Ok, this is off the subject of Carey and me getting six demos done, but it’s ON the subject of critiques, which is the hardest, most confounding, most helpful thing we do with our songs as songwriters.
A while back, one of my Cincinnati friends, Dave Lenahan, himself a fine songwriter who uses a song plugger (Steven Sharp at Sharp Objects is the plugger), kindly submitted for consideration a song he had not even written. It’s titled Deal With It, and it was cowritten with David E. Blowers and Eric Measel.
Below is the critique, and the reason for Sharp Objects putting the song somewhere deep in the back of their catalog.
Steven: “DEAL WITH IT…Even though the spoken word is not part of the core lyric, it is present enough that it could be considered a spoken word kind of song, and those kinds of songs are NOT on the charts. They haven’t been for some time. This is not to say that the song is not great – it is! When we play a song for a Decision Maker with that one line of spoken word, you can see their eyes glaze over. It’s sad, but it is unfortunately part of the game. We will keep these in our catalog and keep an ear out for THE RIGHT OPPORTUNITY to pitch it. If the artist is legendary and has had a long history of hits, he may get away with a LITTLE spoken word. example would be Alan Jackson or Trace Adkins. GREAT SONG DAVE just limited opportunities.”
Later today we’ll be working on the lyrics to the girl songs. And tomorrow I drive from Greensboro to Nashville.
Tags: Dave Lenahan, David E. Blowers, Deal With It, Eric Measel, Sharp Objects, Steven Sharp
June 21, 2009 at 6:07 pm |
Seems like Trace Adkins does at least one line of spoken word in every other hit of his. And Alan Jackson has like a 1 minute conversation with Jimmy Buffett in 5 o’clock somewhere… So the opportunities don’t seem that limited for those two at least.
Now that he put Trace Adkins in my head, this song seems perfect for him.
June 21, 2009 at 6:08 pm |
OH! Or Montgomery Gentry. They do spoken word.