Ok, well, this wasn't exactly the debut of my vocal and songwriting skills I had in mind for TWC. But I pledged to do a warts and all process here and received some encouragement from the masses to go in that direction. Besides, producing something I wasn't terribly sold on was going to happen sooner or later.
So what we have here is a moderately-interesting J-pop technopop track that has now acquired a lazy vocal of dubious intonation and some post punk overtones of questionable necessity. Still, it's a start.
A few observations, and let's begin with the criticisms:
The Cons
- I may have added a melody, but it's not really a positive here — not yet anyway. The verse wanders a little and the chorus is more of a chant than a tune.
- The song's harmonic foundation never fully establishes itself (though given the subject matter, that may have its advantages from a tension standpoint).
- With the addition of the vocal, the backing track becomes overly busy and hyper-syncopated.
More minor criticisms would include the raggedness of the vocal itself and an unbalanced form — as of now, we have a verse/chorus/breakdown/verse/chorus followed by an abrupt end. But both will fix themselves as the process continues.
The Pro's
- The opening line has some requisite drama.
- Though it won't be confused with "Yesterday," the chorus isn't without appeal.
- A few things about the vocal one could generously argue recall John Cale — in particular, the phrasing of the "dust" line at the conclusion of the first verse and the way it ends kind of mid-phrase.
There's a more interesting question that occurs to me, though. A critic commented a few years ago when Burt Bacharach teamed with the unlikely partner of Dr. Dre to release the underwhelming (but not without its pleasures) At This Time. He argued Dre's foursquare beats clipped Bacharach's usually circuitous melodic style. And even though this song shares nothing with Bacharach's work, writing enervative melodies over dance beats and static harmonies is a real challenge. For me, anyway.
Above all else though, what the evidence proves is that sometimes songwriting isn't a pretty process. For every great story about "Caroline, No" being written in fifteen minutes, with inspiration flowing like wine at an Italian wedding, there's about 4 million more that are grueling work filled with difficult and often embarrassing moments. You can probably guess which camp this song's gonna be in.
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