ASCAP songwriter Mike Errico is an accomplished recording artist, writer and professor of songwriting. His most recent book is called Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter (Backbeat Books), which every songwriter should read pronto. Here’s an excerpt from it. When you're done reading, check out Mike's "What the Brain Likes" playlist, featuring brainy songs from his former songwriting students. 

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Our audience is the human brain. Apologies to those who feel I’m giving the heart the short end of the stick here, but what can I tell you? Hearts can be transplanted. You know who figured out how to do that? Brains.

 

I’m not a neurologist, but as a songwriter, I’ve done some tinkering and a little market research, and here’s what I’ve noticed:

The Brain Likes to Be Right

When the brain figures something out, it orders the arm to give a victorious little fist pump. We might emit a Yesss or look for some- one to high-five. These gestures are the brain throwing itself a victory parade because that’s how much it likes to be right. Also at the victory parade: dopamine, a neurotransmitter that opens the doors of the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. The victory parade runs right through those doors, and it’s a pretty kick-ass after-party.

 

Having gotten a taste of delicious dopamine, the brain becomes restless to repeat the process. Why? Maybe it’s curious about the process, maybe it’s hooked on dopamine—and maybe that’s what curiosity is, which is a little depressing. Entrepreneurs identify the cycle (problem/solution/victory parade/search for more problems) and capitalize on it by inventing little obstacle courses for the brain to run: mobile games featuring bubbles that need organizing; Rubik’s Cubes; fantasy sports leagues; and so on. But it doesn’t have to be that elaborate: even normal, everyday puzzles can give similar results. When the amps and guitars all fit in the trunk of the car? When dinner is comprised only of leftovers but actually tastes good? Yesss.

 

A song provides something similar: it’s a puzzle with pieces we call sections and larger patterns we call song form. By learning the repeated twists and turns in the music, decoding the lyrics, and identifying the bigger picture it presents, the brain “solves” the puzzle the writer has created. Then? Victory parade. With dopamine.

 

There are a few basic song forms that have proven incredibly durable despite changing fashion trends and technological leaps. You can chart out songs that were released decades apart and see a similar logic in the same way building blueprints address the common laws of gravity. Why? Because the product (a song in one of these forms) still yields a reward (sweet, sweet dopamine). And when the product is successful, the reasonable conclusion is to continue creating the product.

 

There are three basic song forms. I won’t dwell on them because this information is ubiquitous:

Yes, there are more popular AAAA songs than Tom Waits’s “Walking Spanish,” but it’s my book, and I like that song.

 

Please note: I’m being reductive in order to be clear. Of course, there are endless variations. Rappers in my classes can feel restrained by the forms I mentioned, and the reasons stem directly from the priorities of the art: many are telling linear stories that work like epic poems or novels. Novelists don’t repeat key chapters, so why would a rapper? A chorus, from that perspective, is actually a speed bump in the story and an interruption in the plot. More pop-leaning rappers will toss the chorus to a singer, but some will argue that lyric and flow contain the larger meaning within the work; as a result, I get a lot of songs that, if you were to chart them, would read, simply, “A . . .” In these cases, I suggest they throw the brain a bone by put- ting some repeated information in the instrumental arrangement—a defining “hook” that a listener can sing back, thereby infecting the next potential fan. Hook recognition is a form of puzzle solving, which is a win-win: the writer keeps the intent of the art alive while writing in a language the listener can grasp.

 

Can the writer do absolutely none of these things and still make something beautiful and have people listen and live a wonderful, productive life? Yes. Of course, yes. Your audience for that kind of music would be me, actually, because I love a good eight-hour-long Max Richter concept album based on the human sleep cycle; I love a good cow choir on TikTok. I get tired of being spoon-fed choruses. Hell, I even get tired of pizza if I’m given enough of it. What I’m saying is that the Venn diagram of your listeners may vary—and, like your diet, maybe it should.

Yes, the Brain Likes to Be Right . . . but Not Consistently

A puzzle the brain can nail in a minute (e.g., a six-piece jigsaw of an owl on a branch) is mastered and quickly forgotten. Mobile games that are initially “addictive”—and notice that word—get boring. The thrill is gone. Satisfaction recedes, and the brain gives chase, searching for either more challenging, dopamine-rich puzzles or, failing that, cheaper and dirtier thrills. The best place to score that kind of junk is social media, with its likes, hearts, and follows. That’s bot- tom-shelf dopamine and a lot of us are completely tweaked on it.

 

But just as the brain doesn’t like puzzles that are too easy, it hates puzzles that are too hard. This is why so many popular puzzles are referred to as “brain teasers” and not “brain embarrassers.” Inability to solve a puzzle means no dopamine, and that is not an acceptable result.

 

We want to strike a balance and write a song that meets expectations in unexpected ways—one that satisfies but not without a little work. We do that by giving recognizable forms, like the ones I just mentioned, and then running a few trick plays to keep us engaged. Social media algorithms do something very similar. In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, scientist, musician, and tech writer Jaron Lanier says, “It’s not that positive and negative feedback work, but that somewhat random or unpredictable feedback can be more engaging than perfect feedback. . . . It’s as if your brain, a born pattern finder, can’t resist the challenge.” This brand of gamesmanship fuels addiction, whether it’s to online poker, crypto- currency speculation, or the song you can’t get out of your head.

The Brain Likes Company

We are social animals, and we like to run in packs. We have matching team jerseys, matching leather biker jackets, and matching choruses in songs that serve pretty much the same function.

 

In the ancient sense of the word, “choruses” are, literally, packs of people, often in matching robes, who sing together. The dictionary doesn’t even distinguish the chorus as a uniquely human activity; animals croak, tweet, squawk, and howl in packs, too.

 

Most choruses have matching lyrics that are repeated several times so they can be recognized and “solved”—in other words, remembered and successfully sung back—by the brain. A big, identifiable chorus, then, is not unlike a big, identifiable skull patch on a biker jacket: it’s a recruiting tool to get other brains to “join” the gang of the song. There’s even a term, “gang vocals,” where a bunch of people sing the chorus together—Queen’s epic “We Will Rock You” is a shining example of a song that knows how much the brain loves company.

 

A second benefit of membership in the “gang” of the song is that we get to align ourselves with the message of the lyric. Songs can put parts of our lives into words we can’t find—and it can do so in an amplified way that draws a like-minded community together. We get the sense that we are not alone, which is a very powerful message for pack animals like us. Even when the music is bleak and alienating, it can bring arenas full of bleak and alienated people together in one big bleak, alienated army; the process seems counterintuitive if you’re on the outside, but it’s deeply consoling to those on the inside. We feel seen, and we are given words to express it. The song becomes a gathering place.

 

You might have heard people say that no one listens to the lyrics. In response, I would simply point to the charts, which is where “everyone” is doing the listening. How many instrumentals do you see in the Top 10? Top 40? 100? 200? None? Maybe one every couple of years? Okay. If we are brains in search of patterns, that’s a no- dopamine revelation. Keep looking: What are two of the most popular genres? Hip-hop and country. They live and die on lyrics, turns of phrase, and anthemic choruses. And that’s not “my opinion.” That’s people showing their preferences. But seriously, did you even have to look? I mean, what do you think people tattoo all over their bodies? The horn charts?

 

Rule: Don’t ever let someone tell you people don’t listen to the lyrics. The facts simply don’t support it.

 

Corollary: Don’t skimp on your lyrics because you believe no one listens to them. They do.

The Brain Likes the Number Four

We love multiples of four: there are four-bar sections, the “middle eight,” twelve-bar blues, sixteen-bar solos, thirty-two-bar song form, and the 4/4 time signature, in which a vast majority of pop music is written.

 

Why? Some say we pick it up by absorption via nursery rhymes and the pop music we grow up around. Some say it mirrors the physical rhythms of being bipeds or, further back, to what we felt in the womb as the offspring of bipedal mothers. (So, if we had three-legged mothers, we’d write more waltzes, I guess?) Somehow, in the cacophony that comprises us, four has won out, and our pop songs reflect that.

 

Like a poker player who spots a “tell” at the card table, a writer who recognizes the brain’s bias can exploit it. Songs and sections can be destabilized by avoiding divisibility by four. Other time signatures can be introduced, phrases can run over bars to imply sections of different lengths, and the brain can generally be messed with before landing on stable, repeated sections it can join in on.

 

The questions, then, are solely artistic: Where on the line of solvability is the “puzzle” of your song? How satisfying will that dopamine deal with the listener be? How hard should they have to work for it? Will they be given the stability of four-bar phrases? Will the song be in a solid 4/4 time signature, loping 6/8, disconcerting 5/4? Weird combinations of all of them? And when they get a tattoo, what will it say?

 

The most important question remains: What will your song provide?

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ABOUT MIKE ERRICO

New York–based recording artist, writer and lecturing professor Mike Errico has built his name on the strength of critically-acclaimed releases and extensive composition for film and TV. Live, Errico has toured internationally, playing major music festivals and sharing stages with top artists and songwriters. In addition to his recording career, Errico's opinions and insights have appeared in publications including the New York Times, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, the UK Independent and the Observer. He teaches songwriting at universities including Yale, Wesleyan and NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. Visit Mike’s official site: www.errico.com

 

Mike's book Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter was released November 15, 2021 on Backbeat Books.

 

Buy links: Amazon // Bookshop.org // Goodreads // Books Are Magic