to follow. I’d be lost faking my way through a chain of “Sha na na na Na na whoa-OH” sing-along choruses, or looking for the perfect coupling of romantic notions that followed both a syllabic pattern and a rhyme scheme. If I take a run at it for real, I want to aim for something that evokes a feeling of time and place, something that taps into our collective memory and brings back feelings that, while they may be a little different for everyone, will remind people of what they felt at one time, and maybe still wish they could feel again, if only for a moment. After all, if you’re going to try and tell a story, heartbreak is infinitely more interesting than happiness.
As for the music? Nope. I know my wheelhouse. I'll stick to expressing myself through the lyrics, thank you very much. Luckily though, I have a potential collaborator at the ready who I know could conjure up the music needed to match whatever I might have to say. It’s really just a matter of what and when such a project might begin.
Summer maybe? I guess we'll see....
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