[00:00:00] James: Welcome to episode 176 of the Bandhive Podcast. It is time for another episode of the Bandhive Podcast. My name is James Cross and I help independent artists tour smart. This week I am very extremely thrilled to welcome back Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona. How are you doing today, Matt?

[00:00:17] Matt: James, I am doing fantastic. It's another glorious day in Colorado. Beautiful sunshine. The birds are chirping, the buds are sprouting. It is the beginning of springtime, which means we should only have about six more feet of snowfall between now and the actual start of spring.

[00:00:33] James: Ah, yeah, Scott, I love that time in Denver. to be very clear, we're releasing this on April 11th. Today is March 22nd, so by the time this episode drops, you might only be expecting three more feet of snow because you'll have had three feet of snow in the next three

[00:00:47] Matt: That's right. Let's say one foot a week, right?

[00:00:49] James: Yep, exactly. it's similar here it is.

[00:00:53] James: I wanna say in the mid forties today. Oh, it's actually 30. It was in the mid forties yesterday. That was nice and I enjoyed it. And today [00:01:00] it is cold and gray, but it looks wonderful outside. So here's to springtime in Vermont as well, with another probably foot or two of snow before the end of it.

[00:01:09] Matt: gotta love those mountain climates they do a really good job of being like, Hey, it's summertime. Oh, but by the way, here's like a bunch of sleet and, and like freezing rain still. And then, but it'll be beautiful by the afternoon, but you're so far north that it's only gonna get warm at like three o'clock in the afternoon.

[00:01:25] Matt: So, you know, enjoy

[00:01:27] James: Yeah, Oh yeah. that's how it goes. Once that sun comes around, it's nice and warm. But in the shade, it is cold. the one good thing is that you know what the sun is, you know what the shade is. It's never misspelled unless somebody spells it s o n, in which case, oops, that's probably a typo. I hope that's a typo.

[00:01:49] James: if they actually think it's spelled that way, that's not that great necessarily. . And here's the thing, a lot of artists over the years have decided that they're gonna be creative with their [00:02:00] song titles. And you know what? Back in the day that was totally fine because you just look at the back of the CD or the back of the record and say, oh look, they spelled this differently.

[00:02:10] James: They added some weird characters. They did this, they did that. It's creative and unique. But Matt, that doesn't work anymore. You wanna tell us?

[00:02:18] Matt: Absolutely I do. So this is actually one of my biggest pet peeves. I love songs. I love music. I love words. I love etymology. And one of the most frustrating things ever is when you Easily say or pronounce or even explain a song title due to the complexity of its name. So today we would like to take some time to talk about the importance of naming your songs.

[00:02:38] Matt: Now this might seem like trivial, but it is like a very, very easy thing to overcomplicate. the most important thing that you need to realize is the lens that you need to look through when you're walking into this, when you're a young kid and you're like, I'm gonna write a song, and you think of a clever title or whatever, that's one thing in reality all of the artists I've come across, it's like the younger artists who don't [00:03:00] overcomplicate things and they just like rattle off the name of the, phrase that they repeat during the chorus and they're like, I want this to be my song title.

[00:03:06] Matt: That is exactly what you should. That is probably the best, safest option ever. There are so many great songs that people will be humming along and the only thing that sticks in their head is maybe the single refrain line that you have in the chorus. these are things that as people are humming these popular tunes and they start to get this muscle memory in their head, maybe they only remember a couple words.

[00:03:30] Matt: But what the goal is is for those words to be your song. . Why? because we live in the digital streaming age. We live in the hands-free era. Everybody is driving around in their vehicles listening to either XM Radio or Sirius or, Spotify or Pandora or Apple Music, or, watching stuff on YouTube, ingesting their content a lot of these things all have virtual. . if you have an iPhone, you have Siri. If you have an Alexa, you have [00:04:00] Alexa. If you have Google, you have, okay Google. All of these are voice activated dictation commands that will then search the web for your desired result. what happens when you make your song Title Z B X Y Q R F T W? Are you gonna be able to find that? Is Alexa going to be able to find that? The answer is no. she's not. Now there's a few songs that this is not always the case for, you know, there's some real popular songs that are labeled by their letters, like B Y O b, by system of A Down.

[00:04:31] Matt: know, Alexa will find that, but another band that is in a similar genre and that. Absolutely killing it right now is a band called Bad Omens. I love these guys right now. They just dropped a new record pretty recently and it is just, it's fire. One of my favorite songs on the album is called, I Don't Want That Money, but is it spelled I don't want that money.

[00:04:52] Matt: Of course not. That would be too easy. I only know the name of the song because I've listened to it, so my brain is [00:05:00] already. Making the connection of the humming of this song and the title. I don't want that money because they say that lyric in the song as one of the final lines of the chorus. Very common.

[00:05:11] Matt: But they've decided to call their song I D W T dollar sign.

[00:05:15] James: Terrible.

[00:05:16] Matt: oh, it's absolutely awful. Now I understand why they did it. There's a trendy thing amongst hardcore artists and a lot, of underground scene people in general where, where this is like kind of a cool thing to. But in reality, all it is, is really frustrating for me to listen to my favorite song on the album.

[00:05:30] Matt: I have to ask Alexa to play the name of the album and then manually skip forward to the track that I want to listen to. because of this, I know that. It's Track 12. it's easier for me to have Alexa play Track 12 off an album than it is for me to have her play the actual song title.

[00:05:48] Matt: This causes friction. This is exactly what you aim to eliminate in every single one of your business decisions ever. When you are building systems to help you make money, you want no friction. [00:06:00] So somebody like me who wants to say, Hey, Siri, or Hey, whoever, can you play? I don't want that money by bad o.

[00:06:06] Matt: Well, no. No, they can't. None of them can. none of the digital assistant helpers hands free. None of you kids out there listening with AirPods while you're driving around doing DoorDash delivery are going to be able to hands free play these songs. Most of the world's content now is ingest hands free over a Bluetooth AirPod.

[00:06:23] Matt: AirPods are like 34% of the market. after that it's like beats or something like that. And this is how most people listen to music. You 50% of people ingesting music are listening on, headphones, and they're doing it on Bluetooth headphones and they're doing it in a hands free environment.

[00:06:38] Matt: There are more searches on Google and Google Play and on Alexa and all these things than anywhere else, you know, except for maybe like YouTube. You need to have clear, concise, simple, easy to find material that's spelled the correct way, so that way your fans can easily find it. If there's friction when it comes to people streaming your music, there's friction when it comes to you making money, and that you need to eliminate.[00:07:00] So will have a list of songs included, and I would encourage any listeners to go and, and click on the the show notes and go look at this list of songs that have just letters or abbreviations as the name.

[00:07:11] Matt: And I want you to take a test, see how many of them you can use dictation for. You can turn to your phone or your streaming device, or your Alexa and ask them to play a lot of these songs. You will see a shocking number of them. Alexa cannot even comprehend. These technologies are gonna get better.

[00:07:27] Matt: I'm sure that there's gonna be more and more things that, you know, like artists are gonna start getting wise to this and instead of just putting, one term in their search for, you know, what Alexa is going to recognize in the song that, you know, people are gonna start putting more and more.

[00:07:40] Matt: But it's essentially up to you as an artist just like putting your best foot forward. Like, you don't walk in wearing your pajamas. when you put music out, if you know that the world is ingesting this by stream, and they're doing it on a hands-free device.

[00:07:51] Matt: make things easy to find. I don't want that money as one example. Adidas, by Corn is another example. These songs, they are [00:08:00] acronyms. They stand for something else. And that's something that currently the computer brain is not going to be able to handle because there have not been enough variables set for the computer brain.

[00:08:10] Matt: So what's the best way to avoid that pit? You name your songs, name them well. So that's pretty much what this entire episode is going to be.

[00:08:18] James: Even if it means you have a ridiculously long song title like Fallout Boy song titles were back in the day. That's fine. That's better than having the initials.

[00:08:26] Matt: absolutely. Well, and even then, fallout Boy's a perfect example of a band that has some mega, huge hits. And every single one of their mega huge hits is the name of the song. The Sugar We're Going Down, swinging Dance. Dance We're Falling Apart to Halftime. Exactly.

[00:08:46] Matt: Light 'em up, up, uh, Look at Blink on 82 during the height of their era, their self-titled album had four singles on it. Always. Always, always down, down, down, down, down. It gets me so [00:09:00] down, down, down. I'm feeling this, the year it's so cold right now I'm feeling this. every single song I, all four of their singles off that record, it all had.

[00:09:09] Matt: One of the two of them singing some like kind of generic risque line followed by the other one chanting the name of the song in the background. this is not some new piece of information. you wanna listen to a good quality song title, go look at the beat.

[00:09:26] Matt: The Beatles were champions naming their songs. And we'll get to a few examples later, but for now, I wanna stick with some things that you should absolutely not do. So James, you wanna take it away with the next subsection,

[00:09:38] James: Yeah, absolutely. So we talked about the initials, but also songs with like weird contractions or misspellings. So this is a song that I hadn't heard of now I'm gonna end up with my head on a poll probably for admitting this.

[00:09:52] Matt: you're gonna get crucified.

[00:09:53] James: Well, I'm already James Cross. But anyway, it is Led [00:10:00] Zeppelin. Sorry I'm not trying to kill you today. D'yer Mak'er by Led Zeppelin, which apparently a lot of people mispronounce Dyer Maker, and that's not how it's pronounced. It's Jamaica, don't do that. I did try this one with my Amazon device earlier and it actually pulled it up and I was impressed.

[00:10:17] James: But that's probably because this is a very famous song. that's very popular. If you do this for an indie band, it's not gonna get the training in the algorithm that your device uses to pick it up like that. Same thing if you have, just a song with a confusing name like I'm Made of Wax. Larry, what are you made of?

[00:10:37] James: That's for your song Strong, but it's actually a quote from Night at the museum and it has nothing at all to do with the. It makes zero sense whatsoever. Same for Dear John. What's your name again? Or Mr. Highway Man's thinking about the end not great. those titles don't necessarily relate to the song in any way, and that's not to say you can't have a song title that isn't long [00:11:00] or that isn't mentioned in the lyrics.

[00:11:02] James: Now, clearly it is best to have song titles in the lyric. , but look at something like earlier afi, this celluloid dream. They don't say this celluloid dream in the song, they talk about movies and filming celluloid. It's, what old film was made of, but they don't use the words this celluloid dream in that order.

[00:11:23] James: Instead, it's more just a general atmosphere of the song captured in the. So it makes sense, but it's not completely random. that's why it fits. And then here's a really big pet peeve of mine songs with misspellings. And even if it's intentional, guess what? Alexa might not pick up on it But I tried this one three times earlier in testing and it did not work. And this is by a big band called Enter Shak. and the song is, please set Me On Fire with Please being p l s in parentheses. So it's like texting every time the Alexa just played a [00:12:00] different song called Set Me on Fire by multiple different artists.

[00:12:03] James: I think it was Evanescence and I forget who the other one was, That's not the song I was looking for. And even when I. Plus set me on fire. It did not work.

[00:12:12] James: So don't do that. I get it, it looks cool, but don't do that. And now that I'm thinking about it, enter Shaki on their last album.

[00:12:20] James: From 2020. Nothing is true and everything is possible. They had a bunch of misspelled songs on there. Actually just one. They had the king and there were accents over e, I and N. But also they had things like Tina, there is no alternative. And you can say, play Tina and your device will do that. But then they also had the Dreamers hotel and there's brackets around it or, uh oh, APAC aholic is anonymous. They did the, oh, with the line through it like the Danish and Nord.

[00:12:50] James: Thing like, okay, cool, but that's gonna make it difficult for some devices to play. luck.

[00:12:57] Matt: you're working against a computer. if you're spelling stuff [00:13:00] wrong, if you are abbreviating, you're using acronyms, stuff like that, you are setting the computer up for failure because the computer does not understand colloquialisms.

[00:13:09] Matt: And so it's not going to understand that. It's like, oh, like you mentioned with jerma. That song is spelled d apostrophe y e r space, m a k apostrophe e r. There is no way that if somebody hears that pronounced correctly, that they are going to phonetically categorize that in their brain and take that to a search engine and type that incorrectly.

[00:13:33] Matt: In addition songs with these confusing names that are big and. Can you do a big giant name? Of course you can. Now, if I say, Alexa play, I'm made of Wax. Larry, what are you made of? She's gonna play the right song. However, are you thinking of the right song? How do you know? Are you sure that it's not Mr.

[00:13:49] Matt: Hyman's thinking about the end? Or perhaps it's, my Life for Hire, or maybe it's New Jersey Legion Iced Tea, or maybe it's holding it down for the under. , [00:14:00] maybe you're conflating the songs because they all have confusing titles. So maybe in your mind you're going, oh yeah, like I love this song, and you go to put it on.

[00:14:07] Matt: You're like, oh, wait, that's not actually the song that I thought it was. and sometimes you want this like beautiful poetic song title because you're actually trying to make some sort of allegorical story, which is fine, but you don't want this to be the large majority of your song titles on your album.

[00:14:20] Matt: I think there's some bands that do a really, really, really good job of this where they have, some song titles directly correlated with the singles on the album, and then some song titles are like super obscure and. The goal is to make you think it's absolutely wonderful and artistic to have a nice spread of those.

[00:14:39] Matt: But if you have nine songs on an album and seven of them have a normal song title, and then the other two have something that's a little bit more intricate and more in depth, it's gonna be a lot easier to identify those songs, otherwise it's going to take listening to something like 10,000 times for you to actually. train your ear enough to recognize that instantly. our ear does a [00:15:00] really good job of, recognize things tonally. And so you want to try to match that same. recognition with a song title. a, there's a fantastic YouTube video out there.

[00:15:10] Matt: That was just somebody being, kind of funny where he talked about how each generation has a song that they can identify with just a few notes. the first song that this was ever, the case was Beethoven's. Famous bum, bum bumba. all it took is four notes and you recognize the song.

[00:15:29] Matt: tons of other songs come out throughout the centuries. And then, you know, we get to like Jaws, which is stolen directly from Beethoven, two notes. And what's fascinating about this video is this guy basically said, there's a song that only, a generation of hardcore kids know by a single note.

[00:15:44] Matt: Then he plays the first note from the black parade. The first piano key and what's great about this video is because he's playing this for people he plays obscure songs and then he plays the one that is recognized and people are instantly like, oh yeah, [00:16:00] I know that they recognize it tonally.

[00:16:02] Matt: but because the Black parade is so specifically well-branded, it's a song called The Black Parade. It's named off the album, the Black Parade. They talk about the black parade, the music video, the imagery is all about the black parade. They did, you know, suit like everything was so heavily branded with the black parade that there is this very strong correlation with this single piano. key Ding As soon as you hear it and you hear this really high, just beautiful, you know it's resonating and you hear it and you're like, oh, this is the black parade. There's no questions about it. that's beautiful. in my opinion, that is a song that is so aptly named that you get a whole visual. When you hear that piano key, it's gonna be super hard for you to do that with every one of your songs, in my opinion, the Black Braid is not even the best song on that album.

[00:16:45] Matt: there's other songs that are better, but the branding and imagery was so perfect, that they said, Hey, you know, We're not gonna double down on this. We're gonna triple, quadruple quintuple down on this.

[00:16:56] Matt: Everything about this is going to be the black parade so [00:17:00] much that even the next album, I believe was called The Black Parade is Dead. it might just be their live dvd. I might be conflating what it actually, yeah, it's just a live album. again they're doubling down on that branding, they realize that the nomenclature is so appropriate that they were able to drag even more out of it and monetize an entire live DVD because of it.

[00:17:21] Matt: that, that just gives you kind of a glimpse into the power of like naming something appropriately. If you give something a really good name, like you can release three to four different versions of it. Like what do you think these pop artists do you think Justin Bieber is like, oh, I got, you know, 10 million views on this, song we're done.

[00:17:34] Matt: with it No, his marketers are going, okay, cool. Now we're gonna release a dance version and now we're gonna release an acoustic version, and now we're gonna do a lyric video version. And then before you know it, each of those videos has 10 to 20 million views, and the marketers have squeezed an extra 60 million views out of a single song that somebody would've said was dead.

[00:17:54] Matt: they don't do it with super obscure songs, go online. and Look how many versions of a single Justin Bieber song. It has. It's always the ones that are [00:18:00] like very basic song titles directly correlated with generally the hook in the chorus.

[00:18:05] James: it always has a purpose.

[00:18:06] Matt: exactly. It points to something the music is not the call to action. Shut up James

[00:18:10] James: I was like, it's gonna hit, it's gonna hit

[00:18:17] Matt: Yay.

[00:18:17] Matt: Cheesy puns.

[00:18:18] James: Is it too late now to say? I'm

[00:18:20] Matt: yeah. Oh gosh. Sorry. Yeah, do

[00:18:23] James: We're behaving like children,

[00:18:25] James: that's three

[00:18:27] Matt: back to back to back. So one thing you really want to avoid is common song titles. And the reason is, is because if it's so common then there's a good chance that another artist has already taken the time to do what they can to establish that song as like a search engine result on Google.

[00:18:42] Matt: for example, am. Am is the morning time. there's a lot of songs titled AM one by One Direction. So if you're gonna spend your time trying to write a song and you're gonna name it am When you Google that, you think it's gonna come up with you or do you think it's gonna come up with One Direction Disclaimer?

[00:18:59] Matt: [00:19:00] It's gonna come up with One Direction. One Direction has more awards than almost any band in history, and they're the only band since The Beatles to have broken up. And then, The majority of their, band members became, platinum selling artists after the dissolving of the group. people saying that One Direction is not talented, you are all delusional. you don't have to like their music or anything. But they are unquestionably champions of the music industry. to hate One direction is to just be a fool.

[00:19:29] James: gotta say in this specific example, I just tested it and I searched for AM without the periods, just am and the first result, amazon.com.

[00:19:37] James: And under that, the second result is Arctic Monkeys. Am the band's initials on

[00:19:44] James: amazon.com?

[00:19:45] Matt: So it's, am on, am on am right there.

[00:19:48] Matt: we see things on the front end. we have the user interface, things look pretty, but there's an entire.

[00:19:53] Matt: Web of intricacies called search engine optimization. That's happening on the backend where people go in and they actually [00:20:00] type in specific things that are correlated to what they want for their search results. So when you go into Google and you type, Funky tango, Ziggy goober. if you type that phrase into your search engine optimization and that's how you want your song to be optimized, then when they type that in, that's gonna appear really close to the top a Google search engine.

[00:20:18] James: If they do their job

[00:20:18] Matt: Exactly.

[00:20:19] James: they get paid big

[00:20:20] Matt: that's, right. Search engine optimization is top dollar work. So you guys wanna figure out how to make good money while simultaneously helping your band learn how to be a search engine optimizer. You'll be able to do things you never believed of That's probably the most valuable wisdom in this entire episode.

[00:20:34] James: And if you say, I don't want that money, just. Forget about it. Go get that money.

[00:20:38] Matt: you're gonna be dead on arrival.

[00:20:39] James: Oh,

[00:20:41] Matt: Or a doa.

[00:20:42] James: or without you, man. With or without you.

[00:20:44] Matt: these are all examples of Giants

[00:20:46] James: They're coming up. These are literally the next two on

[00:20:48] James: the list.

[00:20:48] Matt: these are Titanic songs. If you name a song with or without you, it's not going to come up with your song. It's going to bring up you two. If you name a song d o a, it is not going to pull up your song. It is going to pull up Foo Fighters or [00:21:00] Newfound Glory, or an article that talks about something being dead on arrival, because that's an incredibly popular turn of phrase that has probably been search engine optimized to death.

[00:21:11] James: It's also a movie.

[00:21:13] Matt: it's such a popular turn of phrase that it's been used in every form of medial content. Ever stay away from that. Now you can use popular terms of phrase. That's okay. But. A good songwriter is gonna find a clever way to make a song title or take a turn of phrase and weave it into there.

[00:21:30] Matt: And that doesn't even have to be like your song title. So like Anti-Hero, Taylor Swift, great song. anybody that's remotely fascinated in literature understands what an anti-hero is or remotely fascinated in Marvel comics and knows who Venom is, an anti-hero is this concept that everybody know.

[00:21:46] Matt: And you can either repeat this word over and over and over and over and over again, or you can build your own turn of phrase. don't you get tired of rooting always, for the anti-hero, always rooting for the anti-hero. And it's like, okay, she's created a turn of [00:22:00] phrase off of a popular topic.

[00:22:02] Matt: on top of that anti-hero is not a common word. You don't hear that all the time. So it really makes for this wonderful. pinpoint for you to grab on the first time I heard that song, I knew what I needed to look up to find that. The first time I heard the song gives You Hell by All American rejects.

[00:22:19] Matt: Not only did I know where to look up what to look up, but by the, final chorus of that song, I was singing the lyrics. That song is so well written and so well-branded and so catchy and clever I still remember to this day it was like 10 o'clock at night.

[00:22:32] Matt: was heading. I just closed up the restaurant that I worked at and I was driving home and they played it on, channel 9033 to test it to see if people liked it. And dude, by the time I was halfway home, the final course was on, my volume was almost all the way up in my mom's car. And I'm just screaming, gives you hell, and it gives you hell.

[00:22:48] Matt: it's the only line I know, but it was so good and so iconic, and I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever forget that. do not overestimate the power of naming your. song Something that is [00:23:00] easy to identify, easy to relate to, easy to sing along with because when the song gets turned off, they're still humming it

[00:23:07] James: to add to this, another example, in a similar vein, not all American rejects, but we, the Kings Check. Yes, Juliet. They have the ao AO in the chorus. That is perfect check, yes, Juliet is already catchy enough, but adding in those aos, that's the hook right

[00:23:23] James: there.

[00:23:23] Matt: that's a fantastic example because what I was just about to talk about is the other perfect spot to pull your song title from. we. The chorus, we have the refrain line, right? The hook. Well, we also have the first line of the song. The first line of the song is a very, very, very powerful place.

[00:23:40] Matt: to pull them from so, I mentioned The Beatles early Eleanor Rigby. Eleanor Rigby died in a church and was bait along with her name. first off, it's the very first lyric in the song is he starts with her name Eleanor Rigby, Then they talk about Father McKenzie, and then they go back to Eleanor Rigby again, and it's very clearly this, [00:24:00] story, but you hear that and you're like instantly pulled in. John Lennon yesterday. Yesterday. All my trouble teams hope hard way, you know, all sad and marose. But yesterday it's that first, line it's so memorable since his fail.

[00:24:16] Matt: One of my all-time favorite bands. My least favorite song on the album, but the most catchy intro cuz if you actually listen to it, it's just like, got this jam, jam, jam. You know? It's just like a very, Exactly. It almost draws you in the same way that the reason does by hubba tank with the, just the single piano key.

[00:24:32] Matt: Dun dun dun dun. Yep, exactly. they do a similar thing. And the first lyric in the song is just like the lady in the blue dress. it comes in like kind of poppy and bright and and you're instantly intrigued by the lady in the blue dress because she has an era of mystique about her.

[00:24:49] Matt: That's the whole point of the song. It's an easy to remember one cuz you're like, oh, what about, the, the Lady? Yeah. That, that like blue dress song. People remember those things, you know, if you have. Very [00:25:00] unique identifier in a song lyric that you can draw people to.

[00:25:03] Matt: That's also very, very beneficial. One of my all-time favorite songs is the song, save Yourself by a Stabbing Westward. I Cannot Save You. I can't even save myself. And it's so just save yourself. I mean, it's so, there's so much raw emotion in that song that's like a nineties Get pumped up.

[00:25:25] Matt: I mean, it's like if I was in a helicopter and we were in war and the helicopter was going down and I got to put on one song, I'd put on Save Yourself, a pump up song, it hits true, it stays consistent with the branding. It stays very prominent throughout the course of the whole song.

[00:25:39] Matt: And you're like, oh yeah, what's, what's that? Save Yourself song? Or, I can't save You song, or whatever. you might not be able to find it on your first Google search, but chances are by the second or third, you're gonna be able to find it. I know the name of the song, I don't want that money.

[00:25:52] Matt: And sometimes it's, hard for me to find, that should not be the case. So, you can either focus on imagery, like let's say you're focusing really [00:26:00] heavily on branding with your album, and you can focus on that imagery and you can tie song titles into that because that's very powerful, just like they did with the Black Parade.

[00:26:07] Matt: Or you can just keep it simple and say like, Hey, this song is called Wither Without You. It's like the hook of the chorus, and there's nothing wrong with that. If anything, I would say that that's the best thing that you could possibly do, because.

[00:26:17] Matt: People they're going to remember the concept of this song for the most part, unless it's super obscure and they're gonna remember the hook and they'll probably remember the melody. So the goal is for them to turn off that music and still be humming the melody and still be going.

[00:26:33] Matt: that way in six months when they're like, oh man, I can't think of this song, blah, blah, blah. Oh, what is it? Was it, well, let me, let me, let me hum it to myself four or five times. Oh, I can remember like two words. Okay, I'm gonna go take those two words and I'm gonna type it into a Google search. And oh, and lo and behold, it comes with or without you, you know, top result.

[00:26:50] Matt: So in a long winded, roundabout way of saying it, keep your song titles simple so that way you can actually directly market to the people [00:27:00] who are simply listening to your music. It's an easy thing to convolute and it's an easy thing to like overthink oh, we gotta get all these right song titles and they gotta be in the right order and this has to have this right flow.

[00:27:11] Matt: And it's like, man, just keep it simple. Just name your songs what they're about. Give them some nice quality hook name that's not super obscure. And if you think more about this, from an external point of view and you're on the outside looking in and you're saying, oh man, like this song title's really confusing, this song, title's really confusing.

[00:27:27] Matt: Do what you can to like dumb it down to the simplest concepts that you can. It's far better for you to have a song that's like one or two words than it is for you to have one that's like 10,000. Cuz then it's just hard to remember. It'll be easier to Google. Search it if you can remember it. when everything's an inside joke, it's like cool.

[00:27:44] Matt: An inside joke is the farthest thing from marketable. The market is not inside on your joke. The market is outside, so don't name your things funny, silly jokes. And if you want to take this seriously, put your best foot forward. Find the good song titles. Find the quality [00:28:00] material that you have, the ethos that you're trying to present, the, the feelings, the emotions that you're trying to pull out of these songs from people, and name the song after that, tie in deeply with that.

[00:28:10] Matt: the more you do this, the more you'll start to realize the important parts of the puzzle that you need for a good quality song in general. Because you'll start to say, oh, you know, , Taylor Swift used the word anti-hero in a clever manner. How can I do that? And then you're gonna start thinking about your writing a little bit more.

[00:28:27] Matt: on a little deeper level, and in certain areas, maybe just on an even more shallow level where it's like, Hey, this song title doesn't need to be deep because the emotion is coming from this song is really deep. let the song do what it's rhetorically supposed to do and let the identifier, you know, it's.

[00:28:41] Matt: This is where you're supposed to search. imagine going into a, into a school and not being able to find your locker. It's like, no, you need to know where to search. And so if you have this super obscure search process, all it's gonna do is set you behind and bury your song.

[00:28:55] Matt: It'll be buried a lie.