September 2010: Rock/Alt Category
Click on the title in the player to listen to this month's song. The evaluation of the song examines its originality, structure, melody and lyrics and will give you insight into how the SongDoor judges listen to your entry.
For this Tip Jar, we picked a rock/alt song that steered clear of thrash, metalcore or industrial rock. Those genres tend to be more about emotion-unleashing rather than songcrafting, so we went for something relatively middle-of-the-road.
First, try hard to listen past the vocals, as they are painful. DO listen to the lyrics.
They are off-meter, they are irreverent and in parts, they are hilarious and über-clever. Love the irony of "don't copy me when I'm dead," considering they have ripped Green Day's 4/4 guitar-pound down to its DNA.
The verse "melody" kind of sounds like someone in the midst of drowning - or is that a passionate vocal? The rhythm is all over the place - or is that done purposely, to reflect the erratic theme of the lyrics? The chorus melody is hooky, poppy and mainstream; or is that to emulate the unpredictability of human behavior? That's the beauty of rock-alt. It's kind of like modern art ... you see in it what you want, what it means to you. There are no rules. Kinda cool.
This writer was smart enough to know that if this song were to have any radio success, it had better stick to some conventions, at least in the structure, which he did. The obstacle facing this band is a big one. A publisher could well pick up this song and put it in the hands of a competent producer and get it radio-ready. Just one thing: the vocals don't sell the song, they hurt it.
A publisher might offer this writer a chance to collaborate or sit in on a staff-writing roundtable based on the cleverness of this piece. Whether he can write anything out of this range remains to be seen, but there is a unique poetry there we found really appealing. So our scores are:
Grade: B | Publishability Score: 6 (out of 10) | with new vocals, an 8
