Sex, Violence, Pity - What are you selling?

The three most powerful things you can sell with your image/style are sex (pop), violence (rap & metal), and pity (singer/songwriter). Which one are you selling?

OK, let’s back up. Perhaps you don’t buy my assumptions about what’s being sold. If you do, skip ahead to the “Pick One” section, below.

Define your musical essence
There is an acting school of thought that a character's motivation in any scene can be reduced to the most basic of human needs: sex, power, or love. Distilling all the words and actions in your scene to one of these underlying motivations can really boost the scene's energy, and keeps the actors focused on the essence of the scene.

Likewise, most music can be reduced to just a few basic human desires: sex, violence, or melanchoy- a type of longing. Reduced to its most basic, though, melancholy is a form of pity. Pity is a transferable emotion. We can feel sorry for ourselves (e.g., broken heart songs), for a loved one, or for strangers (starving Africans, a la "Do They Know Its Christmas Time?" by Band Aid).

When music becomes too intellectualized, it feels removed from these basic needs, and the audience for it is reduced. Massively popular music appeals to the lower rungs of Maslow's hierarchy. The essence of your music is what underlies both the lyrics and genre.

Hard sell
For example, can you sell “social awareness”? Not really. How do you market that? Artists that try come across as "preachy" and pretentious. But artists who effectively address social injustice in their music reach us through pity. They tell stories of individuals (such as Suzanne Vega's "Luka"), which evoke strong feelings of sympathy, shame, and outrage.

A reviewer once called my music “Rock with Brains.” At first I thought, “Cool!” But I was not able to successfully translate “brainy” into a compelling marketing campaign. By it’s nature, it would have been elitist and snobby, which didn’t exactly fit with the rock/funk/blues vibe of my music at that time. Had I been trying to win over Sting or Pink Floyd’s audience, that might have been okay. I would rather he said that "Curtis Wayne is a great storyteller."

Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album, a pretty intellectual offering for a psychedelic rock band, was not a huge success upon debut. Their violent, anti-war “Brick in the Wall” album was a much bigger initial hit. It took many years for “Dark Side” to become ubiquitous.

Likewise, it’s unlikely that Sting’s intellectual jazz-pop would have been a hit out of the gate, had he not launched his solo career while the Police were still the biggest band in the world. And the Police began as an aggressive three-chord punk band!

Even the most popular folksy-roots songs of the 60’s and 70’s often tapped either violence (“If I Had a Hammer”), sex ("Sugar Magnolia"), or pity (“They Paved Paradise”).

Too many choices?
Knowing your genre is important for marketing and distribution purposes. Music stores (including iTunes) need to know which “category” to put you in, so that people can search for your music. Retail stores must, literally, “pigeon-hole” your music by putting in a particular bin.

But music has been split into so many genres and sub-genres that it’s extremely confusing to pick one to describe your music. Are you rock or country? Hard rock or soft rock? Metal or alternative rock? Death metal, power metal, speed metal, black metal, doom metal, folk metal, glam metal, grindcore, industrial metal, thrash metal, etc.?

Some fans are as rabid in their devotion to a particular sub-genre as certain religious sects are about their particular branch of Christianity or Islam (Baptists vs. Catholics, or Shiites vs. Sunnis, for example). Identifying with a particular genre can win (or lose) you fans, and help you plan a touring strategy with similar bands.

How to choose
Generally speaking, if you are a rock artist, you'll either be selling sex, violence or both. If you have a sexy lead singer who is the focus of your stage show, then you're probably selling sex (think Gwen Stefani/No Doubt, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, or the Rolling Stones). Pop-rock groups that are more band-oriented than singer-centric may also fall into this category, depending on the tone of their songs. Fallout Boy, Gorillaz, and Gnarls Barkley are some examples. Virtually every R&B artist is in this category- Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Joss Stone, Tank, Christina Aguilera, etc.

Many modern country artists are also selling sex. Shania Twain's blatant sexuality was a watershed in country music marketing. Faith Hill looked like a sultry Britney Spears on the cover of her "Cry" album. Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw continue to be two of the most popular in a long series of "country hunks".

If your band is a more aggressive "team effort", then you're probably selling violence. The style and tone of your music will probably be a giveaway here, too. Bands like Disturbed, Papa Roach, Metallica, The Sex Pistols, Rage Against the Machine, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers fit this bill. "Angry artists" like Alanis Morrissette, Henry Rollins, and others could also be described as selling violence, rage, or angst.

Singer-songwriters like Jewel, John Mayer, David Gray, Sarah McLachlan all peddle melancholy (pity) as their message. So do some bands, like The Killers, Cold Play, U2, Radiohead, and Third Eye Blind. Their songs tend to be "downers", or highly introspective songs, regardless of tempo. (I like to call them "You can't possibly understand my pain" artists. ) Many classic Americana folk singers- Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, for example- deliver socially-conscious messages in their songs, but the ones that resonate and become hits evoke a strong sense of melancholy, such as "Like a Rolling Stone", or "They Paved Paradise". For an excellent example of this type of song, check out EmmyLou Harris' "Red Dirt Girl".

These artists do play other types of songs and styles, but their bread-and-butter, the style they are known for, their essential position, falls into one of these three categories. Some of them have been able to successfully branch out, but only after establishing a strong position first.

Other
Then are the others- artists like Devo, Blue Man Group, or Weird Al Yankovic- who don't really occupy any of the above positions, but have managed to achieve success in their areas anyway. There will always be groups that are so far out of the mainstream that they do manage to carve out and hold their own niche, but the number of possible brands, categories, and positions that are minds can hold is limited. So the opportunities for artists to create entirely unique positions outside the mainstream will be limited, too. It's a function of a cognitive psychology phenomenon called categorization and particularization.

Words + Music = Position
If you're lost as to how to position your band, take a look at your lyrics. What is the common theme running through your music? Is it "I want you" (sex), "fight the power" (violence), or "love me, or my cause" (pity)? Determine your lyrical theme, and your musical genre. Doing so will take you a long way toward determining your band's ultimate position.