I'm listening to the “Happy Together” by the Turtles episode of History of Rock Music in 500 songs. The Turtles, like many bands over the decades, had chart topping hits. They couldn't maintain those hit songs forever though. So they spent quite a bit of time chasing hits, trying to find the next song that would next top the charts.
How different the life of an indie musician feels!
That's not to say we don't do similar things. It's just not necessarily about the hits.
The biggest hits I've had were with the Brobdingnagian Bards. “Tolkien (The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings)” was one of the Top 10 of all tracks on MP3.com by the time it shut down. And we did record Memories of Middle Earth. But for me, that albums was conceived to share largely the instrumental tunes that Andrew McKee and I were writing while walking around Renaissance festivals. It was about having a hit per se, especially since the instrumental tunes were mostly only popular online. So this was a vanity project.
“Jedi Drinking Songs” was the biggest hit on Brobdingnagian Fairy Tales when it was released and topped the CD Baby charts in July 2005. We recorded several more Jedi drinking songs since then. That was after I realized people like “drinking songs”. It was a marketing term that I could promote to especially when I discovered that a lot of people who hear the term “Celtic music” think of symphonic New Age instrumentals and not the music we were doing. But drinking songs… that could work. But we didn't try to make hits. We just tried to write fun songs.
Those were the only chart topping songs of my career that I can remember. “The Widow and The Devil” is doing really well on Spotify thanks to being in rotation on Pandora and the naughty nature of the song. Even there, I decided that while I don't mind innuendo in our music, I don't do “dirty songs” in general. Drinking songs and romantic songs are more of what I do.
Instead, I try to write songs that have a good story. I try to write catchy songs. I try to write Celtic or Geeky songs. I am not trying to write hit songs.
That feels out of reach… and also out of touch.
Don't get me wrong I would LOVE one of my original songs to top the charts. That'd be incredible. But that's not what I write. I write from the heart. I write about things I know and love. I write to create. Though I am also trying to write to appeal to my audience. I'm not writing for a mass market.
That's certainly not something people thought about years ago. They wrote or recorded songs with the hope of becoming #1 on the charts.
As an independent musician, I write music mostly for me, also for my Gunn Runners. I might try to push it to Top the Charts. I don't suspect that'll ever happen. But I'm gonna keep creating no matter what.
Nerdy Wonderland is on Sunday, Dec 3, 2023 from 12 – 5 PM at The Lost Druid Brewery in Avondale, Estates, GA. Not hit songs will be played. But there may be some Celtic Christmas Music.
