Recently, I've been listening to lots of songwriters.
True songwriters are much more admirable than a lot of the "rock" bands out there. Most popular bands now a days are horrible writers and aren't even fun to listen to. Yes! It is fun listening to bands like Ben Folds Five, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I don't believe any of these bands are terribly good at songwriting. They can write energetic or "fun" music very well, and as I've discovered lately that proves much harder than imaginable, but very few energetic rock bands have good lyrics. I'll even admit my favorite band, The Who, doesn't have very interesting or insightful lyrics.
Some of the songwriters I've really grown to admire are Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, John Prine, Randy Newman. Some more recent songwriters I've grown to love are Rufus Wainwright, Fiona Apple, and Jeff Buckley. I mention these songwriters because I hope someone reading this might be interested in checking out these people if they aren't too well versed in them already. I am more than open to any suggestions you have, btw, so let me know.
So, in general, it seems there's music written for amusement and music written with a point. I think the key to making incredible music is being able to mix these two ideas. I've been working hard to try and do these in my own music and it's incredible difficult. Granted, I'm a lousy lousy lyricist, but it's still difficult.
I think there are numerous musicians out today that still do this even though many believe pop music has taken a downward spiral. My favorite songwriters that also write some great energetic music are Morrissey, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Ben Harper, and to a slightly lesser extent Mark Oliver Everett (Eels) and Jeff Tweedy. There are even some good songwriters in the more-popular-with-teens-genres such as Matisyahu, Common, and Kanye West, Lauryn Hill.
I guess what I mean by this is good music is everywhere if you're looking for it.
In future posts, I'll comment on other fields of music which I believe people should check out. I may even talk about songs that I like and why I like them.
Hopes someone reads this!
With thanks and understanding of my horrible writing,
William
