What makes a good song?

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What makes a good song?

This may seem like an idiotic question. “Good” is subjective. But answering the question is important to how we make and listen to music. In our common ground of choice, it’s also fundamental to the divide between traditional and extreme metal. “Song vs. sound” – I’ve used that phrase many times before. Now it’s time to nail it down.

Sometimes it’s helpful to work backwards, so let’s start with my answer to the question.

A good song has a soul of its own.

As if “good” weren’t loosey-goosey enough, now I introduce a term, “soul”, worthy of two yoga classes with a 10% discount for first-timers.

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But two concepts guide me in thinking about this “soul”. The first is “I know it when I see it”. (Amusingly, this phrase has its own Wikipedia entry. Its origins lie in a US Supreme Court justice declining to define pornography.) Perhaps I should substitute “hear” or “feel” for “see”, but you get what I mean. (And sometimes I can “see” it without hearing it. If some metal song is titled, say, “The Triumphant Vengeance of Fallen Angels”, without hearing it I can see that its soul, if it has any, is tiny.) This is a gestalt test. I’m seeing/hearing/feeling the total package – music, lyrics, intention, execution.

The second is the notion that musicians are but vessels for music. I’ve spoken with countless professional musicians about their relationship to their music. Invariably, the best ones say that they are subservient to their music. See, for example, my interview with Immolation. Guitarist Bob Vigna says, “You go with the music. You channel the music”. Vocalist/bassist Ross Dolan says, “We’re pretty low-key. But on the stage is different. You become like that beast onstage. You channel all that feeling and emotion that you get from the music…” Vigna and Dolan aren’t laying claim to genius. They’re being affected by the music they “create”. I don’t think that the best music is “created” so much as it is “found”. That’s why the best music feels pure, powerful, and perfect.

These concepts are related. If a musician is a proficient enough vessel, then the music will come through so strongly that I can’t help but recognize its soul (“know it when I see it”). Trey Azagthoth comes to mind. He’s a shredder, but more importantly, he’s a man possessed. All sorts of spirits – some human, some not – swirl out of his fingers when he plays. But he’s not perfect, and neither is his band nor its supporting apparatus (production, etc.). So the “soul” is stronger on some Morbid Angel records than others.

I realize these concepts apply to “good music” in general and not just “good songs”. A song is a finite enclosure – so let’s talk about that enclosure.

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CATCHINESS

The floor of that enclosure, the lowest threshold with which to define a room as such, is “catchiness”. I take that term at face value: “the quality of catching the ear”. (At Full Metal Attorney, Kelly Hoffart claims that I think that this floor makes the enclosure. I can’t blame him, since until now I haven’t made clear my thinking on the topic.) “Getting one’s attention” is an extremely low threshold, yet it’s one I must observe as I am daily inundated with mediocre metal. Through dozens of albums weekly, I am falling asleep most of the time (that is, when I’m not cursing my inbox for spewing digital promos at crappy bitrates).

A disturbing proportion of music listeners defines music by “catchiness”. That’s like defining food by “edibility”. It’s sad that we’ve come to a point where we’re so overloaded with mediocrity that simply to catch our ears is a feat. I often hear metalheads talk about how X riff is cool in Y song, but (a) a riff is not a song (unless you are Sleep), and (b) this perspective loses sight of the forest for the trees. Life should not be about slumbering through cookie-cutter albums, only to be interrupted occasionally by a perky riff. What about the song? What about the song???

So what about the song? It should catch our ears in order to register in our consciousness.  It can do so in any way – a riff, a lyric, a melody, an atmosphere. But once it registers in our consciousness, it must earn its right to stay there. It must say and be something. It must be unique. Every song on Metallica’s first four albums is unique. Those songs vary in quality, but their essences are separate and definable. “Trapped Under Ice” is a world unto itself. So is “Battery”. So is “One”. Metallica made great albums, too – that’s a separate topic of discussion – but great albums have great songs, and Metallica wrote the greatest songs in metal, period.

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SONG VS. SOUND

A disturbing proportion of music listeners also defines music by sound. What I mean is pledging allegiance to genres – black metal, death metal, grindcore, sludge – instead of pledging allegiance to quality. To a certain extent, metal is defined by sound. You like X band, so you seek out other bands that provide a similar but not identical experience. And it’s completely valid to think, “I’m in the mood for grindcore right now”. That just means that you’re predisposed to a sum of sonic characteristics (guitar sound, vocal style, production technique) that add up to something called “grindcore”. I am all for functional music consumption. But thinking only along these lines is detrimental both to personal development and one’s wallet. It’s easy to market something to you if it resembles something you’ve bought before. Multiply this scenario by thousands, and you get today’s glut of mediocre metal.

Extreme metal is defined by sound, but too often uses it as a crutch. Listeners confuse the means with the ends. Are we interested in Orange amps or trebly, tremolo-picked riffing, or are we interested in what humans say with those tools? Back when the universe of instrumentation was much smaller, composers couldn’t get by just with sound. The only sonic options in town were, say, strings and harpsichord. A composer had to outwrite other composers in order to stand out. You couldn’t talk louder than the next guy, so you had to say something better.

Sound is important – crucial to metal, in fact (some have noted my obsession with production) – but so is the song. Songs separate the men from the boys. Plenty of second-tier bands in the ’80s played a style: thrash. A select handful wrote and played songs. That handful became known as The Big Four. Their songs live on – almost in spite of the musicians behind it.

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