How to get your song noticed

Ever had a band advertising a new song and it had some stupid title that just put you off bothering to download it? Out of a big list of free songs to download you notice you click on ones which catch your attention? Well with the use of the Internet in today's world more and more often people are finding out about new bands and songs by just seeing a downloadable version. The first thing they notice before clicking on an mp3 ( OGG ) is the band name and the song title and not the album cover like in the past. Put it this way would you download a song called "Sniff my pantyhose"? Whoops, everyone's pressed the back button now. See what I mean? Titles are very important and really should at least be given a second thought before emblazing it on the web.

Well let's see a few examples. In Flames have come back on form with their latest album Come Clarity after the slightly dull Soundtrack to your escape ( see, album titles are also important. Come Clarity? Oooo sounds intriguing, Soundtrack to your escape? ..... errr... ok.... ). WIth a quick scan of the song titles I see Take this life and Reflect the storm are one's that catches my eye and already get me curious as to what they are like. Now look abit further down and you have Your bedtime story is scaring everyone .... just .... what??? For a start it's so long it could be a Bal-Sagoth song ( eg The Dark Liege of Chaos is Unleashed at the Ensorcelled Shrine of A'Zura Kai (The Splendour of a Thousand Swords Gleaming Beneath the Blazon of the Hyperborean Empire Part II), no honest this is a Bal-Sagoth song. ). The fact that it mentions Your bedtime story is just plain off putting. MY bedtime story??? I'm sorry... just no.

Coincidently Take this life and Reflect the storm are actually really good songs while Your bedtime story is scaring everyone is just one of those bullsh*t tracks which aren't proper songs at all. Don't take that sentence to mean all songs can be guesses from their song title. An example is Peepshow by Sikth. Peepshow is probably the only really serious sounding metal song on Sikth's first album The trees are dead & dried out, wait for something wild ( yep, a dodgy album title. ) with the utterly macabre singing prevelant on most of the songs held back for this one as well as the guitars not going mental over the fret board too much. While when you listen to songs like Pussyfoot and Hold my finger they sound as mental as their song title implies while Peepshow just sounds like it's implying another nutty song but the actual song isn't particularly mad.

Now you can forgive bands who's mother's tongue isn't English for coming up with odd song titles but Sikth are British so they don't have an excuse... no wait... yes they do... THE'RE MAD, FRUITY LOOPED, DOLLOP OF MASH, OUT OF THE SPACESHIP.... Not like the guy who made Bloodshed dev C++ for Windows who had got complaints so he explains why he used the name "Bloodshed" ( admittedly slightly tenuously ). I especially like the bit Heavy metal / Hard rock music is not really my cup of tea.. Certainly telling of the general image of Heavy metal. It's like the GNU Image Manipulation Program ( previously known as General Image Manipulation Program. ) or GIMP for short. It you didn't know what the GIMP was and someone sent you a message or email saying go to this website www.gimp.org would YOU dare click it? I suppose on the flip side the amusing acronym does help you remember the GIMP. While I'm on the subject of proper free ( libre and gratis ) open source graphic applications and titles another program I really love is one called Inkscape ( see a webcomic that was done by my friend utilising the unique calligraphy tool present in Inkscape. The bloke without glasses is actually me. Right too much shameless plugging and drifting off subject, back to the fold. ). Inkscape is pretty much the perfect name for a graphics program for the Ink conjures up thoughts of familiarity with drawing while the scape gives you thoughts of a large open canvas with which to fill to you imagination's content. Now Inkscape is a fork ( bit like Warrel Dane and Jeff Loomis left Sanctuary to form Nevermore. You could say that Nevermore is a fork of Sanctuary. ) of a program called Sodipodi... Sodipodi? What sort of name is that? Certainly harder to remember and not as obvious what it is compared to Inkscape. I wonder if the names of the programs were responsible for Sodipodi failing while Inkscape succeeded. It would not surprise me if it was.

To a ( slightly ) lesser degree band names are also important. There is something intriguing about the name Soilwork. It's just a peculiar band name. I went to a gig in Manchester to see ( if I remember rightly ) Arch Enemy wearing a Soilwork long sleeve shirt ( A predator's portrait by the way. The album before Soilwork went downhill. ) with blatantly emblazoned on it Soilwork in huge letters. I was walking down Oxford road and every 2 or 3 people I walked by had a good look at my shirt then, after I walked pass, I'll hear them muttering in a slightly perplexed voice Soilwork?. Copywriters ( yes "Copywriters", not "Copyrighters" ) would sell their liver to get people looking at a title and wondering in fascination just to create titles like that every week. I wonder if Soilwork spent a long time pondering about their name thinking about whether it would get people talking about them, or did the conversation go like this,
Hmmm.... how about Soilwork?
.... sounds odd... but doesn't sound stupid. Balls to it we're "Soilwork"

I admit there isn't one rule for all with song titles. What would attract the attention of one person could be missed by another person. For example Vim by Machine Head on Through the ashes of empire earns brownie points for being named after my favourite text editor Vim :) .



Well OK I doubt the band were thinking of Vim the text editor but I cannot possibly think what Vim could mean. Vim cannot be Roman numerals because what would Vim be? 994 cause of v + i - m or 996 cause of v - m + i or 1004 from m - i + v but none of these are correct Roman numerals. To people who have never heard of Vim the text editor this song title would normally skip past their attention.

I spent a good chunk of time thinking of the title to this blog post. First I was thinking of just calling it Song titles ARE IMPERATIVE then I was thinking of going for You know song titles ARE IMPERATIVE. I was not so sure about the Imperative bit so I thought I would go for the present title How to get your song noticed. Although slightly cheap it looks to have got your attention at least so it can't be all bad. So remember, THINK TWICE about your next song's/album's/band's name. In the Internet which is rather text based your song title gets seen first. More Reflect the storm and less Your bedtime story is scaring everyone.

Any song titles you think give a positive or negative impression on the reader? Just post them in the comment section. I would like to see what the general populace thinks of them. Until next time. Cya.

Songs you just wanna skip RIGHT NOW!

Do you have any albums that are generally good, even some absolutely cracking songs on them, but there are also songs you just must skip immediately!? Songs that are either coma inducingly boring ( is "inducingly" a real word or have I just adjectivanised "coma inducing" to describe how utterly boring some skippable songs are? "Adjectivanised"! Yet another example of blantent language butchering... I love it! ) or so intolerably unpalatable that they make your ears bleed.

Right time for an example. The Offspring make some absolutely class songs and some absolutely ass songs. They (come out) swing(ing) from one end of the spectrum to another with just a simple change of track in one fell swoop! For example on track 3 of Americana you have Staring at the sun. When it kicks in it goes like the clappers and you realise how good The Offspring actually are but then..... Pretty fly (for a white guy)... oh dear, this song is so painful the Americans were thinking of using this in Guantanamo bay but feared that it would get sonic interrogation banned ( Interrogation.... hmmm... euphemism for torture by the sounds of it. Just like the phrases "Martyrs" instead of suicide bombers and "Enemy combatants" for prisoners of war. I could whinge with glee till my lips rot talking about the double speak that goes on )! Just the intro vocals gives an immediate sense of dread that you will not enjoy this song. Give it to me baby.... aha aha SKIP.
If you dare to keep listening you get subjected to more stupid lyrics like he asked for a 13 yeah but they drew a 31 ... eh? What the fudge? Actually I think I'll probably be better off not knowing what it means. I can see why they say ignorance is bliss but not enquiring about this song. Think that Give it to me baby.... aha aha was the preserve of the intro? Think again this spine twisting insipid torture is the main chorus, the central piece of the song. Just no.

I use to think that The Offspring were a bit pants in the past because I heard songs like Pretty fly. Only later after not listening to the singles that the album only songs are actually really good. Songs like The noose and Genocide to name a couple as well as a slew of others but these are intermingled with dull or intolerable rubbish like Original Prankster ( British peeps guess what bit of crude wordplay I can do to the word "Prankster" to more appropriately describe the song. Leave a comment with the correct answer and get a Brownie point! ) or She's got issues which starts off with lyrics I'm seeing this girl ... WRONG! I cannot think of a song where the subject is about relationship problems that is actually any good ( though maybe Weird Al Yankovic might have done a funny one ). Just some god awful mid toned mid tempo-ed pop pants that makes me loose faith. There are about a dozen ( about half the singles Offspring have released are actually the songs I hate ) songs which regularly if not always get skipped. It's a good job the're on CD rather than tape so they are easily skipable. In fact with mp3s ( or rather Oggs, sound better than mp3s for the same amount of hard drive space usage and music programs and players can include support for them libre and gratis ( that's free and err... free in english. I won't mention the difference here, maybe in the future. So no excuses not to support Oggs... APPLE! ).) you can just delete them. Not quite satisfactory punishment for the songs being condemned to bit heaven but what can you do?

Metal also has irritatingly bad songs that would wake the dead just so they can skip the track. I have just been listening to Sikth ( yep, that's how it's spelt ), a completely mad band that plays some nutty and very heavy and complex music. However there is one song on their first self titled ( The trees are dead & dried out, wait for something wild ) album that I ALWAYS skip every single time. After a weird ( this one is weird even compared to their other songs! ) song called Tupelo ( a somewhat curious listen. When I hear this song I always keep on getting images of Andrew Lloyd Webber in my head... shudder! ) you get this song called Can't we all dream?. It starts off with a creepy little atmospheric keyboardy ( there I go again. "Keyboardy" - like a keyboard or has properties that are similar to a keyboard. ) noise ( the best part of the song. Because it's the only part that does not make you skip immediately. ) mixed with random hollering with lyrics alternating between love is in the air, hate is in the air death is in the air in all sorts of silly screeching to lowly whimpers. You listen to this and start getting a little impatient, you turn to see how long this has been going on for and you see "2 MINUTES"! This dodgy rubbish goes on for more than two and a half minutes!!! I'm sorry but... skippable already unless there's some redeeming feature in the main song.
When the intro is "over" you get some subtle delicate drum work and the atmospheric keyboards get less piercing. The hollering lyrics change to some random ramblings that aren't worth noting. Another look at the clock and you see "5 MINUTES"! Bloody hell when's this intro going to end? Surely this is the longest intro ever. Around this point there's a little breather where the drums go silent and the keyboards go quiet but only for a while before it returns to the torture. At 6:10 suddenly the vocals go all Tourettes and sounds like he's having an epileptic fit! Around this time... if you have not died of boredom or suspended belief... you hear the can't we all dream? song title mentioned for the first time. Woohoo the song's about to start bit no it sort of sticks to the same tosh as before. Just after 7 minutes... YES THAT'S CORRECT! 7 MINUTES. seven, sept, shichi ( think that's correct Japanese ) the vocals just start repeating can't we all dream? while the instruments tail off and go silent. Oh I see, no actual main song is it? Just going to end with can't we all dream tailing off... I said we "tail off" with it... yes we finish now... 30 seconds after the rest of the instruments have finished and the vocals are still going strong. 1 minute in and still going!!!
The song finally finishes off at 8:50 minutes. That's nearly ONE AND A HALF MINUTES of can't we all dream? sung really stupidly. What sort of song's this? It's just PLAIN WRONG. Why oh why did they think that was a good idea just boggles the mind. It's weird because most of the rest of the album's great. Songs like Scent of the obscene ( the first song I heard of Sikth ) are still completely mad but they are genuinely good highly original decent songs I'll keep listening to again and again. But Can't we all dream? ... skipped every time without prejudice.

Now here's one that's gonna get me murdered ( DON'T YOU EVEN DARE CONTEMPLATE PUTTING A COMMENT DOWN ABOUT "how untasteful that is" UNTIL YOU'VE READ THE WHOLE OF THIS ARTICLE!!!), Walk by Pantera. I don't understand why it's everyone's favourite song? It's just so pedestrian ( excuse the pun... man that's so bad I'm not sure which is worse. Saying Walk is horrible or that pun. ), just so slow and monotonous, just doesn't go anywhere. Walk just sounds like filler especially when it ends and Fucking Hostile suddenly rips on your stereo. Suddenly any memories from Walk just vanish.
Ok Walk is not one of those songs that can wake the dead to change the channel but it's ( in my humble opinion ) the dullest song on Vulgar display of power by a long margin. With genius songs like Mouth for war with it's classic riff pinched by ID software for Doom ( probably knew that heavy metal fans and computer geeks are almost completely mutually exclusive sets of people and few people would notice. ) and Rise ( my favourite Pantera song ever. Perfect except for Phil Anselmo's slightly "odd" singing ( "odd" singing... sounds like another blog post. ). Also nicked for Doom.) I'm affraid Walk is just dwarfed by these giants.
Man that pun was bad, unless I've been murdered stick around for more posts vaguely ( Knowing me, very vaguely... ) to do with music and things related to it. Cya later.

If anyone feels I might have stepped the mark with talking about being murdered for something trivial to do with Pantera. I am aware that Dimebag Darrell ( or Diamond Darell during Vulgar display of power ) was shot and killed merely for breaking up Pantera. It boggles my mind and sickens me to the gut to even contemplate somebody doing that for such a relatively tiny insignificant thing.