i try to organize my songwriting course so that there are numerous songs reflecting the aesthetics i see year to year in the types of students enrolled. a lot of the music is not so old (kendrick lamar, jonas brothers, billie eilish, drake, kanye west, lauren hill, missy elliot, red velvet, exo) but personally, i’m more impressed by things made 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago. i have not figured out how they might have epiphanies about those older works of art, try as i might i fail. their ears glaze over. certain students sometimes enter already knowing about certain things from the 80s, 70s, 60s or 50s and loving it but they are anomalies. it’s that time of the year again when i try to figure out how to teach this course about songwriting. i enjoy this august situation, starting from the top again.
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I’ve pondered some of this stuff too (also viz. students). At the course beginning, mostly to see what i was getting myself into, i asked everyone to write down their current favourite + their current least favourite song. I can’t recall if their was a general favourite, but pretty much everyone disliked “Crank That” by Soulja Boy. Even tho the students submitted their picks anonymously, I had a feeling it was a pile-on, and had less to do with the track per se then him having this haze of uncoolness following him around f, sort of like pig-pen. The track was meh imho.
my daughter anounced early on that in terms of music, her tastes belonged to herself and henceforth was pretty much unpersuadable. i’m sure she sensed i was the sort of obsessive who’d follow her around giving running commentary. I would play “Boogie On Reggae Woman” and ask her don’t you think this would be a hit if were released to radio today? huh? I mean, listen to all that perculating instrumentation! hey – where ya going….