Getting to be a kid in the ‘90s meant that I got spoiled by a lot of pop culture greatness from television to movies, but what stands out most? The music that everybody knew every word to from Mariah Carey to Backstreet Boys. Because of that, I’ve always loved and appreciated the beauty of a pop song. No one can tell when a song will be a huge pop hit, but there is a sort of science behind it, at least that’s what singer-songwriter Dylan Galvin breaks down in his latest single, “How to Write a Pop Song.” We dove into not only the new music, but the Holy Trinity of pop songs (for better or worse), touring vs. playing weddings, and more in this back-and-forth exchange.
Kendra: People who attend Berklee College of Music aren’t those who take music lightly. They’re usually those who’ve had their eyes set on some sort of music-based career for quite some time, but what about you – where did your love of music spawn from?
Dylan Galvin: I was very blessed by God to experience a childhood nostalgia of a home saturated with music. My dad was a guitarist and singer in a band with his brother and friends and my mom was a huge music fan. Between them both I absorbed decades of great music inadvertently by just being in the home I grew up in. As I got older I kind of fumbled around with trendy genres and bands but then as my music tastes developed from my own pursuit of music, the trends evaporated and what remained was the good stuff, and that good stuff was rooted in most of what I grew up hearing from my parents.
Kendra: Fast forward to today and “How to Write a Pop Song.” Did you ever think, man…should I be giving out the pop song recipe for free like this?
Dylan Galvin: Haha, only the true secret elite insiders can know such glorious secrets like:
“step three just make sure you have a real nice beat, if you get stuck on the words just REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT” and “Just sing about your ex and how things used to be, or steal a good idea from some song in the 70s.”
But honestly, if you listen to the dialogue of songwriters in American songwriting from the 60s onward, it’s like there’s a collective amnesia happening that started around 2000. Newer songs are like bad remakes of earlier songs, with artists crowdsourcing lyrics to large groups of people, sometimes more than a dozen collaborating on one lyric. It’s like there aren’t many new ideas being introduced, just refurbished old ones, and you can totally just re-do an old concept, but you have to bring it to life in a new way.
Kendra: I think you perfectly captured not only what makes a great pop song, but what I feel has been lacking in mainstream music as of late sans a few artists with, “The chorus has got to be big/ the thoughts have gotta be small.” Growing up during the boy band boom of the late ‘90s, hello – “I Want It That Way” is the prime example because what does that song even mean? I have no clue, but do I sing it like my life depends on it all these years later? YUP. For you though, what are the Holy Trinity of Pop Songs that fit “How to Write a Pop Song?”
Dylan Galvin: So I’m not sure if this means three songs that fit in a good way or three songs that this song would be aimed at criticizing….so I’ll do them both.
THE THREE WORST:
“Unholy” by Sam Smith. Is it catchy? Yes. Is Sam Smith a good singer? He’s an incredible singer. Is the production amazing? Groundbreaking. But what is the song about? Is it a unique, original, beautiful story that shows us something we’ve never seen before? No. It’s just another song about sex. It cleverly uses the story of an adulterous affair to pretend as if it isn’t glorifying cheating, but it does. It’s like punching someone in the face to demonstrate that punching people in the face is wrong. Pretty much every line is shocking in terms of being controversial in content, but there’s not a single stand-out lyric in the whole song, it’s a string of cliches that are just sung with catchy melodies. People end up singing an anthem that celebrates the very thing that has actually damaged many of their own lives. It’s a big chorus. It’s a small idea. It doesn’t rhyme “love and above” but it does use “dropping it and popping it” which I think the early 2000s used as a rhyme scheme enough times for the next 40 years.
“Yummy.” Justin Beiber. Now, Justin is also a very talented performer and singer. But after the 53rd time of hearing the word “yum” (I think the word appears 54 times in total) I’m going to have to say I no longer think artist expression is the motivating factor behind this repetition but rather an attempt to create a hypnotic mantra. This would be an example of my lyric “If you get stuck on the words…REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT.” There are only so many times you really need to say something in three minutes for the audience to fully get the point. This is the Groundhog Day of lyrics. It’s catchy. It’s produced well. But again, what is it about? It’s also another example of producers laying a track that is so auditorily pleasing that you’re willing to give your soul diabetes to consume it.
“Montero.” Lil Nas X. Everything good about this song is everything except the message and the lyrics. Great production, very catchy, instantly singable…but if you listen…really LISTEN, what is this song about? Is it unique? Creative? Introducing something truly beautiful and new? No. It’s just another bland, cliche theme with cliche lyrics, done a million times before. It’s just another story of lust, drug use, and the glorification of the temporary.
Saying that “the value of a song is how catchy it is” is like saying “the value of a woman is what she looks like with makeup on”. The catchiness is just something to enhance what’s already there, it’s not the essence of it. This is sadly the way we’ve been conditioned to listen over decades: people want immediate catchiness or they change to something else. We need to listen more intently. We should consider the value of the message we are ingesting and take more time to consider what that is. Just like you should NOT marry merely based upon merely looks, you need to take a little more time to consider what’s actually in front of you before making a judgment. Don’t let singability fool you into thinking something is good.
THE THREE BEST:
Now it’s very hard if not impossible to truly objectively state three songs that are the best because that changes as I listen to more and more songs and discover things I didn’t know about. These three songs truly nail essentially everything good about what pop music can be:
“Bohemian Rhapsody” – Always remember that one single man wrote this entire song. Has it been overplayed? More than any song except: “Sweet Caroline” and “Wonderwall.” But the fact that this is essentially a modern rock concerto yet made it to the top 100 billboards three different times over the course of three decades. It is unlike any other song before or since and initially the labels were a bit scared to release it because it’s such a long song. But it has everything: storytelling, compositional movement, hooks and singable parts, hard rock, complex harmony, all wrapped in probably the most singable song ever written.
“Black or White” – Michael Jackson truly was the King of Pop. This is a much-needed song still today with racial tension in the country and every media news outlet trying to pin the public against one another. Michael was someone who used influence well in his songwriting when he wrote social commentary songs. This song has so many great elements: guitar solos, intriguing harmonic modulation, elements of different genres, (hip-hop, rock, pop, and dance) eloquent lyrics, and top notch production. It’s a pop masterpiece.
“Yesterday” by The Beatles. This is a start-to-finish perfectly told story. The music serves merely as a bed for the song lyrics. There’s no dependence on a bunch of synth hooks and ooos and aaaas to try and convince you it’s good. It is good. It’s a sad story, but it’s an earnest story, beautifully paced with the melody perfectly paired with the words and all the elements of this song working together to spotlight that story. This is the finest kind of writing in pop.
(Runner up – “This is America” by Childish Gambino. This song is an example of using very modern techniques and vernacular for songwriting but really effectively making a statement about a real issue and it comes out brilliant. This is a groundbreaking song for the pop world)
Kendra: Going back to the lack of what you noted were nostalgic pop songs, why do you think those types of songs haven’t been dominating our world as they once did?
Dylan Galvin: Older music actually surprisingly represents 70% of the market so this is actually not totally the case! I was totally blown away by this when I found out. Modern mainstream labels have effectively created effective marketing campaigns that feign ubiquity. They seem like they are everywhere and that everyone is listening, but it’s a clever magic trick. Big artists get their view numbers inflated with bots. Payola is still alive and well. They make you think that “You’re one of the cool kids if you listen to our new artist: “Lil Clerp Derp” but really, not quite as many people want to hear “Lil Clerp Derp” as they would have you think.
That being said, the mainstream takes up way too much aural real estate and this is because they have the budget to pummel you into wanting what they sell. It’s easier to condition people and create addiction than it is to dissect and explain so they focus on enhancing all of the parts of music that are most likely to burrow into your subconscious and spout little yearnings for more, as opposed to creating honest, authentic messages that challenge the listener or make the listener think. It’s “how can we get an emotional response with the least amount of effort or things said”? They are essentially emotion-salesmen.
There are a hundred disposable “artists” making music in the mainstream right now. It’s unlikely people will study their music in 300 years. People will still study Bach. Time always reveals truth and style only wins short-term battles. Eventually style is swept away and future generations can look back and see the silliness of what people thought was once cool. Sometimes when you listen to older music, you can hear the “datedness” of it. The production or what people thought was cool, but if the song truly is well written, you forgive the outdated style for the substance within and that’s why many of these older songs still hold up. Time sorts out the gold from the dross.
Kendra: On top of making music, you perform often but what’s more stressful – a wedding or a cross-country tour?
Dylan Galvin: Cross-country tour. Awful. Do it once for the experience but after that, don’t. I toured across the US in a Honda Fit with everything I owned stuffed into the backseat. If you ever tour – take a friend. At least one. The novelty of going cross country quickly runs out when you’re alone and you’re driving 8 hours a day to set up your own gear, play a 3-4 hour show, sleep in an Airbnb and repeat it again for weeks straight. It’s very hard to make a tour profitable and you can accomplish many of the same things with well-crafted social media campaigns with much more effective use of your time and money.
I actually should amend this and say: touring isn’t useful until you are at a significantly developed stage of your career. It can work if you’ve got lots of fans who are begging to see you live, but it’s not really beneficial to grass-roots artists and even some big artists. Pomplamoose is a relatively well-known band who had a sold-out tour and they basically broke even. Many artists are nostalgic about the way the music industry used to work so we think we need to tour because “that’s how it works”. Well, it did 40 years ago, but not anymore. Our nostalgia should be for the music, but as for the industry, let those old ways die, because they don’t help us one bit. Weddings actually are usually great. You get to enjoy the best day of someone’s life and play music throughout it. I’ve never had a bridezilla. Part of that is because I’m picky about what clients I work with, but also if your goal is to be a servant of that person, and go above and beyond everything they are hoping for, you’re very unlikely to have any issues.
Kendra: Time for a side note – with it being February, I’m asking everyone for their favorite and/or the best love song they’ve ever heard…
Dylan Galvin: Best love song – I truly can’t pick one. I’ll do the top 3. “Your Eyes” by Phil Collins, “At Last” by Etta James, and “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton (but when Whitney Houston sings it).
Kendra: Lastly, with “How to Write a Pop Song” out now, what else can fans expect as we continue rolling forward in 2024?
Dylan Galvin: My plan is big. My budget is small. But if enough people listen, it might happen after all.
Step 1 – the plan is to release singles
Step 2 – release music videos and other good things for my fans who’ve been patiently waiting for new stuff.
Step 3 – give listeners a balance of catchy and fun with striking and thoughtful all with elements of nostalgia along the way.
