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The other night at Bible Study Fellowship my mind jumped to a tangent from something that had been said in our lecture. I don’t recall what the statement was or what it was related to but I’m sure that it had almost nothing to do with the resulting tangent, which made it all the more interesting. What was the thought? I started thinking about all of these artists/musicians that I enjoy listening to and the fact that on each of their albums there’s almost always at least one song that I just don’t like very much. Now, these are just my casual favorites, these are the musicians that are my biggest influences, whom I highly respect.
Until last night I just assumed that these anomalies were nothing more than the differences in taste between myself and the artist showing up. But, after thinking about my own experiences I believe I’ve found the real reason why many albums only have a couple of good songs on them and the rest are, well, the rest.
Let’s say that you’re a songwriter/musician (not one of these glorified cover bands that only performs songs written by professional songwriters) and you’re working on your next album. The record companies have put pressure on you to have it finished by a fast-approaching deadline and not only are you going to be hard-pressed to finish recording those songs by the deadline but you haven’t even written 3 of the songs that will be on your 9-song album. What do you do? You either have a miraculous experience in which you’re able to write 3 hits in a day or so or you do what most artists do, you throw together whatever drivel you can squeeze out and hope that your label will call it good enough and put your record out onto the shelves. Granted there are those occasional art-songs that are intended as nothing more than a form of artistic expression by that artist/group, but I’m calling the bluff of many artists out there. But, like I said, this is from my own experience.
I’ve been feeling some self-imposed pressure to write and record music that is an example of who I am as a musician. Not only have I had problems getting that music together but I’ve found the harder that I work to try and get out all of the music inside of me the more that music clings to the darkness, where no one will hear it.
So, I’m curious to hear from some of you other musicians/songwriters out there. What are some of your methods for getting your talents to translate into the music that it should? I for one am very interested in hearing from you.