Often times when writing these flails of foam I sort of picture myself all wise and shit. It's entirely possible I'm more like Wile E. Coyote with that crafty look on his face as he invents some bird feeder dynamite boulder launcher thingy made out of ACME parts. Poor old Wile E. Thinks he's a genius, but he's just another delusional buffoon. The key to artistic endeavor or Roadrunner dinner is don't be afraid to appear stupid. Often when inspiration hits the self doubt goes and hides in the bushes. Meanwhile you pace the rooms of your brain cackling and rubbing your hands together firmly convinced that stupid Roadrunner is toast this time for sure. Or people will like your song, or whatever. This is the fun part. Then the inspiration wears off but there's still much work to be done on the tune. Your old pal self doubt creeps back in. It's only concern is that you don't look stupid and people like you. Self doubt will attempt to drive the bus. Self doubt uses top 40 as it's GPS. The good news is top 40 is crap, so your self doubt can be easily ignored. I have proof. Here's a cool timeline flappyjobber thingy on the net that plays a bit of every Billboard number 1 song from 1958 to 2016: Go there and explore a bit. What we can conclude from all these songs is top 40 is crap, and has been consistently crap since it's inception. The people who drive the billboard charts are soulless planetary filler put here to irritate the shit out of us with their boring crappy tunes and bad driving. Bleating and flatulating sheep zombies in search of brains being lead to the musical trough by music exec's disguised as musicians prancing along with pan flutes. It's the only possible explanation for all those decades of musical drivel. These are Donald Trump's peeps. I listened to the timeline for a while looking for trends or any sort of neato stuff that might give me the edge that propels me to success. Nope, just crap. I sorta hoped for hints about what constitutes a hit song, but no. Not ever. All crap. Maybe how music has evolved? No it hasn't. It's always been crap, utter horrid crap. The history of top 40 pop music is not the place to look for anything, except maybe crap. All I got is that top 40 has always sucked serious ass. I notice the suckage has a bit more variation in the early years (Top 40 instrumentals? Wtf!) and I could see how as digital developed and gave more control to the industry the formula got stamped a little harder, but really, it's all crap. From beginning to end. Seriously bad ear flapping crapistry. Next time somebody says music was better in the 70's tell em I said no, they're completely wrong. It was utter crap back then too, just like every other decade. Back in the day Led Zep wasn't top 40 for the most part. It was only when Zep wrote crap tunes like D'yer Maker that they made it to the charts. I don't think anything from Dark Side Of The Moon made it anywhere near the top 40. Mind you, I did hear Frankenstein by Edgar Winter for a split sec there on the timeline. Possibly the last #1 instrumental? It was quickly replaced by Tie a Yellow Ribbon that was on the charts for months. So maybe not entirely all crap, just vastly mostly crap. I suppose some early Beatles were on there somewhere, but anything good that touches the top 40 is quickly driven off by more industry crap being flung at the charts like globs of sugary noise. Early Beatles sucked too, but they added a bunch of new chord patterns and got very good towards the end, so they're forgiven. But Wait! Come to think of it I did get something quite valuable from the popping of these saccharin bloated brain zits whilst perusing the industry offal disguised as music. This is great news for the writers and players of music. It all means the Billboard top 40 charts have absolutely zero value for anything at all ever. It also means if you want to get rich playing music, you should above all never ever EVER write anything good. For many years I've pondered the qualities that make a song popular. I assumed the reason I didn't like the vast majority of top 40 was because I was missing something. Some indefinable quality that everybody gets but me. If my planetary filler sheep zombie theory is correct, it may be them, not me, that has the problem. As long as their tiny boners have some sort of sound track to assist in their search of the Great Wobbly Wazooms they don't care what they listen to as long as everyone else is also listening to it. As, I suppose, was any one of us at certain malleable times such as puberty. I succumbed to the evils of top 40 for a bit when I was in grade 7. Peer pressure combined with my budding weeny forced me to listen to LG73 AM a lot. I still carry the scars. Dancing In The moonlight Made it to #13 in 1973. I used to put my little transistor radio under my pillow and fall asleep while the Fender Rhodes piano flaked off crystalline slivers of sound sugar into my brain. I'd wrap myself in the warm crumbled flakes and drift off. I still get moist and sticky when I hear that tune. Sadly, to this day whenever I hear Sky Rockets in Flight I get a little boner of wistful nostalgia. Sky Rockets is just an awful song that made it to #1 in 1976. Unfortunately it happened to be playing at the same moment I touched my first booby, so I'm stuck with it. Then in my later teens with the help of my equally unlaid peers we refined our quest for tail to, "In search of the Great Wobbley". Always spoken in a scottish accent. Then we'd point at boobs and say stuff like, "Forsooth Friar! Thar be the Greaat Wobbleh now!" and "Quickly lads! To the harpoonery!". We were hilarious and never got laid ever. Back in the good old days when ripping off musicians was more profitable, good music at least managed to gain an audience and stay afloat long enough to achieve it's destiny. Nowadays the good music is still out there, just buried much deeper. Every era has it's great and timeless music, and it very rarely touches the Billboard top 40. Of course the other option is to write exactly the crap that makes the Billboard top 40. Your music may be utterly foul ear vomit, but you might get rich and famous. Then you can hire an entourage to insulate you from the truth of your worthless contribution to the world. Jeez I gotta cheer up. All I'm really saying is when writing music or blogs or putting earthquake pills in birdseed, dance like nobody's looking. Do it for yourself and stay true to your inspiration, not some idealized theory of what people want to hear. Money and fame is nowhere near as important as you think it is. Ask any rich famous person.