NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Phil, I've been thinking a lot of the "dated" terms, and how it plays into all the things we are talking about here. As I have said repeatedly, COUNTRY music is ALWAYS ABOUT THE LANGUAGE. That is what separates it from all other formats. And as we have seen, that still remains even though the musical formats are always changing.
Yesterday and last night I had the chance to listen to quite a bit of "older country' and had to relate somethings to one of our members, Jarrod. He was here for a two day tour and did pretty well.He has been writing songs on his own in Birmingham and a lot of his tours revolve around going through his songs and trying to update and make them work for the current marketplace.
While not very old, not yet 40, at times he uses phrases and terms that are just not used anymore. Things like "Country queen, and pages of a magazine" etc. have been replaced by more name magazines (Elle, Cosmo), etc. and we don't really use "queen" anymore.
Of course, as OTT pointed out, sometimes it gets grossly overused like the term GIRL!! Yeah, it is WAY past time to retire that one.
But all kinds of phrases and words change as our language changes. I was listening to WSM radio last night, (home of the Grand Ole Opry.) They played about six songs in a row from the 60's, 70's and early 80's. A term that was used in about five of those songs was "BLUE." (One of them was my buddy Richard Leigh's "DON'T IT MAKE MY BROWN EYES BLUE' from Crystal Gayle.) That term went out of style years ago, feeling bad, or down, was once called Blue or got the blues all the time. just does't apply anymore. One reason? It got OVERUSED.
And language denotes some radical changes sometimes. Around Christmas we'll all have to be "Don We Now our GAY APPAREL!!!! FA LA LA FA LA LA LA LA LA!!!) Boy has THAT CHANGED?
The point being as it applies to someone like Gerald, is as we age, we lose touch with the LANGUAGE. And so younger people who NEVER want to hang out with older people, are going to be hesitant to interact with us until we meet them. all goes back to my BUILD RELATIONSHIPS FIRST, that I was talking to Gerald about.
So "SONG STUDY' enables us to see that, and see what is overused. This is tremendously important. How?
Well if something is in the common culture, and it starts popping up in all these songs, WATCH OUT, because by the time you are hearing it, it has ALREADY been worn out in places like Nashville. We are hearing things two and three years out. And we hear this stuff all the time. If you guys think YOU are tired of "GIRL", TAILGATE" DRINKING BEER DOWN BY THE RIVER" WITH MY GIRL NAMED GURL IN THE MOONLIGHT!!!" Try hearing it solid on every writers night for the past three years BEFORE it started showing up on the radio.
So Ott, that would tell you to NOT use the word GIRL in your songs. A simple thing like that can really make differences.
The last part of my night last night was at the Commodore writers night. RiDawn and others were there to see my good friend PAUL JEFFERSON. But there were several rounds before him. and one by one, as the writers reeled off songs that simply sound like every other song, you could see the boredom in the crowd. You could hear the hub hub of conversations.
Now interestingly, Paul got up, did HIS songs and some of them, even CLOSE AS I GET TO LOVING YOU, his number one hit from 18 years ago, STILL SOUNDS LIKE IT COULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN YESTERDAY. It doesn't get dated. The same with many songs that Jimbeau has written. Playing "SETTING FANCY FREE" on Saturday sounds just as fresh as it did in 1982, when it was released.
Those are the marks of great songwriters. And they are careful to play with the language in ways that don't go out of date.
One of the problems of many of the current crop of songs are going to be that they are out of date very quickly. the problem with being too much "of the moment" has it's own downfalls.
What to do?
Keep writing, keep searching, keep learning. About all you can do.
MAB