Back when I was a wee snapper and thought I could write songs, I always began the same way. I'd get my acoustic guitar, play around with chord changes, improvise a simple lyric and simpler melody, and wait for something to stick. Time honored, right? No shocker there.
But I was talking to a young, 18 year old, friend of mine, who is in the process of forming a band and he explained to me how he has been working on songs. "I get some simple beats and an oscillator, and I play around with em till I get some real good beats. That's all I'm doing now, working on having beats."
He is hardly the first guy to start with beats, ever since Graceland Paul Simon for one has always begun his song with beats. Since Achtung baby, U2 have done the same. But still . I can't help but imagine that when you begin your musical career as a teenager you begun with chord and if not, if you are working for rhythm patterns up, then rock and roll becomes secondary.
I read an article about Dr. Luke a coupla years ago and he spoke about constructing songs by deconstructing the elements and having different people work on them. It is all email and pro-tools. He then puts them back together and finishes by layering a vocal on top.What you have here is really the end of the concept of the song as a singular entity: play a guitar and sing a melody on top, tap your foot to keep the time: that is hardcore bottom line of songwriter. One person, three parts, tidy in a pretty bow. With the advent of beats as the primary structure, not only are songs interchangeable, but the elasticity of the song, its re-mix-nes is also elastic. The shallowness of pop has swallowed the sturdiness of rhythm.