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Jason Pyles and Craig Tovey give two, in-depth album reviews on Billy Joel’s first solo album, “Cold Spring Harbor” (1971), and The Shins’ “Port of Morrow” (2012), respectively.
In these reviews, Craig and Jason discuss various concepts, such as the phenomenon of having to warm up to a new album — even from a band you already love; how vocal quality and range change with age; the importance of writing memorably repetitive melodic themes; how to add additional “lifts” to your song when you’ve already maxed out your crescendoing dynamics — and many other nuanced topics.
Links from this episode:
Craig recommends: Port of Morrow by The Shins
Jason recommends: Cold Spring Harbor by Billy Joel
Dave Eaton’s new podcast: All About Autism Podcast
On Twitter: @AllAboutAutism
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Send Your Song: The hosts of The Songwriting Podcast invite budding — as well as seasoned songwriters — to send their songs to us, and we will critique them on the show, giving constructive feedback, which consists of positive and negative points, and is merely based on our opinions. Feel free to contact us about sending your song at SongwritingPodcast@Gmail.com.
The Songwriting Podcast is a bi-weekly podcast that posts new episodes on the 1st and 15th of every month — and we’ll be posting Episode 14 here on September 1 (which happens to be our one-year anniversary). Your hosts of The Songwriting Podcast are Craig Tovey, Grant Adams and Jason Pyles. To contact us or to send your feedback, you can leave a voice mail at (801) 382-8789, or as noted above, you can e-mail us at SongwritingPodcast@Gmail.com. And you can also find us on Facebook.
We’d like to thank the Dave Eaton Element for the use of its tunes for our theme music, and we’d also like to thank Kara Brewer for her graphic design work.
This bonus episode of The Songwriting Podcast was recorded on July 11, 2012.
I love the bit in the beginning about having to listen to an album, even from a band you love, multiple times before really grokking and loving it. When this started happening to me, I thought something was wrong with me. I kept thinking, “Gee I must have no spine at all.” It made me wonder if the music was actually “bad” but I would like it anyway if I just “got used to it”.
I love the way you described the experience though. And yeah, it’s a special thing when you really love something immediately, but I think there’s something good about needing to better understand something before really embracing it – I think that means there’s more to it than maybe just a catchy melody.
Hi Iris,
Thanks for your comment. Yeah, if it has taken you some time to get used to albums from your favorite artists, then that just means you’re an astute music-lover (if you ask me). I think of it like being in a relationship with someone who changes. The person you love starts to change (as well all do), and then you have to “catch up” … or not. I think since songwriters grow and change similarly, we find ourselves having to make the same adaptations with music.
Thanks again for writing, Iris.
Jason