Slate Magazine’s William Weir made some good points with Tuesday’s Music Box column:
1. From 1975 to 1990, there were only 30 instrumental songs that made the Top 20. Since 1990 there have been only 5. Compare this to the era from 1960-1974 when 128 instrumentals reached the top 20. Get the picture?
2. Lyric word count has increased over the years. As Weir puts it:
The year-end top 10 songs from 1960 to 1969 have an average word count of 176. For the 1970s, the figure jumps to 244. In 2007, the average climbed to 436. The top 10 for the week of Feb. 2, 2008, features six songs over the 500-word mark. Chris Brown and T-Pain use 742 words in their “Kiss Kiss.”
So what’s the point? Well, it could be that people favor the words more than the pure musical content. Citing 2 studies, Weir concludes:
Neuroscientists believe that the brain uses a different system to store and process music than it does words. Not much research has been done on which affects us more, but an American University study published in the Psychology of Music in 2006 gives a slight edge to melody.
But he concludes that the instrumental is a dying breed. The reason?
Marketability. A band is practically faceless with no crooning front man.
/. . . /No singer means no airplay.
So 2 questions emerge:
“What’s more important; the words or the music?” and
“Why are there fewer instrumental hits?”
While it would be easy to argue that you can’t divide a song into its seperate parts (the work is a whole and should be judged as a whole), just for kicks I’ll weigh in on the side of music being more important. Sometimes music may be created as a vehicle to carry the meaning/message of the text, but lyrics are not the music. At the university, the music faculty teach students to critique the music and the humanities/literature faculty tackle the lyric analysis. But which is better; the music or the words? Here I’ll defer to the music psychologists to argue and test their way to some scientifically defensible position.
My point is basically that the music polls may favor some political speech set to music one week but it is the universal appeal of well-crafted music that makes it survive for centuries. What other songs graced the Top 20 list when Beethoven’s 9th (or 5th) symphony was released? Maybe I’m just an idealist, but I believe that quality pure music wins over time. And good text will endure, too. Just dig up a dead poet laureate (Dante or Ovid); they’ll tell you.
Why are there fewer instrumental hits? Mr. Weir may have a good point, here. If the airplay oligopolies create the demand based on market strategies, then maybe the public never has a chance to hear good instrumental music anymore.
Many of the composers that are really good at crafting music are lured into the film scoring field. The trouble is, their work is often so watered down by cuts and producer changes, it becomes a “work for hire” composition rather than truly a part of the composer’s voice. Or maybe we’re just waiting for the next Beethoven to be born…
Anyway, it’s time for me to stop rambling and ask for your comments. Comments?
7 Comments
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March 13th, 2008 at 8:16 am
I agree with you, music is more important. How many poetry records made it into the top 20 last year? Vocals aren’t the same thing as words. People do tend to latch on to vocal hooks more easily than instrumental hooks.
I think part of the problem is that there hasn’t been an exciting and accessible instrumental genre since surf music. And people still latch on to that music when they get to hear it (Misirlou in Pulp Fiction).
I think it’s still possible to have enough charisma to be marketable without singing. Unfortunately, the record companies seem to only want to market young girls. There have been countless classical acts sold solely on the basis they female and good looking. The fact they’re mediocre musicians might explain why they don’t sell so well.
March 13th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Amen, or as we say in the musical eulogy business, Amin.
March 14th, 2008 at 2:29 am
I guess in the 60s was more about feeling the music while now it is about consumer oriented music and lyrics put a clearer message into a song.
I love Joe Satriani’s music very much but I realize you can not play such instrumental music unless you are a master of your instrument and I guess that this is also a reason.
By the way, Amin is how we say it in Romanian.
March 14th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Joe Satriani? I haven’t heard from him in ages! He’s doing a European tour this spring; looks like Prague is the closest city to you…
March 14th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
I’m flipping through the pages of mental data here, and it occurs to me that a lot of the instrumentals, that would honestly qualify as “hit” songs, were structurally pretty simple. “Rebel Rouser”, “Tequila”, “Honky Tonk”, “Walk Don’t Run”, “Rumble”. The last couple of big instrumentals that I can recall without research-”Feels So Good” by Chuck Mangione and “Rockit’” by Herbie Hancock. Some of the musicians responsible would probably be considered to be virtuosos, some would not.
It is often difficult to distill a purely musical idea and often more difficult to treat that idea with restraint.
I think that if you went back through the history of music, you would see the same trend- a simple melody seems to hit people where they live.
Nothing against the idea of virtuosity but, it rarely accomplishes the same visceral reaction from the average human.
Perhaps, the way that musicians are approaching musicianship is, at least, partially responsible for the lack of popular instrumental music.
March 14th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Hmmm…please elaborate!
March 14th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
O.K. I will elaborate.
“Why are there fewer instrumental hits?” Well, first you have to determine what a hit is. I think that this is an area where a lot of people have a misconception. The article is using “top 20″ as a baseline. That is flawed. Chart position is not a proper way to define a “hit”. There are variations in total sales from week to week so, a #15 song one week might mean a lot of sales and a #8 song another week might mean far less.
I have a friend that wrote a song that peaked around #20 on the country charts in the mid 90’s. As sole writer, he has seen around $10,000 in total income from the song. Now, if you talk to people in the song business (record label or publishing), they wouldn’t consider that a hit. But, it was a top 20 song.
All of the songs I mention above were genuine hit songs. If you analyze the melodies and chord structures, they are simple but effective ideas. They are songs you can hum or whistle and they stick in your mind.
So, you have this simple idea, a melody-the great temptation for a player with some chops is to take that melody and then show some of those spectacular licks. The guys that played on these records chose not to. Herbie Hancock, Chuck Mangione-those guys have no problems playing a bunch of stuff over changes. But, they didn’t. Listen to the guitar solo on Honky Tonk (Billy Butler I believe), it is a virtuoso performance from a technical standpoint, in my opinion. It’s technically difficult to play what he does there but, to the listener; well, it sounds comfortable. It sounds like something that the average Joe could play.
A guy like Satriani, who is a great player, has never come close to the type of mainstream appeal that Duane Eddy did. I’m real sure that Duane Eddy had a bunch of licks up his sleeve that he didn’t put on records. But, Duane Eddy wasn’t making records for other guitar players, he was making records that a hairdresser could hum along with.
Another factor here is that you listen to these records where an instrumentalist is playing a simple melody. The tonal characteristics of the particular instrument tends to really shine. Duane Eddy’s guitar sounds so rich, Bill Dogget’s organ sounds huge (ahh,..Booker T; another one) you can really get inside each note as a listener. The listener identifies the tone more as a personality. This factor tends to decrease as more notes are played.
Going backwards a little, how many be-bop records were hits? I’m not well versed in music from the 19th century and before but, I would guess there are correlations.
I have seen, in my years as a musician, a trend that leans toward not just virtuoso level playing but also, a desire for players to show this hand. Here’s an example; listen to the guitar fills on any up-tempo country hit and compare those to the stuff Roy Nichols or Don Rich did. These guys are playing some pretty technical stuff but, it’s kind of sandwiched in there between the vocals and produced to where it doesn’t obstruct. So, these guys are playing that way; it’s how they roll. But, it’s the kind of stuff a Steve Cropper or Duane Eddy wouldn’t do on a record-they just wouldn’t.
You know, when Satriani’s first record came out, there was a little industry buzz going on. I remember reading press that called it the “return of instrumental rock” or some such thing. I think that what developed was another “niche” market. The industry isn’t going to necessarily ignore a niche but, they aren’t going to embrace it and promote it with the full force.
So, for a song to come out of that niche and prove worthy it has to be a fluke. Chances are, if it’s a fluke, it’s a record with a simple melody and not a bunch of notes being played on a solo. And, that type of song would go against the niche, the core audience for that artist.
When I saw that there had been five top 20’s in the nineties, I was kind of wracking my brain. As I think about it, I’m guessing at least one of those is a Kenny G song.
So, as a young instrumentalist you could, show your chops, get some chicks, wear cool clothes, develop a niche and possibly a career or, play it simple and follow, maybe a Kenny G business plan. In the present climate, if you showed up and said; “I’m the next Kenny G”, they’re not going to get too exited.
Probably way more than you wanted Doc J, but in a nutshell-I think players are playing from a different mindset and, I don’t blame them.