Hello guys,

Due to my current workload, I am unable to monitor all the threads and am keeping mine mostly to "Industry Clarifaction" on the "Mentors" forum. But I did see this and wanted to mention a few things for Geordie.

In Nashville we get literally hundreds of thousands of songs, on writers nights, on open mics, being written all the time, being pitched to labels, artists, potential co-writers, etc. there is a constant frenzy. Almost every third of forth song written is a protest, commentary, or issue oriented song. So right off the bat, those songs diminish in their acceptability simply because there are so many of them, the same as if you listened to extremely loud music every minute, every hour, every day, day in and day out, the nuances simply go away. And every one of those songs have a writer or artist that feel the message is "So important" it cannot be ignored. The fact is with 95% of the listeners, it absolutely CAN be ignored.
People live in the day to day misery of things of the world. There are job layoffs,Natural disasters, man's inhumanity to man, death and destruction everywhere. One of our members Michele, is living in Australia, where all the fires have been over the past few days. So they do not need anyone to tell them how terrible things are, they know. But writers write about this, and the people, surrounded by Internet, 24 hour radio and television, simply tune it out, due to beging overwhelmed due to the subject matter.
From the industry point of view, it simply a matter of "Been there, done that." Like everything, the writers at the "top of the heap" or the artists themselves, who also feel the same feelings, will write a song based around that theme, have the immediate venue to get it out, for instance, Allen Jackson on "Where Were you when the World Stopped Turning" after 9-11,
which will be followed by a very few similar theme songs. After about 3-4 of the same themes get out there, the subject is "done" and the rest are simply rejected out of hand. Which is why the people who did USA for Africa, Lionell Ritchie and Micheal Jackson, were the ones who did all that, at the time they were the biggest entertainers in the world.
So while we would like to think we have a song so attuned to the problems of the world, and we in fact, might, the real fact is that by the time all but the biggest stars get their ideas past all the filters, they are hopelessly out of date. People simply have moved on to other subjects. It is called "Having a shelf life on your songs."
We still get songs about disasters like 9-11 (8 years after the event, Katrina 4 years after the event, Iraq War 7 years after the events, etc. We have just plain moved on.

So that, coupled with a word that is simply not in the lexicon outside of your world, I feel would limit your appeal, and the time factor and difficulty in getting songs out there would negate your ability to get anything on a protest song. Then an ambivilance from an audience wearied by "compassion overload" leads to apathy. People just don't care. This is no longer the 60's.

What you might do, is what most people do in this day and age. Write your song your way, record it your way, get it on your Facebook, MySpace, You tube, and other Internet sites, and hope that it is unique enough to filter through the other competition, and have television and commentators talk about it, giving you your 3 minutes and 30 seconds of fame.

Good luck,

MAB