When you’ve been following a band for 20+ years, it becomes really obvious how their sound is changing and evolving over time. Each album is like a snapshot along the way of this life journey. One of the saddest, most problematic parts of this journey, however, is that, more often than not, they’re like Star Wars movies; too far apart with gaps “too big” in between. Suddenly 2 or 3 or 5 or 20 years have passed and you show up expecting more of what you love, but actually just finding yourself confused by the strange new characters or direction the story has taken.
And you end up asking yourself, who is this Count Dooku that I should even care about him? Where was the forethought in this trilogy? Did you really ditch a secret evil sith Jar Jar reveal at the last minute because you caved to the public dislike of the character, when it was all entirely because he needed that level of character depth all along, and the reveal would have explained everything and done a lot to fix the entire trilogy?
Oh, not you, just me?
So maybe I’m being a little circuitous, but the example of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy is actually really fitting for the point I wanted to make today: For a band, there’s a fundamental problem with “albums” as a concept that is completely at odds with other entertainment media like movies and novels, and it dramatically affects your long-term career.
That game-changing concept is live performance.
Just think about it… You have hundreds, even thousands of people working on a movie, polishing it to this fairly tight, quality piece of entertainment. There’s some trailers, marketing, press junkets, tv appearances, panels, interviews and a big release with a brief season on the big-screen before transitioning to a more accessible form of home media.
With a novel, it’s a little different. You generally have the primary author, and he might have a small team of editors, agents, managers, marketers, artists, publicists, some trusted alpha and beta readers, etc., but ultimately it could be a team as small as 4 or 5 people. There’s generally some form of book tour and press, but the finished product is generally a long-form media that you can take home from the release date and experience it at your own leisure.
An album is different again. Yes, you might have a main visionary writer/performer/group, and a small production team, but then again, you might have 7 different staff writers on every song, a 20+ person production team, and over 100 orchestra-members for that 30-second album intro, not to mention album artwork, publicity, guest artists, session musicians, social media marketing team, etc. You might have some interviews or a teaser leading up to release, but then the finished product is instantly downloadable/purchasable, and you spend the next 18-24 months touring.
You see, that’s where the real money is made. The touring. The stage show, the merchandise, even a relatively small-time band with an independent label is still pulling around 50 bucks a ticket. 300 people a night. That’s 15 grand per show. Top tier artists, doing 5,000- and 10,000-seater stadiums for 150-300 bucks per head, could be making up to a MILLION bucks per show. (Do the math).
So you have this strange cyclical lifestyle, where you might tour pretty solidly for a year or two, take some time off for a life and family, get back to writing songs again, and then jump back into the studio for the next album and do it all over again. This is why these big artists are only producing an album every 3 to 5 years. (It’s almost as bad as waiting for that next Game Of Thrones novel.) Because they’re spending more time performing around the world than they are in the studio, writing, producing, creating more musical content for their fans.
And herein lies the problem.
When you’re stuck playing all the same songs over and over for 3 or 4 years, revisiting this snapshot of who you were back then, your fans and supporters don’t see the growth, the change, the evolution of you as a person. And then suddenly you come out with a new album of who you are now and, if you’re actually being true to yourself and not just following trends, you have a fifty-fifty chance of losing half of your fanbase, because most of them haven’t had the time to adjust to the new you. And so you tour all over again hoping the awesome live performance will win them back over to your stuff once more.
But that’s not actually helping the problem. You’re just playing on their good faith while you sing your new crazy theories about life based on experiences that they can’t actually relate to, and hoping they come around quickly to your way of seeing things. And then when you do that too often, you either force them to grow and change with you, or you leave them behind (or rather, they leave YOU and your new music behind because they’ve grown in different ways than you).
It may sell more tickets in the short-term but it’s not exactly the pathway to a stable, long-term career. So you see the bigger names in the industry trying to combat this in different ways. First, they’ll really hammer social media, cultivating a persona consistent with their music. If their new album is a big step away from the last one, they can lay the groundwork with their fans months ahead of time; sharing new favorite songs by other artists going in a similar direction, snippets of lyrics or even some live online (sometimes acoustic) previews of some of the newer songs.
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Secondly, they’ll often orchestrate a collaboration with another big artist whose sound is closer to the new direction they’re moving in. For instance, Coldplay (whose music has evolved significantly over the past twenty years) are rumored to be bringing out a new album next month. It’s been a full 4 years since their last album, A Head Full Of Dreams, but they filled in the time a little by doing a song with the Chainsmokers in 2017 entitled, Something Just Like This. I predict their new album will continue pushing that pop direction and be their most electronic-sounding album to date.
Thirdly, there’ll usually be a tonne of marketing, interviews, behind-the-scenes clips, even a new single, in the lead-up to an album release. This gives them plenty of time to prepare the fans ahead of time. Fans who hear the musicians they’ve loved and even look up to passionately talking about “their exciting new album and the way their sound has really evolved in dynamic and meaningful ways that reflect their own personal journey” are already pre-programmed to accept the change. One of my favorite authors even released the first quarter of his book chapter by chapter in the 2-3 months leading up to his book release and that book tripled the sales of the book that preceded it.
But all of those things really come down to marketing strategy. As this is chiefly a songwriting forum, I want to focus on songwriting cohesion between albums despite an evolving sound. And this is where I see many more independent bands/musical artists going wrong; they focus so much of their time and talent on being performers that they disregard being writers.
So, what does it mean to be a writer?
Well, I’m in a number of writing circles, both musically and literarily. Lyric writing is closer to poetry than prose, but an album is closer to a novel than a poem. It should take you on a journey, but have consistent themes and musical characteristics that run throughout. For instance, a book that changes tense or viewpoint in some chapters can be really jarring to a reader. Likewise, some bands have a song that just seems completely out of place on their album. Or one album that completely bombs because it’s too far estranged from the consistent sound and “feel” of all their other albums. So here’s three real-world examples of how bands I appreciate handled this consistency problem and the lessons we can learn from it.
Diligence. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote over 300 songs together before the Beatles broke up. If you average out their songwriting sessions over the whole period the band was together, it’s essentially a new song every two weeks. One of the biggest reasons they were prolific, is their diligence, continuing to write again and again, and they churned out album after album, sometimes two a year. They speed with which they released new material meant fans were never at a loss. They weren’t waiting 4 or 5 years for a bomb. If they didn’t like the new album that much, there was probably going to be another soon, so it wasn’t such a big deal. A quality songwriter can churn out a song every single week, and definitely more if there’s collaboration. And more songs released means more that can be streamed on YouTube, iTunes or Spotify. You don’t just need to tour to make money. Make good music. Every show is a one-time event. A new song can stay with a person for life, and can increase your fanbase. More songs, more variety, more potential fans.
Consistency. Marianas Trench, I believe I’ve mentioned them before, are a Canadian band, less internationally known, but they’ve been really consistent musically across many albums, despite a changing sound. They were much more pop-punk-rock originally and their sound has evolved and each album has drawn on different themes, but there’s certain signifying features that reoccur across albums, such as significant lyrical metaphors, melodic motifs, repeat choruses that shift to different chords, super high notes and vocal inflections, harmonies, extra orchestra sounds and hints, etc. If you listen to all their albums in order, you will feel taken on a journey, musically and emotionally. It tells a long and complicated story of a relationship, but it feels like the one relationship. It’s like reading a book series in order as opposed to five random books one after the other. As a listener, your musical connection is deepened with both the band and the music.
Know Your Niche and Trust Your Audience. There wasn’t a single memorable word for this one, so that will have to do. This is more of a sad Tale of an American independent band I’ve followed for years. They’ve had 3 really solid amazing albums, and 1 amazing acoustic EP, 1 mediocre album, 1 less than mediocre album, and 1 complete bomb that was rejected by most of the fans, effectively killing the band (not in that order). It’s my policy not to name bands/musical artists I talk down on, but let me tell you a bit about their album journey.
Their first album was mediocre. They were signed to a small label. Had some great new edgy stuff that I hadn’t really heard elsewhere and a depth to the lyrics that surprised me, so I listened. I especially liked the subtle religious and philosophical themes of hope in the darkness. (They weren’t a Christian band or anything, but the main singer-songwriter was.)
Then they did an acoustic EP. Doubled the awesome from the first album and built on the depth.
Their second album was even better. They took what was great about the first album and quadrupled it, quickly jumping into my top ten favorite current bands list.
Their third album, however, was a bit of a bomb. They were pushed by the label in a more pop-friendly direction. It wasn’t them. It was like a poorly fitting left shoe on the wrong foot. There were maybe 2 or 3 really decent songs and everything else just fell really flat. But then they parted ways with the record company. I think they only had a 3-album contract. So they decide to fan-fund their own stuff.
Their fourth album was entirely fan-funded and by far their best. It’s on my personal top-ten albums of all time. I missed the kickstarter campaign for it, but I did promote it to all my close friends and even covered a couple of their songs at gigs. It took that deep level of lyrical potency and thematic imagery from the earlier albums to the next level and can still impact me in profound ways when I get to listen to the whole thing all the way through.
Their fifth album was also very awesome, but a little different. Fully fan-funded (I was a backer). Very acoustic-focused remixes and new versions of a bunch of their older songs. Almost like a “best of” album but with a spin on it. Great and amazing stuff.
Then comes the sixth album. Ouch. I missed the kickstarter for this one again because of life events, and boy am I glad I did. It seems the main singer-songwriter of the band had some sort of crisis of his faith, because all the hope that was once in their songs and music were completely gone. They were always dark and edgy and deep and sometimes pained, but profound and ultimately with hope for a brighter tomorrow. It was the core underlying theme of all their music. And suddenly, there was no hope, no underlying meaning. It was nihilistic and depressing, and the awfulness of the lyrics infected the music which was comparatively lousy. I have literally nothing good to say about it. And most of their fans agree with me completely because the songs from that album have record low plays on YouTube.
So why am I telling you this? What is the lesson here? Am I saying not to grow and change as an artist? No. That’s stupid. Of course, we’re all human, we all change, we all grow in different ways, and so do our tastes and means of expressing ourselves. The point is this:
As an author, you ARE the brand.
On books from really big best-selling authors, the author’s name is generally bigger on the front cover than the title because it’s the author’s name that is selling the book, not the premise of the story.
For the Beatles, it was that magic combination of Lennon and McCartney that really sold their albums. They audience had some idea of what to expect and that was what they wanted. Their expectations were never really violated because the journey was gradual for them.
For the unnamed band I’ve just been talking about, they were consistent for about 15 years. And then they did a 180-degree turn and delivered something so complete opposite to everything that their audience had been buying up until that point that their album (and career trajectory) completely bombed. I’m not saying they can’t continue down the path they’re on, but they’ll need to find a whole bunch of new fans to replace the ones they’ve left behind. And that’s a pretty stupid career move. You don’t burn the house every time you want to renovate.
