Hot Seconds
These are some assumptions about the conventional path and lifespan of the average pop song:
1) It is usually heard for the first time by listeners casually tuning into their local radio station.
2) Unless it is a song by an established artist that the record company is pushing as the next single, chances are you will only hear the song in light rotation at first - maybe once in the morning and once during the evening commute.
3) If it is a hit, then people will start to request it, it will go into heavier rotation, and soon it will be all over the dial at all times of the day. At the same time DJs and music programmers, in an effort to sate their audiences’ desire for something familiar, will start playing the song in clubs, shoe stores, and high school football games.
4) The song will eventually become ubiquitous and start to annoy even the hardcore fans. Radio stations will burn out on it and slowly pull it out of rotation. It will then sit on the shelf for a few years until nostalgia for the time period in which the song was released encourages people to dust it off for a 70s/80s/90s theme party or a CD compilation sold on late night TV.
But everybody here knows that nothing is conventional about the music industry these days. The internet can break a band just as effectively as a major market radio station. Just ask Lily Allen or The Arctic Monkeys. Also, corporate radio has pretty much made its own bed and is now being forced to lie in its noisy, soulless, advertising ridden sheets. They haven’t broken a band in several years - which translates to several lifetimes in computer years.
Because of this, the life cycle of the pop song has changed. Now, a song can make an appearance in a TV show or an iPod commercial and the band singing it can go from zero to famous in the time it takes to watch one episode of Gay’s Anatomy.
This can be either a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective. On the one hand, those commercials pay pretty well (and the ensuing album sales don’t hurt either). Tiny little indie bands can be given the opportunity to quit their day jobs and make a living playing music. If one less guitar player has to spend his days licking envelopes and doing data entry, that is definitely a good thing.
On the other hand, once you hear a song in a commercial, it kind of ruins it. And once you hear a song in a commercial a million bajillion times, it totally crushes any hope you might ever have of ever enjoying that song again without automatically associating it with whatever product it is used to sell. For example, Lyrics Born’s “Callin’ Out” used to be my go-to track when I wanted to light up the dance floor at clubs and after hours parties. Then one day I threw it on and somebody came up to me and said, “Hey! It’s that song from the Diet Coke commercial.” That night the record went back on the shelf and hasn’t come out since.
So it is with mixed feelings that I present to you Brooklyn’s Hot Seconds. Right now the band sounds great to me. The rhythm section thumps like a hired killer and each song is decorated with analogue ear candy. Synths rumble under the guitars and I think I even heard a melodica thrown in for good measure. Their songs are clean, catchy, and well-produced - which means it’s only a matter of time before you hear them pumping out the jams behind a colorful montage of the new Nano.
Sigh. Such is life - and the life of a pop song.
MP3: ‘Holy Moly’
MP3: ‘Went To India’
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