What makes for a good (indie) pop song?

Pop hooks are the musical equivalent of tweeting.

Jarvis Cocker image courtesy of: the Guardian

They're short and catchy and as the name suggests, they can reel you in to listen to a more substantial piece. Particularly in the dense forest of indie music, it could spell the difference for an obscure talent to gain hits.

As the year comes to a close, many review sites and critics have compiled their top tracks and albums for 2013. It has become a tired old ritual, but is universally practised by curator sites because lists are a good way to generate internet traffic.

People read lists. They've stopped reading in-depth articles. And listing tracks involves the least amount of effort. Films take longer. A pop song requires a tiny snippet of one's time, and it only requires 10 seconds for a listener to become engaged.

So what makes for a good pop song?

I posed this question to the inner circle of Les Scenesterables and got a few responses.

• From Karlo S. (ex-Purple Planet Pincus Five):

For me it boils down to delivery and timing. Delivery, I'd lump in there lyrical sense and flow, musicality and production value, all working toward an emotional or cerebral or even just a physical response. Timing is when you personally hear a song at the right moment in your life, when it speaks to you clearly and punches you in the gut. Delivery is up to the band. Timing is up to the listener, though is rarely a conscious act, more like a confluence of the universe and life and shit.

• From Toti Dalmacion (Terno Recordings):

A good song be it Indiepop or even mainstream is one that grabs you at first listen or appeals to your senses in less than 30 seconds melody wise and has a good hook or two past the mark with an equally clever or at times even just a simple lyric or line that slaps you in the face.

• From  Ponchie Buenavista (Encounters with a Yeti):

I guess I really wouldn't know. Perhaps a song with a good melody or a catchy hook that took nothing more than 3 to 4 minutes of our lives? But would that not be the same criteria for a mainstream pop song? I just hope that come 2014 we'd have less of those anthemic "wooah-oooh-woooah" choruses that permeated a lot of both indie and mainstream pop music last year. They probably were catchy but I found it rather formulaic and a little unimaginative. But who am I to say? I only make instrumentals and don't sell a lot of records.

• From Armi Millare (Up Dharma Down):

I'm not really much of an indiepop fan but as a songwriter, I agree with Toti on the first 30 seconds of attraction to the piece -- though for me it goes as fast as scanning over the first 20 seconds. I cannot quite explain how it happens but you just know a good song when you hear one, you can also tell whether it was truly written from the heart.

And if they contain the "whooah whooah" as mentioned by Ponchie above, while it is universally understood what these days seem catchy (as per what the charts say), then it is a formulaic insincere attempt to capture an audience with the wrong intentions. Maybe doesn't go for all the really popular songs these days? (I'm being gentle here) but that's kind of how I feel bout most of them.

I did a bit of research to add to this, and came up with a few notable quotes. According to Lucy Jones, a self-confessed failed songwriter who penned an article for the Telegraph

It seems what I was getting wrong all those years was ignoring the million-dollar subject: sex. According to a study by evolutionary psychologists, almost all pop songs carry “reproductive messages”. A whopping 92 per cent of Billboard Top 10 songs are about monkey business. It’s not a great surprise. Look at Rihanna’s discography. The woman is obsessed.

For Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, focusing on the stuff of mundane everyday living as he did in Common People is what it's all about. He narrates an episode from his own life that carries this insight

I was sitting in a convalescent ward with all these miners, and I realised that there was more material in looking down at the ground than up at the stars.

Guy Chambers who exposes the tricks to writing catchy pop songs for the BBC talks about the emotive quality of his work

My sound, is comfort food. Warm, not angular, like a roast dinner.

It is interesting that he talks about it this way, instead of discussing song structure, chords, vocals, instruments, etc. In the end, a good pop song must capture an emotion. Feelings are what people want to experience, not sound or words. A good pop song provides that.

The feeling need not relate to what you are experiencing now. It could revive something that you have been through in the past, hopefully something happy or joyful. The nostalgia and melancholy of many indie pop songs comes from their ability to evoke such memories.

Either that or they conjure up pseudo memories that we are yet to have or wish we had. How is that possible? Well let me leave you with that famous quote from Hi Fidelity in which Rob the main character is speaking

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

Good night, Scenesters!