"the money and the greed" Opinions?!

Here's another rough pop-rock track I just finished called "the money and the greed" that I'll be hopefully rerecording soon. I think it's words are pretty self explanatory. Any opinions on the song? I do plan to add some harmonies to the held note at the end. I just noticed that this one is under 4minutes, that's a miracle for me. Thanks in advance for any and all opinions, even if it ain't something you'd normally listen to.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=726342

Sam

Lyrics

Don't wanna preach but I got things I wanna pass on to you, straight from me

some little lessons that life taught me as I'm growin' up through this mystery

Don't wanna say that I know it all

But there's some things that I can share won't take so long

I hope you listen cuz they're generally true

Now pay attention cuz I'm tryin' to get through

Chorus

It ain't about the money and the greed

It's all about the love you need

Keep the friends you've known all along

They're the ones that make you strong

And don't turn your back when someone needs a hand

Cuz it might be you someday and then you'll understand

Well stuff is great but time is precious so be careful bout how, bout how you spend

Ain't nothin' in this life that's harder to replace than one, one true friend

Don't wanna come off like a know-it-all

I'm just tryin' to teach you of some things that I've done wrong

Whatever you're lookin' for in life I hope you find

But if you get lost along the way keep this in mind

Chorus

Bridge

I know it seems like money makes the world go round

But I don't believe it's true

Oh you can't always buy what you want

Oh it's up to you, yeah

Chorus

It aint about the money and the greed

It's all about the love you need

Don't matter if you're a millionaire

If you got no one to share

Oh won't you just believe that I know what I'm talkin' about

It's all meaningless until you find out

It ain't about the money and the greed

wow... well... that's awesome

i love the tempo and melody, and let me tell you, i am envious of your mixing skills and singing

all good

now, there is one thing i did not get with, and that's the first stanza ... it feels like you're saying "ok, listen up, i'm gonna tell you something"

why not just start out by telling it, instead of telling us you're gonna tells u?

but man ... good stuff, good stuff

I disagree regarding the first verse--it's a preachy song, and the intimate introduction makes it a lot easier to bear. I really like the melody, the structure, and the pacing. The bridge is a perfect fit for the song, and I really like the guitar solo and the lead bits that spill over into the post-solo chorus.

The lyric gets fishy in a few places. First off, "I hope you listen because they're generally true" is terrible. What kind of qualifier is that? That's like saying, "this advice has a 60% chance of helping you in any way". That's got to go.

The other big concern is the very weird structure of the pre-chorus. After the two longer lines of the verse, you've got four lines that have some sort of relationship between verses (ABCC, then ABDD) but don't really stand on their own. I don't know what is going on there.

Really, though, you've just got to brush up the lyric. The music could be mixed a little better (sounds very trebley, with some rubber-bandy bass lines), but all in all, it's solid musically.

i see your point about the first stanza, CM ... but i wouldn't take a whole stanza to set it up ... perhaps two lines

Well... I think this is, overall, very nicely performed and recorded.

The song is well-crafted and catchy. The message is a good one, if not exactly revolutionary or bound to provoke much overstimulation of the cortex -- and, I think that's OK. The tone is just a bit -- what's the word they're always throwing at me when I'm on one of my coffee-driven discourses? Ah, yeah -- it's just a little pedantic -- though it saves itself a little, I think with the line, "I'm just tryin' to teach you of some things that I've done wrong." Well... a little, anyway. At least he's admitting he's done something bad. (Heaven knows he might have the moral depth of the slaver-turned-abolitionist who wrote "Amazing Grace" -- but it's not really coming through in the song.)

In fact, if I was rewriting this song I think I might emphasize that angle, really get in there and leverage the humility thing... and that might give it a bit of, you know, gravitas. It might give it a little more heft if the singer grounded his lesson plan in his own trangressions.

Otherwise, I'm afraid the song comes off a bit at risk of letting its own admirable cheer and postive attitude starve it for emotional fuel.

___________

I've now gone back and read Eclepto and CM's comments... I actually liked the kind of mealy-mouthed "generally" qualifier thing, it made me chuckle. That said, I really liked CM's apagogical suggestion: "this advice has a 60% chance of helping you in any way." It doesn't really tickle the ear, though.

CM has a point about the brightness. Although it's pretty well balanced by some low bass that hits my speakers pretty well, I could imagine that that bass might not show up well on all speakers, particularly smaller ones, and that could cause its upper component to be over prominent. The kick also helps balance the brightness of the drums and guitar and, actually, the vocal, too. It's not crazy bright but its worth checking on a few rigs to see how portable the top end is.

I should probably cop to the fact that this is not a genre I'm overly wild about (whatever one would call the genre -- but, you know, that whole John Mayer, Dave Matthews thing -- though I kinda like Jack Johnson at least some of the time).

Very well done! Great production and performance. You have a very nice voice too. I think the mix was fine.

Lyric-wise it is a bit preachy, but it's your song and your message.

The arrangement (especially the drums and guitars) remind me of a MatchBox 20 song... I think "3am".

Sounds great!

Neall

Thanks for the listen's and critiques! I guess when I wrote this song I pictured myself one day giving my son some advice about life before he left home or something like that, a good heart to heart chat if you will. I agree the "generally true" line is the weakest line in the song. I had a bit of writer's block and that's all I could come up with to get across that these tidbits of wisdom I'm relaying aren't absolute and there are exceptions to every rule, but that they're usually right on. (you know, absolute and rule sort of rhyme with "true", maybe a line with one of those words would work, I dunno.

Chicken Monkey, I don't really get why you don't feel the verse and prechorus don't work together, I really think it flows very nicely. But everyone's ears are different. Your "60% chance of helping you" comment did crack me up though. Nice!

As far as the production goes, my acoustic pickup sucks and I don't own a good mic to record it with so that could be much better. The rubbery bass is due to the fact that I don't own a bass, all the bass in my rough drafts is courtesy of my guitar run through my digitech rp250 (which is a GREAT modeler, imo) I use an octaver patch where they cancel out the high part and keep the low. When I re-record these songs for real, I'll be borrowing my old bass players really nice bass, which should help immensely. Sometimes I also think my mixes are too trebley, other times I don't. Not sure what I'm doing to cause that. Could be the cymbals a bit, I generally dislike cymbals and am not good at mixing or eq-ing them.

Blue2blue, I get what you are saying, I also wondered if I shouldn't put in some actual examples of crap I've done and lessons learned but knowing myself, I figured the song would end up being 5-6 minutes long if I tried to do that. I'm my own worst editor ya know. You're the 2nd person to compare my songs to Dave Mathews which confounds me. I am NOT a fan of his and don't care for ANY of his songs I've heard. Now, my old drummer who did these tracks idolizes Dave's drummer so maybe that is coming through in his playing. I also don't really see the John Mayer thing either. Most of my songs are pretty simple on the guitar, and while I'm not a huge fan of his, I can admit that he is a phenom on the guitar, and most of his songs have weird bridges whereas mine are pretty straightforward. PLEASE don't tell me I sing like him!!! The guy sounds like he's singing while taking a crap with a mouthful of marbles.

Da Spider, I can see the 3am similarities. I think they are one of the bands I sound a bit alike, although I hate how Rob Thomas seems to oversing EVERY SINGLE WORD in EVERY SONG.

Ecleptofunk, thanks for the kind words. I try to do the best I can with my mostly low end equipment.

sam

Yeah, he's the William Shatner of pop music.

Neall

The pre-chorus bugged me because the first two lines of it don't rhyme, and if there's anywhere that you need a solid rhyme scheme, it's the prechorus. On a song like this, the verse is your lead-up, the chorus is your long jump, and the pre-chorus is some {censored}ed-up footwork--a stumble.

I've done the guitar-through-octave for a bass, and it helps if you keep those strings stone-still. It's a lot easier to bend a guitar string than a bass string, and it's a lot easier to hear a bend in the lower range, so those two things together make every wiggle really stand out. No vibrato, etc., and it will sound a lot better.

One thing that slightly bothers me is on the chorus. There's a change in harmony at the second part of the chorus. However, the lead guitar part doesn't change. It needs to change more to suit the harmony. It feels out of place to me IMO.

Wow.. this is another good song. I understand the Matchbox 20 comparisons. I like the vocals and the music had a good level of emotion in it. I think it was structured well and seemed to flow ok. I agree some with the comments about the lyrics. I know it's hard, but I like the recommendation about making it a little more apologetic, maybe some humility. But good song I thought.

Actually Floophead, the lead guitar part in the second part of the chorus DOES change, maybe I don't have it mixed strong enough to bring it out well, but I think if you gave it another listen you'd hear that it actually matches the change in the main rhythm guitar pretty well, methinks. Thanks for listening.

sam

Ok, listening on my monitors at home (the sound is 10000000x cleaner), I think I've pinpointed it. It's that last lick in the chorus. It doesn't quite line up. The first 2 are fine, the third handles the harmonic change fine. The 4th needs to be completely different. The problem is more of a problem of conflict with the vocal actually I think. Listening to that last section at the end it doesn't sound so harsh. It's not a huge issue, but it does rather bug me and the entire song is so well done there's not anything else to comment on =D