Turn Off the Radio
by DeRon Talley
First Rate Songwriting is Becoming a Lost Art
Once upon ago, there lived a legion of of musicians and poets that told stories. These stories were emotive, evoked passionate, and gave you food for thought. Be it love, protest, or simply raging against the system, these stories had meaning and a life of there own.
2009.
Sadly, the children of the artists from this era no longer exhibit the same passion or emotion. The tales of civil liberties and democracy are few and far between. Nevertheless, stories are still told. But they are merely a commodity to be packaged, marketed, promoted, and sold. Not by the story tellers, but by the gatekeepers. The ones who control the access to the musician’s potential audience. They also do their best to make sure that the stories that are told fit into the pattern of the industry’s structural underpinnings.
No longer do artists produce emotive poems that reveal other ways of understanding and standing before nature. No longer are there artists that choose to create to preserve a sense of the holy, of the sacred, of mystery with consideration to what unfolds, happens, or reveals itself. We’re low on romantics, or poets and songwriters that aren’t formidable.
People are no longer writing songs that push those limits. If anything, people compose songs that stay firmly within their own comfort zone as a singer, and therefore the songs remain essentially droll and embryonic, so as to make things easy for the performer.
“Music is the silence between the notes.”
-Claude Debussy(French composer, 1862-1918)
Modern producers and songwriters write for singers like rappers. Too many words in the verses and choruses. They think that it’s “soulful” to have a 30 word chorus… No. Less words gives a song and the singer space to breath.
This is due to a absence of comprehensive melody and poetic lyrics.
First rate songwriting is becoming a lost art.
And because of this, music doesn’t truly matter anymore.
