Nit Picks, Pet Peeves and Guilty Pleasures 1.3: Reviewing The Review

Reviewing the Review Part 4B: The Rubric

Category 2: Song Presentation

Song Structure: The basic question with song structure is, “Are all of the elements of the song put together in such a way that it maximizes the emotional impact of the song?” This category looks closely at how well a band uses different types of song structures. A band might be rewarded for using an uncommon song structure that moves away from classic verse-chorus-verse. A band will not be marked down, however, for using verse chorus verse, as I think that such a structure can at times be the one that best fits the song, and best carries the themes and emotional weight of the song. That being said, it should be used sparingly, and appropriately, because, let’s be honest, we’ve all heard it a thousand times. A band will get marked down for having structure that doesn’t promote the song well or that makes the song overly confusing and hard to follow. One thing that will really help a band out is their ability to build a song up. Having a strong build and a fulfilling climax is one of the most important things in a good song and any band that consistently turn out songs with good build (but not the same build!) has won some major points in my book. A song that is carefully constructed, with a strong build (sometimes a de-build works too!) often carries considerably more emotional weight and power than a poorly constructed song, even if the latter song contains the stronger melodies.

Lyrics: Lyrics are an obvious choice for a category here, but it can be very hard to judge lyrics, and every listener is drawn to different lyrics. For the most part, this is a category where I will talk about what appeals to me and what doesn’t when I’m listening to the album, but There are a few things that should generally be avoided. I will call a band out on some of these, such as meaningless and or immature subject matter, poor phrasing and grammar, and of course, lousy cliches. I think its pretty safe to say that no one wants to here any of these in their music... That being said, I think the most important thing with this category (as with almost every category on this list) is that the lyrics help to maximize the emotional potency of the song. What this means specifically for lyrics is, words that work well with the melodies and that they are put to. Usually this means matching like with like (for instance, dark lyrics with dark melodies), but sometimes this can be an intentional shift of the two, like using a cheerful melody for dark brutal lyrics (see Coheed and Cambria’s “Three Evils”). Lyrics can be a tricky area to judge, but in general I look for this kind of harmony between the lyrics and, well, the harmony, and I look for lyrics that flow well together with strong evocative language, and clear and interesting concepts and themes.