Music of the Weak: Everything I Know About Songwriting I Learned From the iTunes Music Chart

There’s been a lot of cry-cry going on about the flailing music industry for the last, like, 30 years—and rightly so. Record sales suck, there are few major hits, and Radiohead is taking over the asylum.  But the irony of it all is that the keys to the kingdom are hiding in plain sight.  All anyone needs to know about writing a monster hit song can be gleaned with one quick listen through the top ten of iTunes’ Top Songs chart.  And now you don’t even need to do that, ‘cause I’m bout to spell it out for you right here. Over the next couple of weeks, for the first time anywhere, I would like to present to you MC Stank Booty™’s 6 or 7 (Relatively) Easy Steps Toward Writing YOUR Breakout, iTunes Chart-Topping Single.

This week, MC Stank Booty™’s principle #1:

You gotta have a gimmick.

90% of all major pop hits have a whiff of novelty about them, from the immaculately constructed (Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”) to the break-out songs from long-time artists (Modest Mouse’s “Float On”) to the warhorses that get to play with the whippersnappers (Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”).  Novelty and artistry are not mutually exclusive—in fact, some would argue it takes more skill to write an accessible but brilliant niche song than it does to write 100 songs aping Pavement or Animal Collective—but if you have to choose one, choose novelty.

Why is Asher Roth’s “I Love College” placing so high on the iTunes chart (#6) compared to The Lonely Island’s “I’m On a Boat” (#51), which appeals to roughly the same audience? Shouldn’t the presence of T-Pain automatically skyrocket The Lonely Island’s single straight to the top of the charts?  You would think.  But upon closer inspection, “I’m On a Boat” is lean as hell and built so that you can catch every single joke the first time through.  It’s built more for use as a viral video than for replay value as a song.

The aspects of novelty on “I Love College,” on the other hand, bloom and build off of each other like the friggin’ Fibonacci sequence.  Every time you listen, you hear (or see, if you’re watching the video) some new thing that reminds you either 1) why you love or loved college or 2) why you are cool—even if the answer to number 2 is because you are cooler than the video.  On the other hand, no one is cooler than Andy Samburg.  Fact.

Asher Roth doesn’t have Andy Samburg’s Saturday Night Live audience base, so he has to pack all of his ideas into one introductory song.  He finds his niche—college is fun because there’s endless booze and girls.  It’s practically a three minute synopsis of Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School.  Roth doesn’t have to say anything clever, he just has to knowingly reference collegiate goings-on as many times as possible.  Miller Lite!  Beer Pong?  Awesome!  Dude, don’t fall asleep with your shoes on.

Then there’s the beat.  Asher Roth is on some serious cross-generational shit right here.  He combines an old school drum-machine and turntable break (80’s, yo!) with a Weezer sample (90’s y’all).  Plus, he keeps his vocal inflections straight Eminem.  “I Love College” doesn’t merely target current college students, but college students from 10, 15, 25 years ago.

Genuine enthusiasm also goes a long way.  Does Asher Roth genuinely love college?  Of course he fucking does!  Does The Lonely Island truly love boating? Of course they fucking don’t—they’re faking it because it’s funny.  We don’t imagine Andy and T-Pain taking the yacht out every weekend, but we can imagine Asher Roth getting wasted every weekend—in fact, we want to imagine it, if only to imagine ourselves hanging out with him.  Four years ago, dude could have run for president.

The video also rocks a fair amount of gimmickry.  It takes place at a college fraternity party—Alpha Sigma Eta, for those of you keeping track—where everybody’s hammered, lots of dudes are vomiting, and our goofy-looking narrator is wandering around with two beautiful women under his arms.  In other words, it’s the stock college party fantasy. And, truthfully, I would like to say that nothing like this ever happens, but the fraternity parties I attended in college were not too far off (neither were the theater-geek parties)—or maybe I’m merely getting seduced by the nostalgia of the video.

There are some genuinely funny things going on at AΣH house, as well.  There are some giant mascots running around, and the dude in the frog suit at one point starts bouncing a keg up and down on his knee. Plus, the guy who passes out and gets written all over with Sharpie and has his head half-shaved wakes up and starts partying again.  It’s a college utopia boxed up in one big, awesome house, and the underlying message of it is that it could be you.  It could be you! (No, it can’t.)  No, seriously, it could be you!  (No, it can’t.)

The Lonely Island’s “I’m on a Boat” is what Weird Al used to call a “style-parody.” It takes current pop tropes (AutoTune and T-Pain) and uses them to riff on some other subject (I’ll give you a hint: it has to do with the water.)  Asher Roth’s “I Love College”—like, say, Afroman’s “I Got High”—works both as parody and as sincerity.  People can bump the track and feel snobby about what a loveable goon Roth is, or they can bump the track and get legitimately excited about college.

NEXT WEEK: Building a brand. A vacuous, meaningless brand.

-Martin Brown, 2009

Comments

[Kenny Cather]

Hey Marty,

I enjoyed the Hell out of this article. I kept wanting to come up with some great response to add to the discussion, but I couldn't come up with anything.

[You Don't Know Me]

That is some heavy shit

[collegelife]

your retarded. clearly you didnt get any ass in college. hit up some legit parties at a legit school and come back to me.

[Marty]

Sweet, dude. Does your tutelage involve teaching me how to leave skeevy comments on internet message boards?

[Chris Jones]

He wants you to be a more experienced lover before you come back to him.

He says this only because he cares.