JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum How Can I Become A Hit Songwriter?

Marc? lollllll

Record a song, burn it to a disk, and then punch someone in the face with it.

That's a pretty sure one.

#1. Write a song that about 10 million people will embrace and actually pay for.
#2. be involved with a huge selling artist who will tour on the success of that song for about 5-10 years.
#3. Keep costs manageable and work every day.
#4. Repeat process.

I was going to shoot for the Rebecca Black method. Write and record a notoriously bad song, and have people gravitate towards it so often that it accumulates 120 million hits and counting. Bad stuff seems to go viral more than good stuff

The poor girl took a ribbing but she must still be making money off of this

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0

I guess she makes money somehow off of this but don't know how. Maybe she has an Album out now....
I guess I could make one called MY TRIP TO THE NURSING HOME or Gotta Go Get My Hearing Aid Adjusted....Could be a Winner on Social Security You Tube Channel....lol Excuse me while I take my meds......

AND Pray.....

shes worth 1.5 million, 20 years old, beautiful young woman now too

She's prolly doin better than artists who had legitimate hits.

https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/singers/rebecca-black-net-worth/

SO what's the moral to this story?

The real moral is that people like bad songs more than good ones, at least in a sense of sharing and streaming. I guess serious songs require too much attention and are not shareable. Funny songs tend to go viral more than serious ones.

It's kind of like trading jokes with people.

It's a novelty song about a day everyone looks forward to so they can have fun on the weekend. The song may not be very good but it made her money. I've heard worst songs. We get jealous when someone makes a hit out of a bad song when we have good songs that goes no where. I have a song about Friday that is much better than that one but no one is beating my door down to record it.

Disagree that the song is bad. Imo...it's good.

Uplifting beat. Pretty enough melody. Good prosody. Ear bug.
The lyrics express a POV that lights up the demographic because of what their outlook on life consists of at that age. Weekends are the best part of being alive when you're 17.

The age group in the car dont just listen to music, they define themselves by it and buy tickets.
Similarly the age group on this site define themselves by grandkids etc. Not kidding.

The girl has a right to be proud. In a highly competitive industry, she got on the scoreboard.

Martin

Um, Well,
I already am a Hit Songwriter! I just need some "Hit Artists" to record them! A couple of years ago I ordered a copy of Writer's Market for places to pitch my book. They asked me if I wanted to be put on other lists of people mostly looking to sell me something in the line of Writing. I said no. Do you think that stopped them? No, I get blurbs on a regular basis from places I didn't sign up for. One of them is looking for the next NATIONAL LAMPOON (Blank) Story. Any of you have a national Lampoon Story? I don't.

Musical success = money! If there is no dinero rolling-in... it's either the best kept secret in West Mayberry... or it's not as good as we thought. (Chuckle, chuckle!) I have not listened yet, busy negotiating a deal, but if Martin says it's good... it's good. (IMHO) That man has fantastic ears when it comes to music... and his understanding of the teenage "id" is spot on. Weekends became the "opium of choice" for me... even until I retired. Now, I wonder every day how I ever found time to work!

Life is good in Glen Rose... and Everett, I feel your pain!

The Video is key and who it targets. She is cute so guys will like it. And it's pretty catchy.
SO Good For Her....

A friend of mine is Michael Peterson, hit writer and award winning artist. He wrote a song "Cheat, Steal and Lie" that was his first real cut, and his first number one. He had written it ten years before. He got interviewed and they would always ask "So how long have you been a hit writer?" He would say "Ten Years, but nobody knew it till now."

Good answer.

MAB

I have no problem with the girl, or her song, I mean after all, it's just a song.

I remember feeling bad for her at the time, my niece brought it to my attention.

Don't forget though, it was her demographic that chastised it, and wrote all the hate comments. It was her own school who started it, and it exploded. Then every kid was stopping by to take a shot at it. And that ultimately made it a viral hit. She was prolly laughing to the bank, cause every time somebody commented, she made money

As a song, I've heard worse, and it was produced ok. What made it especially bad was the comical auto tune one her voice.

So,em people liked it too, but, without the haters, she wouldn't have gotten so many looks. Any publicity......

Which seat shall I choose...... Lollll

The point is people gravitate towards a train wreck, they'd rather spend time bashing something, than praising it.

In social media, people rarely say "oh, you must check out this link, it's such a wonderful song" to all their friends

But they will say, " oh u gotta check this out, it's hilarious, this girl can't sing, the video is hysterical...etc

Immediately people click it.

How do u think the kardashians stay relavent? People love bashing them

And remember American Idol when it was good?

They showed a lot of train wreck auditions, which people tuned in to watch....

They lost ratings when they took most of those away

It's not what you say good or bad JUST SPELL MY NAME right.

Snarking on the web is an international pass time now.
The lyrics are formulaic fine. The music is formulaic fine. Even the autotune is fine. Would have prolly been lifeless without it.

One of the appealing things about it is the video. When I see a video like this, I expect to see model-quality kids. The kids in her video are are very regular looking. May be part of the appeal. Most of us are very regular looking.

My hat's off to her. She's even got a group of grandpas on this site wrapped around her song. How 'bout that?

Reminds me of how much everyone "hated" "Achy Breaky Heart". (The Nashville writer community more than anyone...)

Don Van Tress (the writer) made $2.5 MILLION off of that.

I wish I could write a song that everyone would hate that much.

Prolly the fact that her mother laid out 4 grand for the video made people hate more. People like to celebrate people who came from nothing...then after a While, tear them down.

Apparently she didn't write the song...that may explain why the kids didn't think it represented them, it was written by an older guy, the rapper

http://www.laweekly.com/music/rappe...eaks-dont-blame-rebecca-blame-me-2408161

- "I'm getting a lot of criticism saying I'm exploiting rich kids and their parents," says Wilson, "but find me another company that would do all this at a cost this low. I don't promise anyone fame. In fact, if someone approaches me with their only goal to 'get famous,' I tell them they're not in this for the right reasons."

Bad songs with an "ear worm" quality will sell on bubble gum pop radio, usually.

The chances are greatly against any song making money, whether you or I or someone else thinks that it is good or bad. Pop music is in the eye of the beer holder.

This girl is doing a lot better than me at this stuff.

I think that MAB called out how this works....it appears that there was a rapper/lyricist/producer/handler who decided to monetize the "working for the weekend" anthem theme. So he wrote some what-you-see-is-what-you-get lyrics and found a vehicle for them.
Even got the girl's mom to ante up for the video.

My hat is off to all of them.

A "HIT' song is one that CONNECTS with the public, financially, as well as in the public eye and ear.

For many years you could have a "RADIO HIT" or an "SALES HIT." There were songs that had HUGE radio airplay, getting thousands upon thousands of spins, yet, really didn't lead to a lot of "sales." And some songs that would get to a certain position on the charts and just stay there, not going up to number one, or even in the top ten, but deliver a lot of SALES. So you could have a "number one" song in Billboard magazine, yet, there would be other songs that sold more than yours.

Now with so many charts, pod casts, Internet "views", viral sensations, etc. a "HIT" can have a lot of definitions. Basically it is what connects with the audience.
Most of the time, if it is Internet based, people are not making money of the views, but advertising. So if they can get a lot of views, it can lead to being able to charge advertising rates.

I had heard of this girl a while back but didn't know she was still out there. It's like a lot of those viral sensations, cat videos, all kinds of odd things that are on the Internet, they can create quite a sensation for a while. But that doesn't mean they are making money. There is a hilarious SOUTH PARK episode where the boys make a YOU TUBE video, that gets millions and millions of hits. Thinking they are going to be rich, they go to this place where they are supposed to get all this money and it is filled with all these other Internet characters claiming how popular they all are. The boys come to find out that the "Money" they are supposed to be earning is all INTERNET money which is kind of like Monopoly money.

To me, getting a video that has a lot of views, is simply a promotion for your live gigs. I notice my own business has ticked up due to my ongoing video series on Facebook and You Tube. I do try to keep a lot of what I do "under the radar screen" because I don't want to work with just anybody. But I have gotten a lot of interest due to these things.

Martin, I don't remember the "working for the weekend" thing although it could have been something a while back. There are a LOT of these things that come in the news quickly and then go.

But my most notable thing I talk about has to do with the "copyright issue." It is where a rapper, FRANK OCEAN,
sampled the actual TRACKS for the EAGLES SONG "HOTEL CALIFORNIA", and just put his own rap lyrics over the loop of the music. Someone brought it to the attention of Henley and Frey and at first they wrote some encouraging emails, saying "We appreciate that you like the song enough to use it, but this is really COPYRIGHT infringement and you can't do that. We support the creative process, but this can't be supported."

The rapper or his people, told them to go SCREW THEMSELVES. This went into a long drawn out thing over a few months, with the Eagles, their management and record company having to go through all kinds of hoops to get a "CEASE and DESIST" order to finally get him to take it down. But by that time he had sold nearly a million copies of his song, and it increased his reputation ten fold as a "guy who fought the big evil record companies and won."

The point I use that on, is this discussion on copyrights where people are worried about someone "stealing" some part of a song of their's that most people in the world will never hear and the futility of worrying about anything like that. In today;s world, people just take what they want and there don't seem to be any reprecussions regardless of what new laws they pass.

So that is the story I have talked about before. Hope that is what you are talking about.

MAB

Jaysus.

There was a TV show that came out of the States, called Stacey's Jamboree, a long time ago that featured local singers that were less than great singers, but that show was very popular in my area. People use to watch it more or less to poke fun and have a laugh. The guy that sponsored the show owned a lot of businesses in the area, this brought attention to his businesses, he made money. People like to compare themselves to others, so the bad singers on the show made those watching look good in comparison, gave them hope that they too could "make it" on TV. Sometimes average people will lift up average singers knowing they need encouragement, they feel for them, they put themselves in their place and would feel bad if booed off stage. But if you are "good", you'd better be GOOD, or people will tear you down. People are complex, we judge others as they claim to be,not as they actually are. I don't claim to be a good singer, so when I do sing, people get what they expect, or better than they expected.

We live in a harsh world that is very mean in the way of Bullying and Making fun of People. For some reason or other some feel good making fun of others....UGH.
I hate Singing Shows. I hate Talent Shows. Singing and Talent and even Songwriting is Subjective so one person isn't better than another just different. I wrote a song called Different Is Beautiful and it is so true. Would Neil Diamond or Joe Cocker or Rod Stewart ever win a singing contest? SO Be your self and dig down deep and try to find YOUR Audience not an audience.

The "public meltdowns": in talent shows are what drives ratings. That is why most people tune into the audition phases of all these shows, but fairly soon lose interest. It also can go the other way, when they have someone every one makes fun of, then they turn out to be very good. One career that I know of was created this way.

SUSAN BOYLE.
On "Britian's got Talent, she came out, a frumpy, matronly, looking woman who had a fairly large ego. Before she opened her mouth, the audience was laughing. The second she started singing "I DREAMED A DREAM" from Les Miz, she turned into an instant celebrity as the audience and the judges (including Simon Cowell) were flabbergasted. It hit all the "viral world: and exploded, ending up on all the news networks and she became world famous.

She has kept a career going over the past few years, singing with symphonies, touring worldwide and public accolades. The big problem it created was that people "following her" were not as unique. Suddenly it was accepted that older people could be talented too. Several shows tried to re-create the same thing, but it has never had the same impact.

Was pretty cool though.
MAB

yeah, but I don't believe for one minute that Susan Boyle, was a surprise.

It had a classic ring of...never judge a book by it's cover. And the clothes she was wearing and the look she had was by design.

Even if the judges didn't know anything, she had to go through a screening process and auditions just to get on the show.

It was a ratings magnet, but no accident.

And yeah, I'm sure, other shows tried to do the same thing, but gimmicks almost never work twice.

Believe me, people knew she could sing...it wouldn't surprise me if she had been signed even before the show

They are pretty heavily scripted, but I don't think they expected the AUDIENCE reaction and the VIRAL sensation she became. That you can't predict. They have had some good singers and a few surprises ,But they are very pre-planned and cast. So I think some of it was known, but a good deal was a surprise.

M

This guy happened on Americas Got Talent last night. The backstory coupled with the song choice and execution was very moving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFy5XyZsUeo

You've "prolly" seen it before, but:

https://youtu.be/_OoevpPS0-k

Yeah Mac, love Dave Grohl. I think he 's right too. Maybe there is still hope playing live, maybe the Internet is too jammed, and u can still do something locally in bars.

And i agree, u have to be knocked of your ass. Takes working on your sound, your songs, your performance. It's easy to get stuck In Just standing there and not going out of your way to entertain.

It does take a mountain to move us these days. I remember the day I discovered Willie Nile on cdbaby. I know he had been around and heard of before, but to me he was just some guy on cdbaby.

Totally blew my doors off with his songs, band, recordings. I started saying how is this guy not a major star, doesn't make sense. But he does make a good living I'd imagine. But he was doing what Grohl is describing

Some of the first the tunes I heard from Willie....

Say hey Willie

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CqoL7DKpeZw

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nkwpMl-Qlz0

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iCGGhQzc-G0

It wouldn't hurt if he would clean up his language.

Wow, it's weird how things happen. Here I was mentioning this girl, it's 7 years now? Holy crap!

But she's now making news again for trying out for "the four"

Maybe she heard us talking....

I wish her well but, I get the feeling that this will add to her viral legacy all over again, for kids who my not even have seen it

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/gotta-get-thursday-rebecca-black-tries-four-071245671.html