It's a familiar sight: the frustrated composer. Why is he frustrated? Because what gets played on the radio and tops the charts is crap compared to what he's churning out. Now why is that?
The immediate, simple answer is that the majority of the record-buying public doesn't like intelligent music. They want something to dance to, and that means a strong beat, a catchy melody, and little else. This immediate, simple answer also happens to be the correct answer. But let's look at the flipside of the coin: there's a minority who want complex music.
We still love "Louie, Louie" for its raw power, but writing something so simple would not be our proudest moment.I'm only guessing here, but I would say that the other music fans are songwriters. As we hone our craft, we become interested in more advanced musical forms. We still love "Louie, Louie" for its raw power, but writing something so simple would not be our proudest moment.
As a songwriter, you start out young and without a clear concept of how to write songs. But you know what you like, so you try to write in the vein of the songs you like. But, since you are not a full-fledged songwriter, your appreciation for the finer elements is not there. So you crank out versions of "Louie, Louie" for a while.
You build on that, and you grow, and at some point you realize that while "I Saw Her Standing There" is still a pretty good Beatles tune, "Old Brown Shoe" totally blows it out of the water. And all of your non-musician friends say "I never heard of it."
At some point, every musical artist crosses the line and suddenly has an "early period" and a "later period."We all do it. They all did it. At some point, every musical artist crosses the line and suddenly has an "early period" and a "later period," and the fans are split along that line. And this is how it continues throughout time. Any songwriter starts out with simpler, more derivative music, and once he finds his voice, the music becomes difficult to grasp for the songwriter who follows. So the new songwriter emulates the simple songs, and later builds complexity, but that complexity isn't fully appreciated. And so on, and so on.
I hope that soon I can magically be split into early and late periods. Fewer people will care for the music I want to make, but I'll know that I'm succeeding in getting where I'm going.