Tal Bachman wrote:By the way, about the music stuff, I never saw an answer to the question as to why it comes up so often on here. I don't make an issue out of it; I don't know why anyone else would.
But maybe I should address this directly, since there seems to be a real curiosity about it underneath all the stupid shots at it. Maybe some information will shut up all the halfwits.
While several of my songs have done well and earned me quite a bit of money, mostly from TV and movie use (and radio play within Canada), only one has gotten heavy radio play around the world ("She's So High").
That song was supposed to be a "set-up track": a song released first off an album, which is supposed to just "prepare the ground" for the big slamming single which the company thinks has the real legs. That is, the radio life of "She's So High" was projected by Columbia Records to be only around six weeks, after which they would release the more serious "If You Sleep" - a slower song about fate and death - projected to stay around for months and months.
But as it happened, "She's So High" came out, and - maybe because it was a sunny song, and it came out in the spring - radio stations wouldn't stop playing it. It was on heavy rotation for well over a year, around the world.
The truth is that this didn't surprise me as much as my sense of modesty would have liked, because in writing it, I was specifically trying to write a smash. (And as soon as it was done, I actually did think, "this is a smash".) It was inspired by a bunch of songs. The two most important were Sheryl Crow's "If It Makes You Happy" and the Smith's "Bigmouth Strikes Again". The aria "Nessun Dorma" and "Help" also were influences - they got me thinking about the excitatory value of a quick vocal leap.
Most of all, I was trying to write a song which sounded like my favourite Kinks pop singles, from the '66-'67 "Something Else"/"Waterloo Sunset" era. Ray Davies had the ability to write immediately likable, witty pop songs, which however, sometimes had deeper significances.
I'm not sure that "She's So High" could make any real claim to depth, though I did take perverse pleasure in writing a direct song about a normal human emotion - awe of someone you're romantically attracted to - which more ideological folks may have taken issue with.
It will be hard to believe for people on here, but my record company and music publishers ended up begging radio programmers to stop playing "She's So High" so they could release "If You Sleep". But programmers have no incentive to stop playing a song which is still boosting their audiences, so they didn't. The song had taken on a life of its own at radio - no one at Columbia, after the first two weeks, was "working" it or pitching it: radio just kept playing it.
So by the time "She's So High"'s run at radio ended, it seemed like Columbia was into other things, new acts, etc. There was a bit of a dust-up over a string arrangement which the chairman of the company decided he wanted to put on "If You Sleep"; and in the end, that song was never really pushed. (Plus, it's maybe not surprising that a song about someone dying wouldn't immediately take off at pop radio).
After that, I was pretty much unable to ever get Columbia Records's attention again. Nor was I the only one; a bunch of artists there who'd come out of the box with a big hit, were seemingly abandoned by the record company, and for no really good reason that we could ever discover. The chairman seemed mostly to get off on the thrill of chasing down new unsigned artists and breaking that first hit, then moving on - rather like the sexual rhythms of a teenage boy. There's all this focus on getting the girl into the backseat, but then once he scores - it's off on the next hunt.
Only two years after "She's So High" won the BMI Song of the Year Award, was played all over the world, and got me into Rolling Stone, on The Tonight Show, etc., I couldn't even get Columbia Records to listen to new material anymore. I finally flew to New York and demanded that they either give me a budget to make a follow up record, or buy me out of the contract. They ended up deciding to buy me out, saying they were "just really busy with this whole internet piracy thing", which was then just starting.
The last seven years of the music industry have been a nightmare come true for music executives and recording artists. The whole business was based on the sale of hardware. That hardware is now almost obsolete. Naturally, CD sales have declined dramatically; there is thus less money for record companies to sign new artists and fund their recordings, and less reason for them to believe that would even be worthwhile, since CD sales keep declining. As a result, the music biz is caught in a death spiral feeding off its own energy, and there is no salvation in sight.
I feel like I have a lot of good songs which a lot of people would like: sad songs, happy songs, thoughtful songs, moving songs, light songs. But I doubt that any great number of people will ever get a chance to hear them. I regret that.
At the same time, I'm grateful I got a shot in during what turned out to be the final glory days of the musical business, screwed up as it was. At least I got one song in before it all started to turn south, and I can't complain about the royalties. A few losers on here might mock pop songs, but if they could one day spend a couple of hours creating something which millions of people would appreciate, and which would automatically generate five to ten times times their regular wage annually for a decade, my guess it that without exception they would - literally - consider forfeiting one of their testicles for the opportunity.
Now - would the halfwits leave this alone? It's totally irrelevant to anything we discuss on here, as far I can tell.
This is actually quite interesting; an excellent insight into your experience and the music industry as you encountered it in general. Thanks.
