The Return of the Song
Had an interesting conversation with a young friend over lunch. She’s a musician, just finishing up her first CD. We were talking about business models for emerging bands in the new age of YouTube and downloads. One of her comments stuck in my head.
“What saddest about all this”, she said, “Is that nobody thinks about CDs any more. All the focus is on songs.” The discussion moved on, but I’ve been thinking about that remark since. And when I see her again, I’ll say that focusing on songs is exactly what musicians should be doing.
Songs, not “albums” or CDs or operas or symphonies, are the atomic unit of popular human music. You can break a song up into its subatomic elements like rhythm, melody and lyrics, or you can molecularize them into song cycles or operas. But around a fire in Samoa, Belturbet, Xian or an Igloolk qaggik, people for milennia have sung songs – words sung to fixed melodic and rhythmic pattern.
Recording technology, notably the vinyl record album (the leading means of distribution for more than half a century), provided a new medium. Technical considerations determined that albums would have two sides of about 25 minutes per side, usually divided into 12-14 cuts (originally the number related to payment of composer royalties). Artists, as they will, began to play with this new format, and the “album” became the basic unit of popular music. Physically, it meant a decent space for cover art, liner notes, inserts, photos, lyric sheets, credits, and whimsy, often reflecting the themes and spirit of the music. The “album” became an entire graphic, text and audio artifact, integrating music and packaging. And the music changed too. Albums evolved from collections of unconnected songs to thematically linked cycles, extended pieces of music with linked, multiple themes, and so on.
Songs became, essentially, teasers for albums. Which led, of course, to a depressing glut of albums in which you can clock the exact moment where the artist’s inspiration ran out and the fill began. (Even among the best. Did the world really need “Honey Pie” or “Octopus’s Garden”?)
A lot of attention has been paid to the commercial impact of digital music and its distribution. Less has been paid to the fact that the age of downloads busts returns the focus of popular music to its original, basic musical cell – the song, a self-contained, rhythmic-melodic-lyrical unit, independent of context, production technique or performer, music on a human scale.
I confess I still think in albums. But when I introduced a young friend to singer/songwriter David Francey, the arrangement of his work into “albums” on iTunes meant nothing to her – she buzzed through sampling the songs, and put together her own selection. And that’s perfect – each song is its own entity. Beyond that it’s marketing.
William Gilbert, Cole Porter, Lennon McCartney, George Gershwin, Burt Bacharach, Steven Foster,l Ray Davies, Duke Ellington – the greatest popular composers of the last century – wrote songs. Sometimes they stuck them together and called them suites, or operettas, or medleys – but at the heart of it all was the song. While the format, context, style, musical language, pricing and distribution may change – but the song remains the same.
This is a great summary that puts into context the changing cultural landscape of popular music. For the most part I agree with your main point that the focus on the song is positive with the exception of rap music which I think most children can put together with a computer a few basic rhymes. That is my opinion but perhaps there is a point somewhere that the focus on the song in the digital age sullies the overall quality of new popular music.
The CRIA, RIAA and even the MPAA are all the equivilent of the “Benett Buggy Whip Manufacturer” of the 21st century, desperately looking for government action and legal coercion to protect a business model that technology has long left behind.
Its nothing more than mercantilism and corporate welfare.
If you can’t adjust to the changing market environment brought about by new technology, if you can’t figure out how to make money on the internet, with free downloads, file sharing and copying, go out of business.
Someone else out there will figure a way to do it.
Enough of the government propping up dying industries.
Good boogin’, Balbu. One little picky thing… my ol’ Mum had qyuite a few albums in her record collection. I remember them from when I was a boy in teh 1950’s. These were real albums. They looked similar to a photo album: a fancyish binder with pages of record sleeves inside. I remember she had one of Mario Lanza. These albums would have 6 or 8 78rpm Discs. Regrettably, some were used as frisbees in an assault on a derelict building.
JB
They were shellac based, as opposed to vinyl – used to shatter REAL good. I sometimes wonder now what treasures I destroyed with my frisbeeing…
Honey pie,
you are making me crazy,
I’m in love but I’m lazy…
… I need that song, dude.
Okay, I’ll give you that one. Bad choice. But “Savoy Truffle”?
Yeah. Okay. Savoy Truffle.
Of course, I never REALLY liked Glass Onion either.
Perhaps I just don’t like to hear my vegetables.
One of the games we used to play (along with the Best Ten Seconds In Rock, the Most Overrated Album of All Time, etc.) was: what double album would have been most improved by judicious pruning down to a single album?
The White Album was always a strong contender – I always thought it could have lost Glass Onion, Wild Honey Pie, Don’t Pass Me By, Piggies, Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey, Sexy Sadie, Savoy Truffle, and Revolution # 9 without a blink.