How to Write a Hit Song (and Sell Anything)

As a marketing guy, I think it's really important to "keep tabs" on how the people I market to think and feel. If you want to sell something, you've got to understand the people you want to sell to and why they do what they do.

This is especially important for songwriters.  To write a song people will love and relate to, you've got to know your audience like you know yourself.  What are their biggest dreams?  What are their biggest fears?

This is why Taylor Swift is killing it right now.  She is her audience.

But what happens if you're not your audience?  For that, I suggest going where your audience goes, reading what they read, etc.

Hank Williams did this.  Merle Kilgore, perhaps best known as the writer of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire", once said this about him...

"He would read True Romance comic books. My sister had True Romance comic books, and I'd say, `What do you read those sissy comic books for, Hank?' And he said, `Sissy, hell! Where do you think I get my ideas from? Listen to this line, `Why I can't I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart.'"

And what happens when you lose touch?

Like it or not, as evolving people, we all do...eventually.  And as musicians, one of the worst things that can happen career-wise is for us to forget what it's like to be a fan of music.

As a musician, it can be difficult to think back to a time when you didn't play music, but wanted to.  Or maybe just thinking back to a time when music was something more to you than a way to make a living is tough. 

Does this sound like you?  If so, I highly recommend that you check out The Vinyl Princess by Yvonne Prinz.

This book will take you into the mind of a "superfan" who has a life centered around music-- exactly the kind of fan you want and should be reaching out to!

By the way, Yvonne Prinz is the owner of Amoeba Music, the world's largest independent record store.  So the knows a little something about music buyers...

I found out about this book from my friend Wendy, who is in the publishing business and has a blog dedicated to young adult fiction.  She did an interview with Yvonne Prinz, which I've linked below.

Get The Vinyl Princess on Amazon.com

How do you stay in touch with the needs of your fans?  Post thoughts below...

Comments

[alex hajicek]

Totally agree, you have to get inside your fans heads. It's easy in the beginning because your part of that audience but then things change...

Look at Metallica...

How can they relate to their fans anymore? In this case, writing pissed off and angry music when you're filthy rich and married to trophy wives isn't real anymore.

It's fake and I think somewhere along they we people feel it. They don't connect anymore and as a band you become stagnant.

[David Hooper]

Good point! Saw an interview with Dee Snider where he talked about this. Hard to keep an ear to the street when you're not on it. :)

[GATA]

I have to ask: is it possible to be rich AND pissed off and angry? Or maybe rich, and you remember what it was to be pissed off and angry and you have nada else to write about so you write about that?
For some reason this reminds me of something I read once, and I strongly agree: you have to make sure you establish to your audience who you are and what you stand for from the jump, or your audience will figure it out for themselves...and get it totally wrong. This, I believe, is why a lot of bands get stuck in the "they sold out" category, because the nanosecond you try something other than what you had been doing, your fanbase is alienated. Like when labels put out an artist, and manufactured and polished them for the masses, then said artist decides to be who they TRULY are with subsequent material, look, etc... They will probably keep nothing but their die-hards...and maybe not even them if it is that far removed from their first effort. I think that indie bands have a better chance at showing their fans who they are, and keeping those fans, because they have no-one to answer to but themselves as far as what their brand is and how to market it; nobody to tell them that "you can't do this or that". They just have to make sure everyone else knows it too...so the audience knows exactly what to expect.

[David Hooper]

There certainly are people who are rich and pissed off, but I do believe that "rich" leads to varying levels of understanding and relating to most people. You can be pissed off all you want, but when you have money, you're not as hungry (literally or figuratively) as people who don't have money, so it's easy not to work as hard and forget the motivation you had when you were coming up.

[GATA]

Yeh, that certainly is true. I was being slightly facetious, though.