So Just Exactly What IS A Great Song?

The 100 Greatest Songs list got me to thinking and doing a little looking around. Rolling Stone, for example, recently compiled its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. So what, exactly, makes a great song? I think there are a few approaches that you could take, but I don’t think there is any criteria that everyone would agree on.

Before I go any farther, I should point out that I’m very eclectic in my musical tastes. You don’t have to dig very far into my library to run into baroque, classical, romantic, modern, rock, jazz, punk, funk, metal, opera, impressionist, country, pop, folk, gospel, New Age, etc. About the only things I’d almost guarantee that you wouldn’t find are rap and hip-hop. To my mind, it’s arguable whether those would even qualify as “music.” It might be because I’m just an old fogey or don’t understand the genres, but those styles just don’t do anything for me and generally turn me off. Doesn’t mean that they’re bad, though. It simply means that I don’t care for ‘em. So, that being said, let’s get on with it.

I guess one of the first criteria you could use to identify a “great” song is longevity. Is the song still being played? The idea behind this criteria is fairly simple: Mozart was a great composer because his music is still being played more than 300 years after he died. While the idea has some merit, it does have a few drawbacks. On the exclusionary side of the problem (songs that would not make the cut), what about a really great song that first appeared last week? That hardly qualifies as long-lived. On the inclusionary side of the idea (songs that make the list), does the song get played because it’s great or for some other reason?

Having worked in the radio business for a few years, I can tell you that it works pretty much like any other business. Whether you know it or not, radio’s business is actually selling airtime to advertisers. A station can charge x-dollars for a 30-second spot because a ratings service (Arbitron, for example) tells an advertiser that a 30-second spot aired during a particular time on a particular station will most likely be heard by a certain number of listeners. The more listeners that a station can deliver, the more they can charge the advertisers. By being able to charge more for the airtime, the station has more money available to attract more listeners through promotions, better air-talent (”air-talent”? I always tell people that I used to work as a “disc jockey”). But because the public is fickle, stations have to continue to deliver what the public wants to hear if they want to stay in the game.

For example, the “oldies” station out this way used to play stuff running from the mid-50’s to about the mid-70’s. They have recently changed their format somewhat and an “oldie” is now running from the late 60’s into the mid- to late-80’s (which makes me a real “oldie,” I guess, because I used to play some of that stuff when it was still on the charts). There is almost nothing earlier than about ‘66 or ‘67 that gets any airtime and most of what they play is in the ‘75 to ‘85 timeframe. Also, the music is now more on the “edgy” side. Not necessarily metal, but no Manilow, for example. Why? Because that’s what the listeners want to hear and if they don’t hear it, they change the channel.

So that kind of shoots a big hole in longevity as a major criterion. Half or more of the first 25 of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest are pre-1970. While people of my generation would remember them, lack of air-play kind of defeats the idea of a long-lived song. Now, granted, I don’t live in a major market and I wouldn’t even begin to speculate on what gets airtime in places like New York, Chicago, Washington, Houston, etc. But on the other hand, this isn’t Podunkville, Iowa, where both stations are mom-and-pop operations, either. But still, doesn’t that change the criteria from “still getting airtime” to something like “still getting airtime in the top radio markets”? Or, more to the point, does longevity have more to do with popularity than anything else?

And what, exactly, is popularity? I’m one of those folks that really liked Frank Zappa’s music (’course Al Gore said that he’s a Zappa fan, too, so take that for what it’s worth). But Zappa only cracked the Top 40 once (”Valley Girl” peaked at #32 in 1982). Does that mean that his music wasn’t great? This is a guy that should be ranked right up there with Hendrix, Page, Santana and Van Halen for the sounds that he could get from a guitar and his compositions run the gammut of musical styles. Or how about the Grateful Dead? (To my knowledge) One decent hit - “Touch of Grey,” which topped out at #6 in 1987. Very dedicated fan following, although not huge like the Beatles or Rolling Stones. But eighteen of their 55 albums went Gold or better. To be fair, 16 or so of those 55 were released after Jerry Garcia’s death and the band released a lot of compilations and retrospectives, so it’s not 55 albums of completely original content, but it’s still a very prolific showing. I think the work of Zappa and The Dead would definitely qualify in the “popularity” department, but nothing in Rolling Stone’s top 500 and I’d still argue in favor of calling them “great” even though I’m nowhere close to being a Dead Head.

So if we can’t judge “great” by longevity or popularity, then what else? I suppose we could always “follow the money” and look at profits (which might also be a “popularity” factor). After all, there’s a tidy chunk of change tied up in Elvis’ estate or in the Beatles’ Apple catalog. But only 6 of Elvis’ more than 125 Top 40 hits (US - I didn’t include UK hits) made the cut for the 500 Greatest (something like 20 or 25 of The Beatles’ songs made the cut). But, honestly, how much did Chuck Berry actually make off of “Johnny B. Goode” (number 7 of the top 500) or did the Isley Brothers make off of “Shout”? I’m not disputing their being included, but considering the treatment of Black artists at the time, I’d be very surprised if they were paid more than a pittance for their work. And is a profitability criterion adjusted for inflation? A million-seller in 1955 must have certainly been something much bigger than a million-seller in 1995.

OK, if not profitability, how about musical impact? What I mean by that is influence upon other composers and musicians. All musicians and composers draw upon what others have done. While not necessarily copying, they are nevertheless drawing inspiration from or trying a different take on an earlier theme. But if that’s the case, aren’t all of these songs influenced by the “classical” composers (by “classical,” I mean “symphonic” - “Classical” has a very definite meaning, referring to compositions of late-18th and early-19th century composers) and in that sense, all of the top 500 are derivative works of other composers. Shouldn’t those other composers receive their due as well?

No, I think “greatness” is more subjective than objective. What is great to one person may very well be noise to someone else. Music is, perhaps, the most pervasive and consequently the most subjective of the arts. That and the desire to visually express oneself permeate the human experience from the dawn of time. Music touches something inside of each of us. What it touches and how it touches are going to vary from person to person.

I’m not a terribly emotional person (overtly, anyway). But Tchaikovsky’s Festival Overture: 1812, Op. 49, can usually pull a tear from my eye, especially when a chorus is used for the chants and folk dances rather than being played by the strings, as Tchaikovsky wrote it. But most people find that the piece evokes a sense of excitement when they hear it (I mean, really, tears on the 4th of July?). Are they wrong? Of course not. It’s just that the piece touches something different in them, and that’s perfectly cool.

My list of the top 500 songs of all time would not have included Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone, which came in at #1 (wonder why? Consider the source), but would have included Mozart, Beethoven, Dizzy Gillespe, Louis Armstrong, both Gershwins and a host of others that the average reader of Rolling Stone would probably never consider (or maybe even have heard of). ‘Course I’d also have to go back and look at what a “song” is before making that list, but that’s another issue entirely.

So I guess that the short version of all of this is that if you think a song is “great,” if it somehow touches something in you (for better or worse), then it’s a great song and you should revel in it and to hell with what Rolling Stone or John Sandford or I may think about it. Rock on!

This entry was posted on Thursday, 24 August 2006 at 21:17 and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.