Thursday, July 7, 2011

You're A Terrible Judge of Your Own Music


Alas, it is true. Murphy's Law will tell you (and I'm not exactly sure who Murphy is, unless he's Papa Murphy, in which case, I'm not real crazy about his pizzas, either) that whatever song you think is your absolute best, fans will absolutely HATE, or worse, will absolutely IGNORE.

How do I know? Well, that's where marketing shows its real value. By "marketing", I mean basically slapping up some songs on a promotion site, such as ReverbNation or Jango, or, if you're really, really bored and narcissistic, on your own radio station.

It's the ultimate conundrum, I guess.

For example, I'm sure that Mark Knopfler thought that this was the greatest Dire Straits song ever:


Watch Dire Straits(money for nothing) in Music | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Of course, that was before Canada got wind of the song, and determined that it was COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE FOR BROADCAST. (Really, Canada? And here I thought you all had that laissez faire attitude. You know, being French and all.) And strangely, "Money For Nothing" was released in 1985, so it only took a quarter of a century for Canada to determine the utter inappropriateness of the song. Well, they have a backlog.

So, Mark was downhearted. Well, actually, he was feeling pretty uphearted until approximately the year 2010.

Ironically, little did Mark know that the actual favorite Dire Straits song, as determined by the fans, was this:



Why, Mark asks? Well, it was because of this line:

"doo doo, da da DO do do doo doo".

Not scientific, I grant you, but what, after all, is scientific about music?

The moral of this story, if there is one, is, as an artist, please make sure that you include this line in every one of your songs:

Doo doo, da da DO do do doo doo


Then riches shall be yours. And you won't have to guess which song your fans will like best, because they will like them all!

Another fine public service from me, your Music Success Guru. And I don't even charge for this!

Woo-hoo-hoo.

3 comments:

Glenn Lockhart said...

Hey, it's still the best Dire Straits song...and this is from a Canadian.

The controversy you allude to has to do with the use of the word "faggot" in the lyrics. Apparently, some little faggot in the province of Newfoundland decided he didn't like that word and filed a complaint with the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) who are very similar to your FCC, in that they are responsible for broadcast standards.

The complainant felt that the word "faggot" was insulting, demeaning, etc. to the point where it held up a segment of society to ridicule, and was, as such, skirting the issue of hate crime.

The deicision to ban the full-length version of the song stated that the offending word may have been okay at the time the song was written but is no longer so. The danger in this is that anything written in the past that carries language that today is considered politically incorrect runs the risk of now being banned if someone feels like complaining about it. This could easily extend to literature, as well.

Scary! The ghost of Mark Twain (among others) is now doing flip-flops.

BTW, "Really, Canada? And here I thought you all had that laissez faire attitude. You know, being French and all." I don't know where you get your information from, but there is no bloody way this country is "French" -- maybe you should hop into your car and drive north for five or so hours and find out all about it.

richfarmers said...

Hey Glenn ~ I was just being facetious about that Canada comment. I'm French myself, so really, it was a knock on myself. My ancestors emigrated from Canada. I've visited your country many times, and enjoyed it immensely. But, as for the political correctness, I see it as a real danger for musicians. Art is art; we shouldn't have to censor ourselves. And, BTW, we have plenty of political correctness here in the US, and it is quite tiresome.

A guy named Lulu said...

so true..