Last Wednesday on the episode of my weekly “Now Hear This Entertainment” podcast that was released (number 532), John Ellison – who wrote the R&B standard “Some Kind of Wonderful” – talked about a contest he participated in when he was young.
You’ll have to go listen rather than me reveal the dramatic plot twist here, but, Ellison starts to talk about how he got called into the audition room, and only twenty seconds after he started playing, one of the contest judges stopped him, because it was clear that they’d found their winner and didn’t need to go on with the rest of the song OR the remaining contestants.
Imagine, music creators, being only twenty seconds into a song and already you have won someone over. Now that, my friends, is something to aspire to, huh?
After all, you’ll often hear about music industry executives, say, in Nashville, for example, listening to the first verse and the chorus of your song – sometimes even less than that – and having their mind made up if it’s something they like or not.
This all is similar to today’s society and posting on social media (TikTok videos, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts) and how fast they say you have to catch the viewer’s attention before they just scroll on to something else.
So, when the song “Time,” by Chance, was sent to me, it went into a similar funnel, if you will, but – as evidenced by my writing about it here – it stuck around longer than the eight seconds they talk about for social media or the aforementioned verse/chorus period.
Ya' know why I liked this song? It's different and it kept me hanging around wanting to know, "What are they going to do next"? It held my attention and more than a minute in I realized I probably was going to stick with it all the way through. And to that I say (to the artist), “Congrats. Nice job. Different is good!”
The song came to me with a description of, “Beginning somewhere between Gregorian chant and acapella Beach Boys.” And I must say that “somewhere between Gregorian chant and acapella Beach Boys” is spot on. I definitely detected that, and then soon heard a sound reminiscent of the Electric Light Orchestra, who I’ve always loved, and thus more points were scored with me. (Ironically, ELO had an album called “Time” back in 1981.)
No, you can’t write a song that everyone is going to love. And no, you shouldn’t write what you think that radio wants. (Ironically enough, a client of mine will soon be releasing a song alluding to that last statement.) And you can overthink it when it comes to, “Does it sound too MUCH like (insert song or artist here)?” It boils down to, write what you want, what you feel, and what YOU like. And that is exactly what Chance did here.
It bears repeating. This artist did something a little different. And yes, I know, different isn’t always good, but I would argue that someone is going to stick around a little bit longer than hearing a song start and thinking, “Oh gosh, here we go again. Everybody sounds the same these days.”
They’ve set me up to use a nice pun here, which is something I’m not bashful about doing. But I do, in fact, encourage you to make ‘time’ to check this song out. It got my attention. There’s a chance it might just do the same with you. And, for the artist’s sake, here’s hoping it does so with radio and/or any influential music executives.
Some real thought went into this song and in a time when we hear the word ‘creator’ so often, there’s definitely some creativity that went into this track.
For twenty years I’ve been working with indie music artists (not to mention authors, actors, entrepreneurs, small business owners, podcasters, and more). What challenges are keeping you up at night that I can help you with? Let’s jump on a ten-minute call so you can take advantage of all my experience and make sure that you’re moving forward.