Page 14 - WriteAwaySept

Offbeat In
Don’t disregard the unusual...
Have you ever partially written a piece of
music or some lyrics, only to discard it
because you feel it is too odd? Perhaps
you’re striving for commercial success
and what you’ve created doesn’t fit with
your notions of what’s required to score a
chart hit? Or it just doesn’t sound like the
genre or style of music that you’re
associated with?
Don’t be too quick though to discard
those offbeat ideas. Being different may
be the thing that helps deliver an
unexpected breakthrough.
Let’s look at some examples:
Sweet Child O’Mine, By Guns
N’Roses
The distinctive guitar intro to Sweet Child
O’Mine is instantly recognisable to anyone
who has ever heard it, regardless of
whether they are a fan of the band, or its
heavy rock genre. However, guitarist Slash
hadn’t intended for it to be used in a song.
He was sitting around one day and was
playing that riff because it provided a
good workout for his fingers. He
described it in a later interview as ‘sort of
a finger twister’. Fellow Guns N’Roses
guitarist Izzy Stradlin heard it and started
playing some chords to accompany it.
And singer Axl Rose had also heard it and
went away and wrote some lyrics.
The rest, as they say, is history, and that
song helped launch the band to become
one of the biggest bands on the planet.
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Seasons of Wither, by Aerosmith
Seasons of Wither is a much-loved ballad
from Aerosmith’s second album. It has an
odd and haunting feel to it and a great
backstory. Steven Tyler has explained
that he wrote this song in the winter of
1973 using a dumpster guitar that the
band’s drummer Joey Kramer had given
him. Tyler commented ‘It could only take
four strings because the neck was bowed.
You could shoot arrows with it’. And yet
the limitations of that damaged guitar
influenced the chords that Tyler strummed
when creating the song. If he’d been
working with a better guitar then that
song wouldn’t have had that standout
ethereal feel.
Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen
Bohemian Rhapsody is surely one of the
most famous songs of all time, and the
reason that I’ve included it on the list is
because it’s a non-conformist hit. Firstly, it
mixes various genres – cappella intro,
then a mix of glam metal and cod-opera.
It’s not something that record company
execs would normally touch. It’s also
interesting to read that Freddie Mercury
had commented to his band mates that he
had written enough material for three
songs but had decided to blend them into
one long extravaganza.
This approach means it doesn’t fit snugly
with standard song writing conventions.
Finally, it comes in at nearly six minutes
long, which would have been at odds with
many radio shows’ playlist criteria.
Despite all this, it would go onto be the
band’s biggest hit, and has been streamed
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