You have to understand I just returned from Cannes, where Midem and mayem were flying as fast and furiously as harmones and hip hop. Midem, as you probably know, is the humongous International Music Industry Convergence that occurs annually in Southern France and is attended by about 10,000 people. In the old days, I understand, foreign record labels and subpublishers listened over headsets to products and wrote checks and signed contracts on the spot, on a regular basis. Now it's a bit different. You have 10 to 30-minute appointments with various companies from differing countries, which have been set up in advance for either minutes, days or months. And it helps, immensely, to be referred by someone they know. Most of the meaningful meetings take place outside of the Palais, or convention hall, at one of the palatial hotels on the main strip. Between the hours of 1AM to 4AM, there is schmoozing that makes Los Angeles look like a sleepy hick town. But how much of that actually pays off is for someone else to tell me. I had too serious a case of jet lag to go to the Martinez Hotel Bar for even one night.
What I did observe, though, is an analogy that's been building in my head since I got home. It's the analogy between art and romance. Most people have dating longer than they've been writing songs, with the possible exception of the painfully shy and the wildly precocious. So think back to those times which linger in your memory as the sweetest...those romances or that one romance in which your heart was deeply involved. How did you act? When you talked to her/him, you were really interested in the conversation. You didn't feel like you were off watching yourself from a distance, wondering how you were doing and wondering if it was working the magic you needed to get the results you wanted. That's seduction, not romance. Now apply that to songwriting. When you're really interested in saying something, musically and lyrically...when you have something to communicate because your heart is so full of an emotion or a realization that it simply spills out...that's when you make real contact. That's when your listeners are moved, your audience gets to know you, other singers want to sing your songs.
Obviously, you have to know how to write songs first. But assuming you have control of the craft and have honed it to such an extent that you can are fluently conversant in the language of songwriting, that's when you can consciously decide how to communicate. Do you try to dazzle your listeners with how clever you are drawing attention to the frame rather than the picture? Will you write any way you think will please someone, whether it's your natural style or not? Like the Valley Girl who tries to write rap because it's "happening?" Will you take on a viewpoint that's not yours or speak a way that's not natural to you in order to achieve some imagined desired result? Like the Cape Cod yuppie who parachutes in on Nashville because he hears Garth is "looking." Have you ever been out with someone who's trying to order dinner in a foreign language he/she doesn't speak, or discuss wines they know nothing about? It all looks pretty similar to me.
Do you say what you think they want to hear, in a drum groove, a bass line or a lyric? Or do you simply translate your own individual viewpoint into song form, holding onto the integrity of being yourself every step of the way? Once you do this, and do it honestly and superbly, you must understand that those who don't want your songs are simply not your target audience. Just like the analogy of romance. If you're really being yourself and your dinner partner doesn't want to see you again, you're with the wrong partner. Wouldn't you rather know that now than pretend to be some way you're not and have to be that way for the rest of the relationship? It reminds me of the band whose music is really outside, lyrically they're somewhere between Dylan and bomb throwing leftists and the label wants them to do "this one Diane Warren song" so that they can get widespread crossover airplay, etc., etc. Of course, the fans who buy the album based on the single are horrified by the rest of the album and they end up being one of many flash-in-the-pan bands whose options get dropped. Ah, the heartbreak of the one-night-stand.
At Midem, it seems that the people who were the most successful were the ones who genuinely care about the people they contact there. Relationships are begun and nurtured over years between publishers and subpublishers, between record companies and publishers and recording artists. But people who came looking for a quick deal or immediate funds were usually disappointed. It's a people event. You have to get to know people and have their best interest in mind as well as your own. After all, it's not just Americans there. And, therefore, it's not just attorneys representing talent. Companies want to know the people they're doing business with, the track record, the potential, the plans. Slam-bam, thank you maam, doesn't make it in the Midem big business arena anymore. I witnessed some very sweet long term publisher relationships. Watching the lovely and graceful Molly Hyman deal with her subpublishers, I felt I was at a family reunion, rather than at a business meeting. Once again, sincere communication succeeded over manipulative conversation. Those who were comfortable with themselves and genuinely interested in others did way better than those who had that desperate look of 2AM in a singles bar. As Nik Venet says, "Everybody writes. Everybody sings. Not everybody tells the truth. And it's the truth that touches people." In art and apparently, sometimes in business too. And wherever I saw these successful intercontinental interactions, I always felt I was witnessing a romance, never a seduction. But, then, I never made it to the Martinez.
© 1995 Harriet Schock
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