Making Your Music More Memorable, and the Importance of First Impressions
Sweetheart Pubstack #21
We’re Rachel Hurley and Frank Keith IV, co-owners of the Sweetheart Pub. We’re music industry veterans with over 30 years of combined experience in the music business, having worked in licensing, talent buying/booking, label management, tour management, and more. Once a week, we’ll publish a new edition of this newsletter, where we’ll share some philosophy and actionable advice on all facets of the music industry.
What we’re thinking about this week…
One of my favorite gifts to give to a client is the book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. It’s about the year science writer Jonathan Foer spent trying to improve his memory. Bill Gates says it’s one of the most interesting books he’s ever read, and I think it should be a songwriter’s bible.
In the author’s search for how the memory works, he began interviewing people known for theirs, including people who entered and won memory contests — like memorizing the exact card order of a shuffled deck of cards in a finite amount of time. As most would, Foer assumed that the participants were born with the talent of memory — Rainman style — or you weren’t. He learned that was a myth, and for most, it is merely a set of tricks and shortcuts that anyone can apply. The biggest key to a strong memory is visualization.
One of these memory tricks you may have heard of before. It’s called The Memory Palace. “Method of Loci” was developed in Ancient Greece and used visualizations of familiar spatial environments to enhance information recall. People of the day used it to memorize long speeches or stories.
“In this technique, the subject memorizes the layout of some building, or the arrangement of shops on a street, or any geographical entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. When desiring to remember a set of items the subject 'walks' through these loci in their imagination and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any feature of that locus. Retrieval of items is achieved by 'walking' through the loci, allowing the latter to activate the desired items. The efficacy of this technique has been well established (Ross and Lawrence 1968, Crovitz 1969, 1971, Briggs, Hawkins and Crovitz 1970, Lea 1975), as is the minimal interference seen with its use.”
Your memory palace might simply be your home. For instance, if you would like to recall your grocery list without writing it down, you might picture the cheese between your couch cushions, the cookies next to the dog bed, the salt and pepper in your bathtub. Then, when you get to the store, you visualize yourself walking through your house, and you see all of the items you need to buy. The wackier the visualization, the more likely you are to recall it.
A similar technique can be used to memorize people’s names, which I am terrible at. We’ve all been to a party where we meet someone and then five minutes later we can’t remember their name.
You know how sometimes you think of something in another room, and so you go to it to retrieve the thing, and as soon as you get there — you’ve forgotten what you were looking for? This happens because as soon as you start the journey, your brain is bombarded with new information that floods your senses. “Oh, look, there’s my other shoe.” “I really do love that portrait of the family.” “Is that lightning I hear?”
You haven’t forgotten what you were doing; the thought has just been buried under twenty more.
It’s the same situation when you meet someone new. Immediately after someone says their name, it’s usually followed by a series of other details about them: how you know each other, where they are from, why they are there, etc. The least visual part of the conversation is someone’s name — unless they share a name with someone else you know, in which case you automatically fuse those two things. The key to memorizing names is to pair them with a visual. The more outlandish, the more resonant it will be — burned into your memory. For instance, let’s say you meet a person named Lucy, and to remember her name you visualize her moonwalking with Einstein (see what I did there?).
So what does this have to do with songwriting? Well, this is just my take, but I theorize that you could use these techniques to make your music more memorable.
There are songs that, when I listen to them, I enjoy them. Then there are songs that I think about deeply even when I am not listening to music. You know the ones.
Science says fusing two senses around something makes it even more memorable. Creating a song that evokes visuals, tastes, how something feels, or smells will burn it more deeply into someone’s brain. Instead of writing about a dress, write one about the soft red cotton dress with the appliqué that twinkles under the lights. I can visualize that dress — and that dress belongs to this particular song. Other things I see now remind me of the dress — and by default, the song.
This is a simple example, but the application of this technique is limitless. I suggest taking the time to read the book to learn all the different techniques to make something more memorable and decide which ones you can incorporate into your own songwriting process.
-Rachel
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How’s your bio game looking these days? Did you write a one-sentence bio on Facebook five years ago and forgot about it? Maybe it’s time to revisit…
Your bio is very important—it’s how you control your story, and we've yet to run a press campaign where the bio hasn't been used by a media outlet either partially or in its entirety. Having a strong bio allows you to, in many cases, write your own press.
Your bio should read like a magazine article that constructs your unique story and reveals the reasons why people should pay attention to your music. A bio can be the essential part of the decision for a music journalist to write about you, a talent buyer to book you, or a label rep wanting to further consider you for their roster. They could like your music, but if there's no compelling story behind it, they may end up moving on.
Make sure your bio is consistent across all platforms. While there are of course character limits on many platforms, you want to make sure your branding/messaging is consistent so that anyone who finds you anywhere is getting the same first impression.
A professionally-written bio isn't cheap; rates can run from ~$100 to over $500 depending on your ask and the writer in question, but it’s an investment that is an essential asset not only to a PR/marketing/radio campaign, but your long-term brand image.
Take a look at some of your favorite/similar artists’ bios around the web for examples and inspiration, and feel free to hit us up for suggestions if you’re thinking about either 1) hiring out or 2) DIY-ing your next bio. You might be surprised at how many writers at your favorite music blogs & magazines do bio work on the side — and who knows, maybe you’ll catch their ear as a bonus.
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