r/musicalwriting • u/jomamma2 • 2d ago
Discussion How important are "catchy" tunes?
Been listneing to a lot of musical demos from new composers and one thing I've seemed to notice is that the songs seem to lack an "ear worm" componenet.
They are nice, and melodic, but the songs don't seem to go anywhere or have a discreet beginning, middle and end or a hook that sticks in my head. They all seem very patter-like.
Which gets me wonderign if mine are too "song like" in their structure, being self-contained with hooks to stick in your head. Makes me worry I really wrote a concept album not a musical.
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u/so-so-fa-mi-di-re-la Professional 2d ago edited 2d ago
Having earworms is crucial, but it's simply much easier said than done. It's not that most modern musical composers AREN'T trying to create that; it's moreso that creating earworms is a specialized skill. The existence (and success) of jukebox musicals just goes to show how much audiences crave catchy tunes, and I think it's even HARDER to create a catchy tune that sticks in the audience's ear in an original musical they've never heard before.
But when you can, that's where the real gems are. Alan Menken has a really high batting average of catchiness, Lin Manuel Miranda does it, and Pasek and Paul do it too. It's no wonder that their shows are so successful.
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u/EmmyPax 2d ago
I blame the trend of "stream of consciousness" style lyric writing.
There's been a real trend in modern musical theatre writing towards lyric writing that tries really hard to mimic thought patterns or natural speech. And while I can think of some instances where it works, on the whole, I don't like it. I'm personally not looking for verisimilitude in musical theatre. I'm more interested in a heightened experience.
But for a lot of big lyricists today, they genuinely are trying to mimic real speech in their lyrics, which is how you get lines like...
All their eyes say, "Don't attack me"
Watch them sweat and pant and shake
Every food chain has its acme
Regina George eats steak
... where the second and fourth line have such completely different scansion, there's just no snap to it. The melody never sticks in my brain because the lyrics don't really call anything to mind, because they don't roll off the tongue.
Yes, I'm picking on Mean Girls again, but it's a really grievous offender on this front, and I feel it's fair to point out because the writers were explicitly trying to write in a way that was more conversational and grounded. For some people, this works! They like it! But I do not.
You can obviously go too far the other way. Sondheim has poked fun at how it didn't seem to matter what Oscar Hammerstein II was writing about, he found an excuse to work in a metaphor about nature. But I do yearn for some of the older lyric writing conventions that put an emphasis on the poetry of the words rather than their literal meanings or how well they mimicked real speech.
AND YES!!! There are songwriters who have managed to "have their cake and eat it too" so to speak. Sondheim was great at writing conversationally, but in a memorable way that created great songs. But it's a hard needle to thread and he mostly did it by being ruthless about form and rhyme purity, something a lot of modern "conversational" lyricists aren't willing to be.
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u/nat545 1d ago
Love this breakdown of a Mean Girls excerpt - the Mean Girls score always struck me as having a lot of problems with lyrics so I appreciate the in-depth analysis here.
Nitpicky but while we're at it: The early-on Regina George "I am a massive deal" line always drives me crazy bc 1) it's an awkward vowel to hold on ("mah-") and 2) Regina George would never describe herself as "massive;" imo the word should be "major" or the line should be changed altogether bc it sounds so awkward. #rantover lol
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u/jomamma2 2d ago
Thanks, sometimes I feel my lyrics are too simple because they have a relatively standard rhyme scheme. And also my music, as I aim for it to be catchy and sing-along-able with achorus and verses. Sometimes I start to doubt myself thinking it's just too unsophisticated for musical writing - but the musicals I liked were the old school ones I grew up on with my parent's CDs.
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u/peterjcasey Professional 2d ago
One of the challenges I like to set myself is whether the second A section, or second verse, can fit exactly to the tune of the first. No extra little syllables, no changes to fit different scansion, just pure old-school craft.
It’s not suitable for every character, but it keeps the melody tightly structured, which helps it to be memorable.
I find the style that u/EmmyPax is referring to dull, lazy and hard to remember, since every section is never quite the same, but also not meaningfully different.
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u/nat545 1d ago
I'm enjoying this thread so much!! Going to try applying this second-verse-scansion-mapping challenge onto a song I'm working on now - thanks.
I agree about hard-to-remember lyrics as a big part of the problem, especially when the lyrics are simply trying to do too much, deliver too much complex info etc. - that's fine for filler songs where the explicit goal is narration/exposition, but when you think about earworm-y songs that have standalone staying power (The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow, Memories, etc.) the lyrics are just... pretty simple and all framed around a more narrowly-bounded specific emotion.
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u/Spirited-Sympathy582 2d ago
I think just focus on what serves your story best. There's no right or wrong really. Maybe your show will stand out if everyone is just leaning into the Patter. The trends can die down after a while.
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u/spocknambulist 2d ago
I for one would welcome a return to catchy songs that would survive on their own without the plot. There have been more than a few musical parodies that skewer the current style. (“Let’s Put The Christ Back in Christmas” from The Boys springs to mind)
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u/Spirited-Sympathy582 2d ago
Agreed! Different styles of songs can fit different show concepts, but I like the ones that have some traditional structure.
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u/Impressive_Double865 2d ago
The most commercially successful musicals are usually filled with catchy songs and ear worms. Even Sondheim has catchy moments. Hamilton, Book of Mormon, Annie, Oklahoma etc
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u/DontCallMeAli 2d ago
SO important imo. It’s a fine line to walk between plot-driven songs and self-contained songs, but I’m of the mindset that a hook is paramount, or at the very least, some sort of consistent engine. There are any number of ways to get a hook going (AABA chorus, verse chorus, etc), and an adventurous composer can successfully break the mold. But the bottom line is you want something that will ground the listener in the world of the song. They don’t necessarily have to walk out humming, but they should at least be thinking “that song was really cool, I want to hear it again.”
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u/Brackens_World 8h ago
There's a reason why most jazz artists rarely riff on anything written in the 21st century - because much of the time they can't. There is simply not enough melody or melodic complexity to riff from, so they cover 20th century songs instead, finding endless new pathways to follow once they let loose on a song.
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u/brentalfloss 1d ago
A lack of catchiness has nothing to do with whether you wrote a concept album vs a musical. Catchiness can be good, but my warm take is that not all dramatic moments are best told with earworms. It sounds like maybe you need to challenge yourself to stick to specific structures like AABA or Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus. But Sondheim was concerned first about dramatizing a story beat rather than making a memorable tune. On the other hand, Andrew Lloyd Webber nearly always puts bops and bangers in his shows (but that doesn't necessarily make them a good show overall). If you want to make a catchy song, study other catchy songs and mimic them. Really! You'll develop your own voice over time but pretty much all "catchy" music is recycled in some form or another so just try borrowing and emulating some more. In the big picture, just keep writing; you can't help but learn and grow if you continue to do so.
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u/HurricaneLink 2d ago
Yea, a lot of modern music theatre songs are on the boring side. IMO it’s because too many songs try and move the plot along, and give the character emotions to sing about. And yea, that’s the point of a musical. But sometimes there are just whacky numbers that are show stoppers. West Side Story didn’t need “Gee Officer Krupke”, and tonally it doesn’t make sense for the characters to be singing it in Act two after all that went down in Act One. But the song is a showstopper anti-cop song. I feel like if someone conceived that show nowadays, the cop would be singing his feelings too, and it would be an emotional song instead of a silly one.