enjoymment vs popularity of your music

[Esperado]

Title might be missleading but its hard to fit the concept in the title.

Do you guys find that the songs which you enjoy the most end up being more successful or does there seem to be no connection at all? Personally, it seems true that my more personally enjoyable remixes end up being the ones that garner the most interest from others. The same isn't as true for my originals though.

[spellmynamewithabang]

there's a nearly opposite correlation, here; homestuck fans seem to genuinely not care about all of the tracks i put effort and love into and love

seriously look at the difference in view count there

[AngelCityOutlaw]

About a year ago, I did this Mute City guitar cover and put it on YouTube. Just a couple weeks ago I signed in and was like "holy shit". It's up to something like 1100 views and all these good comments. 13 likes and 0 dislikes.

I'm like, I didn't even try to promote this thing, totally forgot it existed, isn't that great of a track and people love it

[lazygecko]

I stopped doing remixes cause I grew tired of my original material being neglected in comparison.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

I stopped doing remixes cause I grew tired of my original material being neglected in comparison.

Yeah.

Also, I actually find it way more difficult to make an OCR style remix of something than it is to come up with an entirely original piece. Because, unless you're working with some source that might just have one or two melodies, you've got to work on taking this whole, structured piece and working it into something completely different.

Which means you just about always have to sacrifice something about the original piece to substitute with your own idea. So most of my own, non-collaborative remixes tend to wind up sounding more like traditional covers.

So my problem is that when I'm done with the arrangement, it's either way too close to the original because I didn't want to change it too much or way too liberal because I got rid of too much from the source and replaced it with my own composition.

Edited August 23, 2013 by AngelCityOutlaw

[SnappleMan]

I don't expose myself to many comments on what people like/dislike about my music. Every song I write or remix is a song I love to work on and am proud of, even the awful ones. When I release a song all I really care about is that at least one person has heard it and enjoyed it, after that I just want some feedback from my peers and it's time to move on to the next song.

[Garrett Williamson]

If we're referring to whether or not an artist likes his biggest hit or not, normally it's surprisingly a no. Not always, of course, but it seems to be that most big artists or one-hit wonders big one hit that got them huge was a song they didn't personally like.

For example, The Beatles released the single "Let It Be". Obviously they had tons of other ridiculously successful singles and albums (they're still to this day the most successful artist ever to exist on this planet). But "Let It Be" was written and released as the band was separating. That was their last record together and they were already separating as they were working on that album. And they hated that song. They absolutely hated "Let It Be". Nevertheless, it was a huge hit.

That's just one example of many I could give you.

or I could've possibly brought up an entirely different subject that has nothing to do with the original topic

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Jani Lane (R.I.P.) said that he could've shot himself in the head for writing "Cherry Pie".

[Esperado]

i think my most popular song was the second full song i ever made. none of my others seem to catch up with that one in terms of popularity. i dont hate it though. I wonder why it is that big hits are often songs that the artist doesnt like. maybe the process to just banging through a song in a few hours keeps the flow of the song more natural and less complex?

[AngelCityOutlaw]

i think my most popular song was the second full song i ever made. none of my others seem to catch up with that one in terms of popularity. i dont hate it though. I wonder why it is that big hits are often songs that the artist doesnt like. maybe the process to just banging through a song in a few hours keeps the flow of the song more natural and less complex?

Well, in the popular music world I know that it often stems from being a song that the songwriter was often demanded to write by the label (See also: Korn - "Ya'll Want A Single?").

To use Cherry Pie again as an example, the album was finished. It was called "Uncle Tom's Cabin", the single to promote it was supposed to be Uncle Tom's Cabin (great song) etc. It was a much heavier album than Warrant's debut but....the label wanted a "rock anthem" or some shit like that and so Jani wrote Cherry Pie. Next thing he knows, he's the cherry pie guy; he's in pie eating contests, marries and divorces the girl in the video and his legacy is now this one cheesey song he didn't even want to write.

I mean, I'd hate to be one of these big rockstars that actually cares about music and you believe that you've improved over the years and composed better songs than your "hits", but when you hit take stage night after night the only thing people want to hear is that one fucking song you wrote 20 - 30 years ago.

[Garrett Williamson]

To use Cherry Pie again as an example, the album was finished. It was called "Uncle Tom's Cabin", the single to promote it was supposed to be Uncle Tom's Cabin (great song) etc. It was a much heavier album than Warrant's debut but....the label wanted a "rock anthem" or some shit like that and so Jani wrote Cherry Pie. Next thing he knows, he's the cherry pie guy; he's in pie eating contests, marries and divorces the girl in the video and his legacy is now this one cheesey song he didn't even want to write.

lol I totally remember that quote of his where he was talking about how everything was cherry pie and he freaking hated that song