Popitty Pop Pop Pop
Is every song based on chords not riffs or rhythm a country song now? Really?
Super long time ago. During the era of the original GIG Magazine. For maybe three months tops, I was in a band with the associate editor (Temple Ray) and the art director (Jim Love). Temple was—probably still is—a badass singer and Jim was playing rhythm guitar. Now, first let’s get straight that a two-guitar band where I am the better player is likely doomed to start with. Jim was a really musical guy and way ahead of the music tech curve but—crucial for this little story—he had zero real training or education about music.
Side note: After having not seen her in some 25 years, I ran into Temple at what ended up being the last NAMM show any of us have been to in a while. One of those kismet moments. I was there with Scott Woodward who had driven the two of us there from Las Vegas. We were heading to the parking structure’s elevator and something happened to delay us. I think Scott had forgotten something in the car. Anyway, we were delayed long enough to miss the elevator and had to wait. As we were getting on, a woman pulling a wagon full of typical booth stocking stuff arrived. We helped her get the wagon in the elevator, but her back was to me the entire time. As the elevator started moving and she started talking… I *knew* that voice. I said, “Temple?” It was actually a moment that resides in the catalog of some of my favorite life moments. Jim I have not heard from in years. Way back even before 2016 happened and the world lost its collective mind, when I was still pretty open on a certain social network about my libertarian political leanings, I got a message out of nowhere from Jim saying that if I was a libertarian, then that made me either a sociopath or a moron and he chose not to associate with either. We had been friends for about 25 years.
Anyway.
The band had some potential but it was a case of a gig coming too early being the death knell. We had been rehearsing a couple of times a week in this little airless room that had been built inside of Temple’s garage. It was soundproofed to the point that we never got a complaint from the neighbors but during summer in the San Fernando Valley it was not a comfortable space.
We had learned maybe six songs when Temple got us a gig at a local club. In two weeks. It meant having to learn another 10-ish songs in a short time period. I still do not remember who the drummer was. And I don’t remember the bass player’s name but he was what rock players invariably call a “Jazz Guy.” Which basically meant he knew about chords and scales and some basic music theory. So we started brainstorming songs we could learn quickly. And the bass player and I were talking about chord progressions in terms of scale degrees because at that point we did not know what key anything would be in.
Elvis Costello had put out a great version of “My Funny Valentine” which is a classic ii-V-I. There are a million I-vi-IV-V tunes out there including everything from “Capitol Radio” by The Clash to “Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett. Etc. After about 30 minutes of this kind of banter, Jim kinda blew up. “What the %#@* is a five?” It is an experience I remember every time there is a communication breakdown in my life. If you don’t know about using Roman numerals to describe chords based on the degrees of a scale, there is a good explanation of the system here.
Labels are important. It is a way we communicate about things. But when it comes to music, it can get complicated if the people involved in the conversation do not use the same terms. Another example from my past.
Back in the days of the old Rev. Bill and the Soul Believers band, we played a bunch of clubs in the Pasadena, CA area. There was a new club opening in Old Town called Wise Guys and I went to talk with the owner about getting booked. He asked what kind of music we played and I always found that question funny. As far as I was concerned, the music style was right there in the name of the band. I told him we played classic soul music and when he looked puzzled, I started to reel off artist names. James Brown. Wilson Pickett. Aretha Franklin. Otis Redding. Sam and Dave. He got that lightbulb recognition look on his face and said, “Oh! So, you play classic rock.”
No. But, I didn’t argue.
So, this has all been a really long intro to a conundrum I’m currently in about the meaning of Pop as a musical style. It was an honest statement from a singer I recently did some work with that set the mental wheels in motion. After having him sing on one of my tunes that I don’t really know what to do with (more on that in a minute), we’ve started the process of me writing some stuff with him in mind as the artist. I find that exchanging playlists of music we each love is a good starting point. When I confessed my love of Hanson and Rick Springfield and said I was an unrepentant lover of pop, he said, “I don’t really know what you mean when you say pop.”
Hmmmm…
As I alluded to a few other times in this space, I’m working on a record. Which still feels weird to type. After more than a year, the stars have finally, apparently, aligned and Larry Hall–who set me on this path in the first place and who is producing–finally has time to work on it. We sat down a week ago to listen to my mixes of 14 or 15 songs with the intention of whittling it all down to 10 tunes. There is one tune—the one I had the aforementioned singer take a swing at—that is 100% a country song. And I don’t know what to do with it. One one hand, it feels like the song with the most commercial potential. On the other hand, all of the other writing I have done is much more pop. At least it is to me.
So, I was shocked when I sat down with Larry and he kept saying “This is a country song.” I mean, what the actual F?
OK, so there is a ballad that I can see being country with the right singer. But the one I wrote as a sorta-kinda-homage to The Cars? Or the piece of cotton-candy pop that hinges on the motion between a Maj7 and Maj9 chord with the same root? Really?
Reluctantly, I took his counsel and went home and redid the horns. Kept the bari sax cuz we both liked that but I muted out the trumpet and both the tenor and alto saxes and redid those parts as country fiddles. Same chord structure. Same actual parts. Just a different instrument playing them. And, as much as I hate being wrong, I gotta admit that the fiddle version doesn’t suck.
But all of this has me thinking about what I consider to be pop music and where that sits in the current world in terms of style.
It’s not any mystery that we don’t have a common definition of pop. I mean, it’s just a shortened version of the term “popular music,” a term that was often one of derision. There was popular music and then there was serious music. For me, the roots of what I think of as pop are songs from the 1940s.
“But Beautiful” written by Johnny Burke.
Sammy Cahn’s “I Should Care.”
“Come Rain Or Come Shine” written by Johnny Mercer.
And so much Cole Porter. I very purposefully have used versions that feature non-ancient singers. Songs this good can be sung by singers of any age and still be great.
Like so many others of my generation, I have to thank Linda Ronstadt for the intro. Her three records with Nelson Riddle served as my entrée into this music.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoDH1jJDcQEQPeTVsuoAz1UbN84LVs4pC
I first heard the Getz/Gilberto album right about the same time and all of that eventually grew into a love of Frank and Tony and others.
There are three common threads in all of the above music.
Interesting chord progressions and colors
Clever and usually literate lyrics
Really memorable melodies
At least to my mind and ears, there is a through line that runs directly from the above mentioned writers through Carol King and Laura Nyro and Todd Rundgren and Elvis Costello and Pat Monahan and teams like Elton John and Bernie Taupin and the hits written by Daryl Hall with either John Oates or Sara and/or Janna Allen.
Those are all writers who I love and who I wish I could legitimately say I emulated in my own writing. But I’m nowhere close to good enough to make that claim.
While all of the writers I’ve listed are “of a certain age” (or dead), I want to be clear that I am not going down the “current music sucks” rabbit hole. There are artists who are not already grandparents who are part of the same string. I adore Diane Birch and am a big Chromeo fan. White Denim is interesting as is Eric Hutchinson. My Substack partner Tim Hemingway got me hooked on Weezer a few years ago and I am pretty consistently stunned by their creativity and the way they meld pop and rock. I got turned on to tons of great young writers via the web series Live From Daryl’s House and from Elton’s really excellent radio show.
In prep for writing this, I sat down with my streaming service of choice and a copy of the Billboard Top 100 to see if I could find material that featured all three of the above listed characteristics. “Ghost” by Justin Beiber and “Bad Habits” by Ed Sheeran both came close but the single entry in the 20 songs I checked out to tick all the boxes was a mashup/remix of “Cold Heart” and some bits of “Rocket Man” by Elton John and Dua Lipa.
I think one of the things that kept me from writing music for more than 20 years was a feeling of irrelevance. The stuff I like and am good at does not fit into any current genre. But my discomfort started to ease a bit a couple of years ago. Besides the aforementioned Mr. Hall calling me out about my stated inability to write songs, the turn came from an episode of Live From Daryl’s House. The one with Diane Birch. I love this episode so much that I ripped the audio from YouTube, cleaned it up as best I could and turned it into an “album” that I could have on all of my devices. She is a great writer. “Nothing But a Miracle” stands as maybe the best pop song of female heartbreak that I’ve heard in 20 years.
In one of the bits between songs when she and Daryl and T-Bone (RIP) were sitting on the porch talking about music and Diane said that she had gone through the same kind of doubt. Her stuff did not sound like anything else that was popular and she finally just decided to do what she does without worrying about it. And Daryl Hall, a man who between songs he wrote himself or with John Oates or some combo of the Allen sisters has been responsible for 30+ Top 40 singles, said something like “Yeah, you gotta do what you do. If you consciously try to write something that you think will be a hit, it never works.”
But back to the point of all of this which is trying to define pop. At this point I don’t think it can actually be done. Or at least, I am the wrong guy to do it. I mean, I have a playlist called Pop Perfection that includes everything from Alice Cooper to Carly Rea Jepson, from “Stacy’s Mom” to Frank Sinatra and covers of standards by Boz Scaggs pushed up against Yes. (Yep. Remember those three characteristics I listed earlier? “Roundabout” boasts all three. It’s a pop song. At least in my twisted mind.)
And having taken my annual dive into the current Hot 100, I can sorta get how songs I think of—and wrote as—cotton-candy pop can be seen by someone else as country. I write story songs and that is 100% the realm of country music. But the song that started this whole screed… It’s not a country song. I mean Maj9 chords are not a country thing. It moves from the major key to its relative minor as the center on the chorus and leaves even that related key for a couple of bars in the bridge. It uses 8 or 9 different chords of which exactly one is a triad.
But the fiddles sound kinda cool and if that means people think it’s a country song, I’m OK with that. Mostly.