Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard Deconstructs the Science of Songwriting

https://medium.com/cuepoint/death-cab-for-cutie-s-ben-gibbard-deconstructs-the-science-of-songwriting-bbd085a06a2a

by sarahf • 11 years ago

93 28 11 years ago

    The Photo Album is my least favorite record we’ve
    ever made because it was a really difficult,
    arduous process to make it. We almost broke up
    during the recording of the record and then the
    tour after that was horrible. I look back on that
    record and I think I didn’t have enough songs —
    I barely had 10 songs and two of the 10 were barely
    complete thoughts.

Funny, given that The Photo Album is usually one of the top 2-3 Death Cab albums[1] of their most dedicated, long-term fans. For what it's worth, I think the second half of Kintsugi is weak, and I hope that this isn't a result of Walla's departure.

[1] Mine are probably Transatlanticism, Plans, and The Photo Album, although The Open Door EP holds a special place in my heart.

Jgrubb2• 11 years ago

I haven't given it a critical listen yet, but have run through it a few times since I discovered it's existence (yesterday). I was apprehensive when I found out (yesterday) that Walla had split, but it's reassuringly solid so far to me.

What's up with the marketing though? I stumbled on this new one in Spotify trying to find some older stuff that I don't have.

aaronbrethorst2• 11 years ago

"You've Haunted Me All My Life" and "Hold No Guns" feel like they were already done (and better) on Plans and on Ben Gibbard's solo album. "Ingenue" and "Binary Sea" feel sort of 'meh' to me. "Binary Sea" in particular feels like a love ballad rehash of Transatlanticism minus the heart-on-the-sleeve nature that the original had.

I think "No Room in Frame" and "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" are great, even though the latter sounds like a spruced up version of "Blacking out the Friction" ;)

rtw21012• 11 years ago

agreed about the marketing. i follow a lot of indie blogs so i had heard about the new record, but very little considering it's death cab. they tend to come up in the mainstream a decent amount as well, but i haven't seen anything.

re: walla's departure, i think they'll be ok without him. gibbard is unique and the leader but to me, the saving grace of this band will always be jason mcgerr. he's one of the great drummers and creative forces in this genre today.

bpyne2• 11 years ago

Michael Stipe said in an interview that "Fables of the Reconstruction" was his least liked record. When they recorded it the band was exhausted from touring, they were burned out and very negative. The negativity made for a dark record. He felt the negativity wasn't what they were about. That album is one of my favorites because of the darkness.

Ben addressed this divide between the artist and fan in the interview. It's so true that the context in which a song is heard becomes part of the song in a person's memory.

I'm a recently-become fan of DCfC. I can already tell that I'm going to listen to their songs many times over and think about every lyric in their albums the same way I did with REM.

tptacek5• 11 years ago

Which is crazy because fully half of REM's whole catalog is inessential, and Fables is if not their second best album at least their third best, and is the bridge between the Murmur sound and the musical trajectory they'd start on with Document. Also: there's a difference between "darkness" and "melancholy", and also: better "dark" than "sophomorically shrill", which is the tone they adopted on Pageant, Document, and (especially) Green.

You can do better than Death Cab! I liked some of their earlier albums, but their lyrics have always been sort of weak and superficial to me (those lyrics also ruined The Postal Service for me).

bch• 11 years ago

Fables was also recorded in London, England[0], and iirc that wore on them. Apparently they almost split-up after that album.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fables_of_the_Reconstruction

joshschreuder• 11 years ago

Plans was my first album they heard (like a lot of people I suppose), though I would probably say We Have The Facts and Transatlanticism are pretty close to being my favourites.

Oddly enough, I never got into The Photo Album, despite trying to listen to it many times. I should give it another go.

tptacek5• 11 years ago

Disappointing, given the title.

aesthetics1• 11 years ago

Yeah, it really just touches on the 2 recent plagiarism issues. They then go on discussing the new album basically. Not much "science" if you ask me.

hellameta• 11 years ago

If you really are interested the following book gives great insight to the "science" of it all. It's a how to guide but it gives great insight.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1582975779

rrss1122• 11 years ago

Considering that Death Cab For Cutie isn't even that good, I would have been disappointed either way.

tptacek5• 11 years ago

Gibbard's songwriting is so formulaic and mawk-laden that it would have been interesting to see the blueprint!

mturmon2• 11 years ago

Besides the OP, and Suzanne Vega's recent series of posts for the NYT, here's another, almost completely opposite, guide to songwriting, extracted from a (very) long article by David Samuels from n+1 cheekily called "Justin Timberlake Has a Cold" --

While [Mike] Caren’s rules are not comprehensive or exclusive, it is easy to measure their value by a glance at the dozens of gold and platinum records hanging in his office. He is happy to run down his rules for me.

“First, it starts with an expression of ‘Hey,’ ‘Oops,’ ‘Excuse me,’” he begins. “Second is a personal statement: ‘I’m a hustler, baby,’ ‘I wanna love you,’ ‘I need you tonight.’ Third is telling you what to do: ‘Put your hands up,’ ‘Give me all your love,’ ‘Jump.’ Fourth is asking a question: ‘Will you love me tomorrow,’ ‘Where have you been all my life,’ ‘Will the real Slim Shady please stand up.’”

He takes a deep breath, and rattles off another four rules. “Five is logic,” he says, “which could be counting, or could be spelling or phonetics: ‘1-2-3-4, let the bodies hit the floor,’ or ‘Ca-li-fornia is comp-li-cated,’ those kind of things. Six would be catchphrases that roll off the tip of your tongue because you know them: ‘Never say never,’ ‘Rain on my parade.’ Seven would be what we call stutter, like, ‘D-d-don’t stop the beat,’ but it could also be repetition: ‘Will the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up.’ Eight is going back to logic again, like hot or cold, heaven or hell, head to toe, all those kind of things.” The ninth rule of hit songwriting is silence.

[...]

His favorite example of a song that uses the most rules in the fewest words is a hit by the rapper Ludacris, “What’s Your Fantasy,” which starts off with the lyric “I wanna li-li-li-lick you from your head to your toes.” Caren loves that song. “In the first line: a personal statement, ‘I want to,’ a stutter, repetition, ‘li-lick you,’ logic, ‘from your head to your toes, move from the bed down to the down to the, to the floor,’” he explains. “‘I gotta know’—another personal statement—and asks a question, ‘What’s your fantasy?’ So he’s got six of them, in the first two lines of the song.”

uniclaude• 11 years ago

I feel like this comment provided more information on the topic than the whole article. Great writeup.

cpeterso• 11 years ago

A similar deconstruction of pop songs is "The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)" by The Timelords/The KLF. It's a tongue-in-cheek guide to achieving a No. 1 single with no money or musical skills:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual

octatoan• 11 years ago

What the hell is "the Hindustani Classical Scale"?!

hrnnnnnn• 11 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustani_classical_music#Prin...

Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard Deconstructs the Science of Songwriting

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