Where to Find New Songs & Artists to Listen To

Listen to new music to learn new techniques. (Photo by Elice Moore.)

Q: I want to learn more about what kind of music is current. Where do you find new music and artists to listen to? Also I want to pitch my songs to film & TV. Where can I hear artists that are being used in that market?

A: If you’ve been getting my monthly emails, you know that I’m big on listening. I recommend that songwriters spend as much time listening as they spend writing. That means listening to successful songs, current songs, songs that inspire you as often as you can.

But there’s a huge amount of music out there—more every week, every day— so much that it can seem overwhelming. So, how do you find new music and artists to listen to? How do you know where to look and how to focus on what will be helpful to you as a songwriter? Here’s my guide to finding new music that will deliver plenty of inspiration, knowledge, and ideas for your own songs.

Cover Songs Are a Big Deal

I’ve been hearing a lot of great cover songs in TV series and commercials lately. Last week, The Handmaid’s Tale featured a spooky, electro cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” by Kerala Dust. VRBO is re-airing a commercial with John Legend covering the Johnny Nash hit “I Can See Clearly Now.” An INXS cover version of “Never Tear Us Apart”—a hit for both Tom Jones and Joe Cocker—is currently being used in a long-form commercial for Michael Hill Jewelry. And recently NCIS: Hawai’i used Kina Grannis’ great guitar/vocal cover of “Shut Up and Dance” originally by Walk the Moon.

Cover songs are giving old favorites a new life and new, indie artists added traction!

Alternate Versions of Your Songs

I’m often asked if it’s a good idea to record and mix multiple or alternate versions of a song. The short answer is YES! Because…

  1. There are versions of your song that you’ll need to have.
  2. There are optional versions that can be useful to have.
  3. There are versions that you make just because you’re dying to hear what they sound like.

For the long answer, let’s take a look at a variety of alternate versions and how they can help you in a whole lot of important ways.

MUST-HAVE VERSIONS

THE MAIN VERSION

If you’re an artist, the main version of your song is the one you’ll release as your single. It’s the definitive version, the one you’ll promote first, and the one you want people to hear.

Writing Songs for Film & TV

Movie Slate

Thousands of songs are used in TV shows, films, and commercials each year. For every song that’s placed, many are auditioned—often hundreds—but only one is chosen. And you want that song to be yours.

The song that will get the job is the one that enhances the emotion and memorability of the scene for the viewers. Is a character discovering real love for the first time? The song needs to evoke that feeling of innocence, yearning, and wonder for the audience. Is the film set in a small town in the 1950s? The song needs to make us feel that we’ve traveled back to another time and place.  And the right song can bring the whole thing to life!

How Is a Lyric Like a Movie Script?

Desmond Child, producer and hit songwriter

Desmond Child, hit songwriter and music producer, put it this way: “The lyric is the script, and you can’t shoot a movie without a script. The score is actually the last part that comes into a movie, in the same way that the music on a record should help bring out the meaning of the lyrics.”

I love Desmond Child’s comparison of a lyric to a movie script. While music truly does have the power to move us emotionally, it’s the lyric that draws us into the song, paints a picture in the mind, makes us identify with the singer or with the people in a situation.

Not the same old story

Like a good movie script, a song has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And a lyric, like a movie script, tells more than just the facts of a story—I met you on Monday, we fell in love on Tuesday; broke up on Wednesday, etc. This doesn’t really work well for today’s listeners – and it’s not enough for movie-goers either.