Another Pointless Soliloquy about Heavy Metal Music in General, and Songwriting in Particular
Introduction and a Bit of Insistent Flailing
This’ll be a short one, because I only have one real thought and lately I’ve been working on concision, so instead of trying to pluck every additional idea I see floating in the ether of my mind and plugging it into the article in some ill-advised attempt to expand my simple concept into a complex essay, I’m going to express my thesis, then give an example and we’ll be done with it.
So here’s my premise:
A lot of very good bands, with excellent songwriting, hinder their own results by feeling the need—consciously or unconsciously—to wrest their song’s progression into the constraints of a typical song structure.
To qualify my opinion, while I’m not someone who needs a verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown-chorus structure that is so typical of Western music in general, I’m also not a snob who dislikes the verse-chorus-et cetera-structure preemptively; however, I have listened to thousands upon thousands of songs, and I like to listen critically: when a pattern emerges it will eventually lose its luster for me since I’m not usually listening passively.
II. Example
What is it that brought this idea to mind? It was actually a specific band and track:
Extraterrestrial Life by Airborn
You can take a listen to it. It’s one of those bands (and songs) that at first seems like your standard, maybe B- or C+ tier power metal, with an average singer, some typical keyboards, and very expected song structure. What sets the band apart for me, besides that they actually tend to have pretty good melodies, is the creativity of the writing for the instruments. The songwriter is always adding interesting flourishes, melodies, breakdowns and solos to the proceedings, with a high degree of energy and melody. This is a band who I at first think, “O.K., it’s decent,” yet any time one of their songs appears in my playlist I listen eagerly.
III. So What’s the Problem?
If you listen to the song above, you hear examples of all the things I’ve praised the band for: Strong vocal melodies and creative musical sections. What you might also notice is that the transition into the second verse is a little clumsy. It’s almost as if the song is going to go on and do something else, maybe go into a breakdown or a musical interlude, but then the second verse comes staggering in with a bottle in one hand and the inside-voice left out on the stoop.
The fix would be simple enough, more or less: Just control the music so that it transitions better into that verse. You don’t need to change the whole song structure, just git gud, right? but the issue is that I don’t think the songwriter doesn’t know how to transition into verses, rather I think that he was so intent on sticking to that verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure that he was tripped up.
Alright, that sounds like a pitiful excuse of his failure, and maybe it is, but can we really listen to this whole song with all of its treats and skill, and suggest that the songwriter could do all of that, yet he didn’t know how to make a simple transition into a verse? It seems almost like he was so eager to get into some sweet guitar and keyboard arrangements and leads that he forgot to work the verse in properly, then they ran out of time, so the band just agreed to start playing a second verse.
IV. And the Point!
The point is that I believe the songwriter let the need to adhere to a typical song structure hinder his writing. While there was no need to make completely odd song structures, or use no chorus or have no verse, there was also no need to have a second verse, or if he wanted a second verse he could have put it after another instrumental section. Instead, something made him feel compelled to keep to a rigid standard, and that was ultimately a hindrance.
So the lesson here is that if you’re making music, or drawing, or writing, don’t feel the need to always hold fast to standards that are not, and never were, primal or superior. If you have something to say, in whatever medium, and there’s a certain way of telling it that will deliver the goods optimally, and that way is not in accordance with the unspoken standard, then so be it: Do it anyway.
Now, it might fail! I’m not saying it won’t fail. And I’m not even saying that the choice to buck the standard won’t be the reason it fails, but I am saying that you will never know if it was meant to be if you’re too afraid to even try it. Creativity is a process of development, not something you have that you just dump on people like they’re a big truck. It’s a series of tubes, and. . . uh, well, it’s a process is what I’m saying.
Happy creating.
