To illustrate what makes a truly great song, I want to use an analogy.
Jimmy Carr
There’s a comedian in the UK called Jimmy Carr. He is a one-liner comedian, and while his comedy tends to be quite crass, he had something very relatable to say about crafting great jokes.
In an interview, he commented that there are certain comedians whose material is quite lack-lustre, but that they work their butts off with on-stage antics to make it funny. These are the often highly energetic comedians, typically a bit slapstick. They rush about onstage, imitate the actions in their jokes, etc. They generally put on a highly physical performance and energetic output to generate the laughs. If the person just stood still on stage, no laughs would be generated.
Build the comedy INTO the joke
Carr’s preference however, is for building the humour into the structure of the joke itself.
In his view, a well-crafted joke is one that you could write down on a slip of paper, pass to someone who is a non-comedian, and they could read it out with no knowledge of the punchline, and everyone would laugh.
The person could say the joke with nearly any delivery style, and it wouldn’t matter. The joke’s comedy value is baked into the material itself. No performance is required, and any on-stage antics would only enhance the comedy. To him, that is what makes a great joke.
Truly great songs are the same
In the same way, truly great songs have their vocal greatness baked into the very fabric of the song. They are so well-crafted, that no performance is required to make it sound beautiful. It’s a slam-dunk in nearly any voice, with a perfect marriage between melody, lyrics, and story as it progresses through the song structure.
“Can’t Make You Love Me” by Bonnie Raitt (also sung by George Michael), and “Make You Feel My Love” by Bob Dylan (most well-known to be sung by Adele) are two examples of such songs.
Both of these songs have such well written melodies, intertwined with poignant lyrics, that I can put this into almost anyone’s voice and they will sound fabulous. The quality of the song is not in the performance, but the very substrate of the song itself.
In contrast, certain songs that SOUND very cool on the recording, often sound flat when we try them ourselves with just a guitar/piano or a backing track. When someone is still building their voice, this can seem confusing and often make them think it is THEM that is at fault. It must be my voice that’s not sounding great, or I need to learn to perform it better, etc.
Two examples from the last week are “Didn’t Know My Own Strength” by Whitney Houston, and “Shine Jesus Shine“. These songs are not inherently bad songs, but there is very little melodically or lyrically to help a singer trying this song on in their own voice.
Note: Now I must stress that performance is an important part of learning a song, even just learning to smooth out the melody in one’s voice. But I’m not talking about strutting about onstage or writhing onstage. I’m talking about vocal performance and the musical rendition of the song.
Conclusion
Truly great songs are to be sought out, as they do the heavy lifting for you. It’s like finding a great book or film. Something that is perfectly paced, perfectly crafted, it doesn’t need to be rewritten or reinterpreted.
Of course, every song benefits from practice and refining the performance, but the best songs for singers are the ones that stand on their own merit. That way performance is an the icing on top of an already great cake, rather than having to make up for a lack of substance in the first instance.