So I made this realization that seems kind of obvious but is actually quite profound and will make a huge difference in how I move forward with my music.
I was thinking about these two albums that I put out this year: Animals, which is a collection of animal based songs for kids, and Everyday, which is an EP of 5 of my best songs that fit into a kind of dance-electro-pop vibe.
Animals took about 8 months to record - there were many disparate elements to bring together (including videos for each of the songs) - and took about 2.5 years from beginning to release. I finished Everyday in about 2 months.
Neither album was really financially successful in any way - I lost money on both - but to me, Animals was an artistic failure and Everyday was a success. As I started thinking about why this was, I came to this profound and obvious realization. It has to do with the WAY I picked the songs and HOW people reacted to them.
When you have as many songs as I do, deciding how to group them can be tricky. One of my stated goals with Song A Day is to “find my good songs”, which is cool and all, but, like, HOW?! When thinking about which songs deserve to be polished up for a proper release, answering that question has always been really hard.
In that case of Animals, I picked the songs based on TOPIC. I had all these songs about Hippos, Penguins, Capybara’s, Ostriches, etc. and so it just became about listening through them and choosing the ones I thought were the “Best” for inclusion on the album.
When it came time to choose the songs on Everyday, I took a different approach. My first question was, “What are my BEST songs, full stop?” and when I asked that question, I found 5 that I thought were some of my best. These songs were picked based on their QUALITY.
When the reviews came in, there was complete consensus. The songs that comprised Animals just didn’t really excite people that much, while the songs on Everyday stood out for people in a big way. Animals landed with a thud and Everyday was met with a HELL YES.
Looking back, this result was obvious. Through the whole process of working on Animals, through all the different various people that worked on the songs, listened to the songs in progress, helped with the videos, nobody said, “YES! THESE SONGS ARE GREAT!” In contrast, while working on Everyday, every single person I showed the songs to was super excited by them. The quality of the songs should have been obvious even before I put the records out.
So this is the realization: From now on, when it comes time to make a record, I’m only ever going to choose the songs that are the best. That’s it. Obvious, right? Organizing songs around topic is fun, but by it’s very nature it’s not going to yield the best music, and it isn’t worth all the time, effort and money to rework them. This is actually contrary to the next thing I’m going to be putting out, which is the Harry Potter EP. 5 Songs I’ve chosen because they were all about Harry Potter. They’re good songs. I don’t think they’re GREAT songs, necessarily - not when you put them up against the truly GREAT songs I’ve written.
Pick songs that are the best songs and be ruthless about which ones are truly great. That’s my new method.
One of the best ways I know of for starting the process of discovering the Best songs is for YOU TO TELL ME. If you have any songs of mine that you consider to be my Best - let me know! Maybe it’ll end up reworked on my next album.
Last week's songs:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tn7vyd4cvc0xptm/AAAdd1SjN3GjGdeZ_PD4OvlPa?dl=0
View all 16 comments
William Smith You always cover songs from bands that sound pretty obscure (or maybe I dont have my finger on the pulse of indie music) how do you find such bands?! this cover is so killer!
December 4, 2014 05:56:54 · Reply
Lauren O'Connell Thanks! Years and years of mix CD's/playlists from friends.
December 6, 2014 01:33:41 · Reply
Jeffrey T. Smith a demo? sounds great the way it is
December 31, 2014 17:45:42 · Reply
David Mencarini Just catching up on stuff and enjoyed this song for the first time today. Nice job and good choice for a cover. Hard to miss on a Jayhawks song. Great band.
January 14, 2015 19:00:01 · Reply