Category Archives: Music

Okay – Another Perfect Song

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I mentioned earlier about perfect songs and what makes them so. When I first started thinking about the concept, I figured song perfection would be transferable or agreeable from person to person. However, after doing this for several years, I found that even if the criteria for song perfection tries to remove the personal, such as the song reminding you of the first time you fell in love, for example, song perfection is still a personal thing.

For me, a song to be perfect has to be:

1. A great song.
2. Recorded perfectly.
3. Performed perfectly.

A perfect song is not just the song itself, but the recording/performance of it, that one time. It is perfection captured in time. The song should not be dated – i.e. evoking a particular era or stage of life. One of the key properties of a perfect song is that you can hear it over, and over, and over, again, and not wear it out. Sure, you can hear it 20 times in one day and get tired of it, but if the song came on again tomorrow, you would turn it up. I have several that meet the criteria. This is one:

Simply Red – “Holding Back the Years.”

 

 

Michael Jackson – “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough”

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Well, let’s talk about Michael Jackson, since he died one year ago. Like everyone else, I was stunned when I found out he passed away. While I was never a rabid Michael Jackson fan, it really is amazing how much his music was/is intertwined with my life.

Jackson was about my age, and I remember thinking when I was a kid about how crazy it must have been for him to put up with all of the attention and adulation. He was a true star, a true artist. As crazy as he appeared to be, I personally never cared. I only looked at how incredible a dancer he was, and how truly solid his work was. Even when he was under the gun, being pursued by the Paparazzi, called “Jacko” by the Tabloids, he was able still able to cut through the insanity and do his art. He was in his own class.

There are three songs that I immediately think of when I hear the name “Michael Jackson:” “ABC,” when he was ten and singing with The Jackson 5, “Thriller,” and “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough.”

“ABC” hit my fifth-grade class like a bomb. We were about the same age as Jackson, and all the girls loved Michael. One of my most indelible memories of grade school is the girls playing “ABC” on their battery-powered record players, dancing and singing in the school cafeteria.

“Thriller,” both the song and the album, is Jackson’s masterpiece. It was great artistically, technically, and promotionally. Jackson was the center of a great team – Quincy Jones, who produced, John Landis, who directed the Thriller video, and a host of other professionals. The songs were great, they were excellently recorded, produced, and played. The album itself was masterly promoted – it seemed like 1982/83 was Michael Jackson’s year. When one single from the album started to fall, they released another to rocket into its place. I love “Thriller.” I smile every time I hear Vincent Price’s evil laugh. Masterful.

But to me, the essence of Michael Jackson is “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough.” This was his breakout song. This was the song that made all the rest possible. It was his first work with Quincy Jones, who, as producer, provided the environment that let Jackson become “Michael Jackson.” It is the exuberant song of a twenty-year-old kid declaring himself and finding his style.

And, it’s a great song. There’s a lot going on with it. It sounds straight ahead and very smooth, but don’t let the disco strings fool you. Try and follow the percussion. Sure, it’s a four-quarter beat, but what’s going on with that cowbell? And during the bridge, you hear street conversations in the Marvin Gaye style. I definitely turn it up when it comes on the radio.

I miss Michael Jackson. It would have been great to see him break back out again last summer. But, I am glad for his legacy – he left us with some great music.

What’s your favorite Michael Jackson song?

What Makes a Song “Perfect?”

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What is a “perfect song?” A few years ago, I heard a song that I had heard a million times come on the radio. When it came out, it was played over and over and over again – back in the days of “Top 40,” and I was in a small town at the time with only a few very commercial stations. When it was on  the charts, the song finally drove me crazy. Now, twenty-five years later, I not only did not turn the channel, I was singing along with it. I really liked the song – loved the song.

Why? How could that be? It was because it was a perfect song.

What makes a song perfect? What are the criteria?

There are many, many reasons to love a song, to call it your favorite, or even to call it perfect. To me, a song is perfect if it meets the following criteria:

1. The song must not evoke any particular time or event. It must be timeless, as much as possible. If you hear a song and think “ah, 1966!”, then it is not a perfect song, even if it is a great song. It must transcend its time.

2. The song is a recorded song, and it is a specific recording of the song. This probably reflects my recording engineer bias, but a perfect song is a specific instance of a wonderful thing, captured on tape, vinyl, or bits. If “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole is a perfect song (and I would argue it is), it is the recording he did, not just a recording of him on TV singing the song. By the way, Nat’s so good, he recorded the song twice, and both recordings are perfect.

3. You must be able to hear it a million times and still want to hear it again. You can burn it out with an overdose, but it comes right back, and you find yourself listening and perhaps humming along.

4. It must be artistically and technically perfect for what it is. It must be well recorded, by which I mean that the recording must perfectly capture the song even if it technically may not be “perfect.” It must be well played – the musicians must be inspired. The arrangement must work. The song itself must be a great song, well constructed, with lyrics (if any) that just work.

A perfect song, therefore, is a recording where the magic came together. It is a sublime moment in the musical cosmos.

An easy perfect song is “All Blues” by Miles Davis. Another is “I Can See Clearly” by Johnny Nash. Yet another is “Ring of Fire” by another Johnny, Johnny Cash. And, more recently, “Hallelujah,” which was written by Leonard Cohen, but recorded perfectly by Jeff Buckley. Just to name a few.

When I mentioned the concept of a perfect song to my old boss, who has a few years on me, he said that a perfect song to him was “Kentucky Rain” by Elvis Presley. Which, would not be on my list. But it shows you how subjective music is. One person’s perfect song could be (likely is, actually) someone else’s drill-bit on the ear drum. But to my old boss, “Kentucky Rain” spoke to him, and it was well recorded with great session musicians, and, well, Elvis was a pro, so I can’t argue the choice too much.

Some of the songs that I’ll dissect in this series will be perfect songs, many won’t be. I’d love to hear what songs you consider perfect according to the criteria listed above?

Music Appreciation: Killing me Softly – Roberta Flack

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Okay, here is the first song to dissect, and it is a sweetheart. First, listen to the song. It is on iTunes.

When I worked as a Recording Engineer in North Hollywood, there was another engineer there who turned me on to this song. Of course, I knew the song – it was impossible to live in 1973 and not hear this song on the radio. What he did was told me to listen to it. He declared it was the best engineered song of all time. I was nineteen at the time, and I could not believe that he was serious. Ry Cooder, sure. He did the first digital album. The Alan Parsons Project – yes, great engineering. Persons did “Abbey Road” and “Dark Side of the Moon.” But Roberta Flack?

He was right. What a great song, and what a incredible job putting it on tape. This is first rate professionalism on all counts – the musicians, the recording team, and of course, Roberta Flack herself.

Listen to the crispness of  the sound. Listen to the shimmering of the symbols and bells. Listen to her voice. Enjoy. Let me know what you think.

Music Appreciation

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I have always loved music, but I never learned to play. I did the next best thing: I learned how to get music on tape. While I am a computer IT professional by trade, my formal education is in Sound and Recording engineering, and I worked in a couple of studios in Hollywood and LA at the very start of my career.

I am starting a blog series on Music Appreciation. We listen to music all the time – in the car, on our iPods, even when we eat in restaurants or shop in stores. There is a vast, vast variety to music. We as humans have made music probably before we tamed fire, and I’ll bet that even then there were styles that differed from clan to clan, tribe to tribe. What one person considers a sublime wave of awesome beauty is considered by another a cacophony of pain.

We have all heard the same songs again and again. Even if you listen only to contemporary music, you will no doubt hear the same song many, many times. We are all familiar with hearing a song so often it makes you sick. When I was growing up, we had “Top 40″ radio, which literally played the same forty songs over and over and over again, with a new list each week. We have the same thing now, split into many more genres.

When you get into older pop music, there are songs you may have heard perhaps hundreds of times over a few decades. How many times have you heard “Brown Eyed Girl” or “Moon Dance” by Van Morrison?

But, you know what? Most of these songs are still played because they are so good. When they were fresh, they blew your mind. Or, you weren’t ready for them, and after a few hundred times, then they blew your mind.

Lately, I’ve been hearing songs on the radio I heard a hundred times before, only, this time, they hit me. I hear something I hadn’t heard before, or I was in a particular mood that just hit right, or something broke through the “oh yeah, this song” factor. I thought it would be fun to try to share the experience, to take a song you may have heard many times before, and maybe loved when it was new, or maybe even hated when it was new, and then dissect it. Point out things in it that are truly great, or that made the song unique. Perhaps it was something in the way the drummer hit the cowbell. Perhaps its the way they used a flanger on the guitar. Maybe something else. The idea is to re-experience the song, so that even if you heard it many times before, it will almost like hearing for the first time.

Stay tuned – we’ll see how this turns out!