Here are some insights that may be interesting but aren't true:
- Songs that aren't great IMMEDIATELY (that have a slow intro, or are quiet the first two seconds) won't be super popular because people will impulsively skip them.
- 50% of making a catchy / addictive / magnetic chorus seems to be to make it a wall of bright sounds. The remaining 50% is the usual stuff you've already heard about (repeat stuff?).
- The music I made ten years ago has aged much better than the lyrics I wrote to it.
- Having confidence in your voice is SO MUCH more important than singing "well". Success in music probably comes down to having something unique to say and saying it with confidence. If you think bands are underrated or overrated because their music is way too good for them to be unknown, this is probably where they lack. You can't be successful by being bad, you have to be good at something, and the music world is probably more about the uniqueness and confidence than about the melodies and chords.
- Some songs are so catchy that you can sing along to them the first time you hear them. Or maybe they're just predictable. I don't know how/why this is, but now I'm planting a seed to think more about it.
- There's way too much focus on mixing and mastering. You polish the sound because you believe the audience wants "good audio", but they don't really want that. They want all the other things.
Signed, kbrecordzz