The airwaves used to be full of pop songs with storylines.
Look at all the story songs from years past (some good, some bad; I’m not endorsing the quality of all of these):
[ul][li]Me and Bobbie McGee[/li][li]Brandy[/li][li]Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald[/li][li]Hotel California[/li][li]Tangled up in Blue[/li][li]The Night Chicago Died[/li][li]Another Old Lang Syne[/li][li]pretty much any Harry Chapin song[/li][li]Don’t Stand So Close to Me[/li][li]Gimme Three Steps[/li][li]The Devil Went Down to Georgia[/li][li]99 Red Balloons[/ul][/li]
(Feel free to add other examples.)
I’m excluding rap/hip-hop and country. Those genres do still tell stories, but the story song otherwise seems to have disappeared from pop music. Also, I’m talking about hits here, and not obscure album cuts.
The last story song I can think of that was a big hit was “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam, but that was nearly 10 years ago. Any since then? And why aren’t there more?
Because keeping track of the plotline, in addition to dancing, putting on fingernail polish and talking to your friends on the cell phone is, like, hard and stuff.
So you’re saying that “Mmmmbop” isn’t the complex Greek tragedy that I thought it was? Huh.
If we’re counting remakes of story songs, “American Pie” and “Last Kiss” were remade fairly recently and sold pretty well. As for why they’re not writing original story songs anymore…it probably comes down to “catchiness”. We’re in the age of the 10-second soundbite. Telling a story in a song just don’t cut it with these kids today; you have to hold their attention for too long.
spoke-, you missed my two favorites of this genre: Uneasy Rider by the CDB and the immortal story of Alice’s Restaurant.
I think I’d have to agree that the majority of today’s youth just don’t seem to have the attention span required to make stroytelling ballads popular. I can think of a few modern examples (Stan from Eminem comes to mind) but they definitely don’t seem as common as what we grew up with.
While certainly not as popular as they were in their heyday, both John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen still write and release story songs, tog perhaps not as complex in narrative as the examples given.
Although you disallowed country, two musicians who skirt the country-rock (crock?) line on occasion, Steve Earle and John Hiatt, write superb story songs, some of which are hits to a degree.
Crock? That’s hilarious. I think the current PC term is Roots Rock. I would add John Prine, Robert Earl Keen, and Lucinda Williams to that list. IMHO, this genre is probably more closely related to folk than it is to country or rock.
There are many other singer/songwriters working today that are masterful storytellers, but the industry trends have dictated that they be less obvious about it if they intend to compete on the charts. Carrying a single plot line throughout the lyrics of the entire song is not the formula for writing a modern hit song, I’m sorry to say.
I enjoy this type of song very much. Bad Company’s“Shooting Star”, Steve Miller’s* “Take the Money and Run”, and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Ballad of Curtis Lowe”* are three of my all-time favorite songs.
I find stories in the songs of {b]Tom Petty, Prince, Bonnie Raitt, Blues Traveler**, and several other modern artists, but it seems that I must listen much closer to the lyrics to actually “hear” the stories. Even modern blues has evolved to the point that the “twelve bar ballad” is extremely hard to find. Hopefully, the trends will change again in my lifetime. In the meanwhile, I think I’ll keep on “crocking”.
hmm… king missile is pop… it didn’t chart in any meaningful way irc, but it is pop.
in this vein we also have the masters of modern story-telling pop, belle and sebastian (cue: me + the major, it could have been a brilliant career, judy and the dream of horses etc). they write truly amazing narrative pop, yet fail to chart… shame… ne c’est pas?
umm…
umm… i don’t think it could be said that pop music has any more immediacy today than it did 30 years ago. just like britney spears sells millions today, so too did madonna in the 80’s, villiage people in the 70’s and those doo-wop girl groups of the 60’s.
besides, we also have a 30 year old group acclaimed as being brilliant for churning out short-attention span hits like ‘i want to hold your hand’. so, no, it is hardly fair to say that a short attention span is exclusive or any more prevalent in ‘kids today’.
and recent charting narrative hits…
blink 182 - what’s my age again
ben folds five - brick
everclear - father of mine
everclear - heroin girl
cake - the distance
nick cave + kylie minogue - where the wild roses grow
weezer - el scorcho
…there’s no shortage of such songs, it’s just that there seems to be less because we’re not looking back on them after a period of many years.
You know, if I put my mind to it, I could probably come up with a hundred other story songs from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Of the top of my head, here are a few more (and again, I am not vouching for the quality of all of these):[ul][li]Lyin’ Eyes[]The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia[]Ode to Billy Joe[]Patches[]Chevy Van[]Angie Baby[]Half a Person[]50 Ways to Leave Your Lover[]Pink Houses (Jack and Diane)[]Glory Days[]Fire on the Mountain[]Johnny Be Good (OK, that’s from the 50’s)[]Friend of the Devil[]Angel in Blue[](Angel Is the) Centerfold[]Billie Jean[]Raspberry Beret[]Little Red Corvette[]Copacabana (Hey, I said I didn’t vouch for the quality…)Margaritaville[/ul][/li]
I could go on and on. (And again, feel free to add your favorites to the list.) But when I try to think of story songs from the past decade, I struggle to come up with any at all.
I’m not sure I agree with the idea that teens today don’t have the attention span for it. I think the market is there. Witness the surprise success of “Last Kiss” by Pearl Jam. That song was a throwaway that came out of nowhere to be a big hit. Based on that, it seems to me like the market is starving for story songs.
So how come the record industry isn’t catching on?
Missed your post there, gex gex. Thanks for the examples. I was trying to think of the name of that Ben Folds Five song. I’m not sure “Going the Distance” qualifies, but the rest do, some fully, some marginally. Still, even with your additions to the list, it’s a tiny number, and as I said, I could go on and on naming story songs from previous decades.
I agree with you that the attention span of this generation is no shorter than that of any other. I reject the “these kids today” argument. To me, it’s more of a marketing failure. I don’t know whether it just doesn’t occur to anyone to write story songs, or whether the record companies just aren’t promoting those who do, but I think there is a market for them.
I agree also that the “Roots Music” movement is the best place to find story songs today, and that’s mostly what I listen to, in part for that very reason. Sadly, this stuff isn’t making it to the airwaves. (Another marketing failure, in my view.)
sewalk wrote:
Classics, both! (“I’m a faithful follower of Brother John Birch, and a member of the Antioch Baptist Church, and I don’t even have a garage- you can call home and ask my wife!”)
And to expand the metaphor, what was the last commercially sucessful concept album? Any at all in the last ten years?
And can we please use the term “ballad”? The fact that most people don’t even think to use the term says more about the collapse of the genre than any number of examples ever could.
It does seem odd that the ballad has fallen out of favor, though. You would think that video culture would make it more popular, as one can tell the story across different media now.
Good point, Manda JO. I thought about it, but the word “ballad” has been misused for so long that a lot of people these days think it means “sappy love song.” I wanted to be clear that I’m talking about songs with story lines.
I have always understood a concept album to be any album where the songs all work together in a specific order to tell a story. Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage is the best example I can think of. I always liked the idea of a concept almbum (the concept, if you will) better than the execution: I can’t help but think that a concept album could be really really cool if it all came together just right, but I haven’t ever heard an example where it came together just right.
I have no idea about any of the examples you are citing. I don’t listen to much music produced since 1960 or so, and that that I do listen to tends to be bluegrass and folk, so you tell me if they are concept albums–I was curious, not rhetorical.
I would add John Prine, Robert Earl Keen, and Lucinda Williams to that list. IMHO, this genre is probably more closely related to folk than it is to country or rock.