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Who makes the rules for music?

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The Timelords + The KLF

So, if those are the rules, who enforces them? Who’s to say that songs that follow those rules are better songs than those that don’t?

The short answer: we do. A large part of our appreciation of music comes down to the relationship between what we expect to hear and what we do hear. The trick is to play something familiar enough for the listener to feel comfortable, but then subvert that with something slightly unexpected, in order to create a pleasant surprise. To achieve this, we need to combine two elements – “catchy hooks”, and song structure. The BBC’s guide to songwriting notes that “an unstructured song will be messy, difficult to listen to and impossible to remember.”

Regarding hooks, Keith Duffy – professor of rhetoric and composition at Penn State Schuylkill – describes it thus:

“MRIs show that a catchy song makes the auditory part of the brain ‘itch,’ and the only way the itch can be scratched is by listening to the song.”

Penn State’s professor of music theory and composition, Paul Barsom, emphasises the role of familiarity in combination with repetition.

“Unfamiliar music doesn’t connect well. It’s harder to own, especially on first listen. […] If you have a hook (a short catchy phrase or passage) in the song, and if that hook is repeated often, that could do it. You might only remember five seconds of the song – but sometimes that’s enough.”

Now all you need is constant radio rotation and you have that ‘earworm’ effect.

“You could hear a song 25 times a day. If it has a short refrain that everyone can remember, it will stick, even if it’s terrible.”

Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty (The KLF) harnessed this in their UK Number One hit, ‘Doctorin’ The Tardis’. Following the success of their novelty hit, they published a book – The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way) in 1988 – promising neither fortune nor legacy but “guaranteeing” a Number One chart position by following their strict formula:

Firstly, it has to have a dance groove that will run all the way through the record and that the current 7″ buying generation will find irresistible. Secondly, it must be no longer than three minutes and 30 seconds (just under 3’20 is preferable). If they are any longer Radio One daytime DJs will start fading early or talking over the end, when the chorus is finally being hammered home – the most important part of any record. Thirdly, it must consist of an intro, a verse, a chorus, second verse, a second chorus, a breakdown section, back into a double length chorus and outro. Fourthly, lyrics. You will need some, but not many.

Creators of music who desperately search originality usually end up with music that has none because no room for their spirit has been left to get through. The complete history of the blues is based on one chord structure, hundreds of thousands of songs using the same three basic chords in the same pattern. Through this seemingly rigid formula has come some of the twentieth century’s greatest music. In our case we used parts from three very famous songs, Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’, ‘The Doctor Who Theme’ and The Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’ and pasted them together, neither of us playing a note on the record. We know that the finished record contains as much of us in it as if we had spent three months locked away somewhere trying to create our master-work. The people who bought the record and who probably do not give a blot about the inner souls of Rockman Rock or King Boy D knew they were getting a record of supreme originality. The fact is, ‘Billie Jean’ would be nothing without that lynx-on-the-prowl bass line; but he wasn’t the first to use it. It had been featured in numerous dance tracks by various artists before him.

(It should be noted that Drummond and Cauty later admitted they had initially intended to make a “serious” house record, acknowledged it wasn’t working, and decided instead to go for the lowest common denominator. Its chart success was largely accidental.)

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