One Hit Wonders

Lately I have been feeling guilty.

Lately I have also felt frustrated.

Why guilty?

Because I have been spending up to 2 hours per day writing one of these blog posts.

After a couple weeks into this year long goal, the guilty thought started occurring to me and is now crossing my mind every day.

It goes like this.

“Great you are writing and posting a blog article each day, but you are not writing a new song every day. Does this make sense? Are you a blogger or a musician/songwriter?”

The Unhelpful One returns. My inner critic extraordinaire. Let the should-ings begin.

The voice goes on …”Shouldn’t you also spend the same amount of time on writing new songs? You’re a long way from being even a one hit wonder.”

Hey, not fair! And don’t dismiss the One Hit Wonders.

I had the song “Take On Me” by the group a-ha stuck in my head this morning. And then later, I was humming “Play That Funky Music.”

Those are great one hit wonder songs, and it is extremely hard and extremely rare to have a hit song.

Out of curiosity, I did a search, and if you include “streaming era” artists with 10 or more Top 10 hits in their career, there are about 120.

If you pull out streaming era artist achievements (because of “bot farm fraud”) the number drops to about 80 artists.

Try this to see what I mean.

Think of a musical artist you really like or even love. See how many of their songs come to mind for you. Do it across 4-5 artists. What is the total?

Look, I love a lot of musical artists, and for some of them, I love 80% or more of their catalogs, but many of these are lucky to have 3 or less “big songs” that people recognize.

But back to the story for today…

Why have I been frustrated?

One big frustration has been that I want to get better at guitar, and music knowledge in general, but lately have not made the time for it. The Unhelpful One does less should-ing around this, but it shows up here, too.

And then it hit me.

It goes back to having Fun in the Sun—I like a game, a challenge, an adventure.

And, I realized the two things go together for me…songwriting and practice/learning.

I enjoy writing new songs way more than practicing. That is the Fun in the Sun part for me.

However, I had somewhat forgotten that I typically practice every day when I am writing new songs, too, because I use it for inspiration for the song(s) I will write that day.

I may use a chord or a riff I practiced, or I will learn a cover song and be inspired to write something different but similar.

Practice becomes fodder for the new songs.

That’s right. I can combine them into a one hit wonder.

And…

I’ve been considering what my next “Big” challenge could be.

There are several good candidates.

Last year, I finally tackled a beast of a project that has been hanging over my head for quite a while. I narrowed down my favorite 100 songs I have written so far (out of about 1300 attempts), and determined there are about 60-70 of these songs worth putting more time into.

And, at the beginning of this year I started regularly rehearsing 60 of those 100.

Then I cut it to 40. Then down to 30, and about a month ago, landed on 27 that I have been rehearsing Nearly every day for the last month.

But I have been hitting the wall on rehearsing the songs the last couple of days. It’s felt onerous and hard to even think about doing.

Why?

I typically find great joy in playing and singing a song.

Fun in the Sun…it’s evaporated. I need a new and exciting challenge.

I have gotten pretty good at the 27. Now I want to play them live.

That’s a potential exciting challenge. Should it be the one I add?

Ideally, I’d like to figure out how to:

1) Post a new blog article each day for the remainder of the year

2) Write a new song and record a scratch demo each day

3) Get out an play my rehearsed set of songs once or twice per week (i.e., 50-100 live performances).

However, I am unsure how many One Hit Wonders I can handle, though.

Oh, and btw, I have come to associate a One Hit Wonder with a year-long pursuit.

Doing something for one full year is the bomb. It’s what I want to continue to pursue.

If something is worth doing, why would I stop at 90 days?

(Well, there are reasons, but let’s bracket those for now)

For now, though, here’s what I know.

Writing a blog article and posting it every day is intense and I am not quite two months into the year on this goal.

I am also working on getting into shape to be “stage ready.” I’m walking 15,000 steps per day. That’s time consuming, too.

So, I think the question is twofold.

What’s my capacity and what is my burning desire?

today, I will need to leave you in suspense on the answer of what my next One Hit Wonder will be…

But, yeah, I think having a few One Hit Wonders you are working towards is a good thing.

What are yours?