By what metric do you gauge whether a song is good or not?

TheBiggestJerk

TheBiggestJerk

Well-known member
By what metric do you gauge whether a song is good or not?

I listen to a lot of music, in many genres and often come away with little to no memory of what I just heard. More often it’s simply because the tune just isn’t memorable or even remarkable. It made no impact. I was in the shower this morning thinking about this, all whilst I’m singing/humming Poncho and Lefty, at which it occurred to me right then that I was answering my own question. Eureka!
I guess for me is that if it’s good,
it sticks and I wind singing it to myself all day. Now notwithstanding, I’ve also been subconsciously singing the “I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight” jingle for several decades too, so I might be wrong.

What say you?



 
There's a whole continuum for gauging songs:

"Wow, that's a good song"
"Man, that's a great song!"
"Damn, what the fuck was that song?"
"Whoa, that song gave me a chubby"
"Fuck! That song gave me full raging wood!"

Anyhoo.....
 
hard to pinpoint. Has to be great guitar tone for sure. not too overdriven.
at my age i don't like anything loud or detuned anymore. not too many tricks or speed demons.

i guess a semi clean strat or P90s into a Twin with a sexy female growly voice like Pat had back in her day
 
70 Mach 1 said:
hard to pinpoint. Has to be great guitar tone for sure. not too overdriven.
at my age i don't like anything loud or detuned anymore. not too many tricks or speed demons.

i guess a semi clean strat or P90s into a Twin with a sexy female growly voice like Pat had back in her day
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I feel like it’s way deeper and more profound than equipment and tone.
 
311boogieman said:
everyone is different so if it's good to you it's good for you. :yes:
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Agreed to some extent, but apart from equipment, many a bad song had great tone and gear. It’s gotta be more profound. Some great songs were recorded with terrible tone and equipment.

 
NGD here also.
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There's no universal answer. If there were, someone would have discovered it and written 10,000 number one hits.
 
There's many different metrics, and they all add up to an invisible cumulative value that I do subconsciously when I rank things as good or not

There's the originality, both in the context of the genre it's presented in and wider music as a whole. Is it a relatively common example of a well known subgenre? Did it create or innovate an entirely new genre? Those are important questions when determining a song's place in history, and therefore whether it's good.

There's the harmonic and rhythmic complexity. Is it well thought out? Complex? Novel? A new spin on a classic theme? Songs get more attention from me when they have those things.

There's the lyrics and melody. Do they connect in a meaningful or new way? Is it something everyone's heard a million times before? There are a ton of old country songs that have relatively retarded chord progressions but do new and novel things with the melody and lyrics on top of those boring chord progressions.

There's the production and atmosphere. Does the way the song was engineered and produced add to the aesthetic? Does it detract? This isn't objective based on production expense, time, or fidelity. Black metal can be amazing even if dickless posers don't like the production; in fact some of the most popular bands are just like that. And there's huge, modern, crisp, clear sounding satellite radio metal bands that sound tiny because it doesn't add to the music the band is playing.

There's the connectivity of the melodies in the parts of the song. This can be as simple as a repeated line at the end of a verse before the chorus, or a complex pattern in a prog metal song. The key is the connectivity and structure making sense or sounding pleasing. Not that it's simple or complex necessarily.
 
I just kind of know it when I hear it.

Sometimes a song grabs me on the first listen. Other times, they stay hidden in the middle of an album I’m listening to as a whole.

Occasionally I’ll actually pay attention to an old familiar song that’s been hiding in plain sight, then one day something just clicks & I appreciate something I previously overlooked.
 
I'd say that there's something occurring on a primitive level when we hear a song that we think is good or bad. Does it elicit emotions? Do you feel like head banging or dancing? Does it make your energy levels go up when you hear it?

Our assessment of whether music is good is on an instinctual level. It just grabs you and you start remembering rhythms and chorus words, even if it's the first time you're hearing it.

The way you feel the bass and drums on a sub-sonic or subliminal level as it hits your body is another thing I think can distinguish between a good song and a great song.

Mind you, one man's great song is another man's horrible ode. We're all susceptible to our biases based on experience, which is why a lot of folk who listen to Metallica may think that Britney Spears sucked.
 
Earworm jingles - can’t sleep because it drones in your head
Counterpoint melodies in all music gets me going
If a song can be recreated in a different arrangement from the original and sounds potentially better. “Wait wtf, I know this song”
 
DanTravis62 said:
There's many different metrics, and they all add up to an invisible cumulative value that I do subconsciously when I rank things as good or not

There's the originality, both in the context of the genre it's presented in and wider music as a whole. Is it a relatively common example of a well known subgenre? Did it create or innovate an entirely new genre? Those are important questions when determining a song's place in history, and therefore whether it's good.

There's the harmonic and rhythmic complexity. Is it well thought out? Complex? Novel? A new spin on a classic theme? Songs get more attention from me when they have those things.

There's the lyrics and melody. Do they connect in a meaningful or new way? Is it something everyone's heard a million times before? There are a ton of old country songs that have relatively retarded chord progressions but do new and novel things with the melody and lyrics on top of those boring chord progressions.

There's the production and atmosphere. Does the way the song was engineered and produced add to the aesthetic? Does it detract? This isn't objective based on production expense, time, or fidelity. Black metal can be amazing even if dickless posers don't like the production; in fact some of the most popular bands are just like that. And there's huge, modern, crisp, clear sounding satellite radio metal bands that sound tiny because it doesn't add to the music the band is playing.

There's the connectivity of the melodies in the parts of the song. This can be as simple as a repeated line at the end of a verse before the chorus, or a complex pattern in a prog metal song. The key is the connectivity and structure making sense or sounding pleasing. Not that it's simple or complex necessarily.
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Thank you for this answer. Well thought out and conveyed.
 
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