I want to sing along........(to my favourite songs)

[fleaaaaaa]

Okay just a little thing that came up today......

I played a song today of someone I like, I will leave the artist unnamed unless you want to know later on. It was a song that is his single and its very easy to sing along just after hearing the chorus once...... and I played it to a friend of mine - who is an awesome guy but he said "I hate this kind of music" I asked why "well I hate when you can hear the chorus once then sing along the next time it came along and the chords are so predictable". So I was like - how do you know what the chords are? How do you know its predictable (I hate that, heard it a few times from different people on different music I like - these people must be musical gurus) and he just said well you can hear what chord comes next. I said something along the lines of....... I actually like that, I like that in music when you are listening (and playing along) and you can kind of guess the next chord - there's something kind of nice about that because it just means they followed the same musical logic you would.

I can't deny it really, my roots are not in complicated or sophisticated music, the first people I liked as a kid were the Monkees, Michael Jackson and Queen - I love to sing along and I like (good) pop music I don't see anything wrong with it.

What about you?

[cnev]

I'm probably very similar. I like what I like and it doesn't have to be complex to be good

[Vic Lewis VL]

Same here. I grew up in the 60's - the golden age of pop music - when every song was either G, Em, C and D or A D and E. Simple 3-4 songs, although it must be said most of them changed key - not easy for a beginner guitarist to play along with unless you're anticipating the changes. Back in the 60's, you DID anticipate the changes once you'd heard a song once or twice!

Ah, the 60's.....the Shadows, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Beach Boys, The Stones, Manfred Mann, The Hollies, The Byrds, The Who......those bands (roughly in order of radio appearance!) shaped my musical listening from then to the present day. OK, later on in the 60's I got into other bands - The Small Faces and CCR spring immediately to mind, but the Troggs (Wild Thing) and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch (Legend Of Xanadu) were always on the radio too. Then there was Motown - Supremes, Gladys & The Pips, Marvin Gaye, Martha and the Vandellas, The Temps - and Stax and Atlantic - Wilson Pickett, Booker T and the MG's, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, The Drifters, The Coasters....and then we had women who could actually sing and put some emotion into their recordings....apart from the aforementioned, there was the great Dusty Springfield, there was Lulu (who could REALLY belt a song out!) there was Sandie Shaw.....and of course, the finest one-hit wonder of all time, Lorraine Ellison with "Stay With Me Baby."

Then of course there was psychedelic rock, psychedelic soul, there was Dylan and the Band (although I really didn't get Dylan till I was much older!) - music just EXPLODED in the 60's, everything was fresh, new and vital....there will never be a more creative period, ever. And when you think most bands used to go into the studio and record live - no overdubs! - there was never a problem recreating exactly the same studio sound on stage.

There are time when I wish I'd been born earlier - 1947, instead of 1957 - then I could have actually watched some of that music live. Still waiting for that time machine to be invented....



Vic

[Vic Lewis VL]

I may have digressed slightly from the point there and got carried away a little, but the point I was trying to make was that those simple 3-4 chord singalongs have stuck in my memory for almost 50 years now....the point is, music back then was memorable, sing-along-able, and catchy - and featured more hooks than you'd need to catch a whale.

Still my favourite era....



Vic

[s1120]

I'm probably very similar. I like what I like and it doesn't have to be complex to be good

Thats it right there. Some times simple and predictable is good. Your buddy likes more complex stuff... good for him. You dont... good for you. I tend to fall on the more complex side of the coin... but thats me, and frankly it stopped me from learning guitar as a youth. [hard to copy the songs you like when your listening to Floyd, yes, Rush, Zep, ELP, etc... If I was a AC/DC fan, Id have stuck with it back then. ] Nothing wrong with simple Pop.. [well dont get me into the overprossesed, autotuned stuff though!!!! ]

[fleaaaaaa]

Even pink floyd knew how to write a simple pop song that stuck in your head, yeah they framed prog songs around them (Time, Money, Another Brick Pt2) but don't let them fool you, they were doing (at least at that point) what everyone else was doing - writing songs that glued into your head.

[boxboy]

Famous quote from Noel Coward:
'Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.'
I figure if there aren't dozens of simple pop songs/melodies you like or liked, there's something the matter with you.

[s1120]

Even pink floyd knew how to write a simple pop song that stuck in your head, yeah they framed prog songs around them (Time, Money, Another Brick Pt2) but don't let them fool you, they were doing (at least at that point) what everyone else was doing - writing songs that glued into your head.

Very true. The start of money is frankly a fun little diddy.

[fleaaaaaa]

I find now if music is well produced (sure it can be overproduced) or is very poppy or catchy people say "It's too commercial" or "that band's gone mainstream" - so my questions:

Did people in the 60s say "It's too commercial" "that band's gone mainstream" or "it's overproduced?"

Were such things possible then?

[Cat]

Writing idiotically simple hooks is what I did for over 30 years. Commercial jingles, music beds, and even elevator music. They need to be dead simple and direct. I've heard people say umpteen thousand times "Anyone can do that."

Ha!

Cat