Music Analysis: What Makes A Successful Rock Song?

What Makes a Successful Rock Song?

A song’s success can be defined concretely in various ways; record sales, nominations for awards and awards won, youtube hits etc. However, the success of a piece of art cannot be defined solely through data - a rock song has been successful if an individual is moved by it. For the purposes of this investigation I will be using the more concrete definitions of success, but also considering the less obvious aspects of success.

Analysis - Castles Made of Sand by Jimi Hendrix vs. Last Nite by the Strokes

Both “Castles Made of Sand” and “Last Nite” were hugely successful songs - “Castles Made of Sand” was on the album “Axis: Bold as Love” released in 1967 which spent sixteen weeks in the charts, peaking

While “Last Nite” is written in a conversational style - for example, the casual register, the use of elision (e.g. “gonna” “‘round” and “walkin’”), contractions (e.g. “ain’t” and “won’t”) and fillers (e.g. “well”, “oh”, “see” and “so”), “Castles Made of Sand” is written like a poem, using literary features such as metaphor (“his tears fall and burn the garden” and “whose heart was a frown”) and onomatopoeia (“slams”, “slips” and “melts”). “Last Nite” is written in the first person, repeating the pronoun “I” in almost every line in the verses. This point of view makes the listener feel closer to the emotions, making the song easier to relate to whereas “Castles Made of Sand” is in the third person which distances the listener from the emotions in the song but allows it to tell multiple

Repetition of words and phrases makes lyrics more memorable and catchy - in “Last Nite” the chorus repeats the phrase “they don’t understand” four times. Similarly, in “Castles Made of Sand”, in the second verse the word “Indian” is repeated three times and the refrain “And so castles made of sand, melts into the sea eventually” is repeated after every verse. Furthermore, both “Last Nite” and “Castles Made of Sand” make slight changes to their chorus/refrain - in “Last Nite”, the beginning of the final line of the chorus changes each time it is sung; “On top of this, I ain't ever gonna understand...” becomes “And me, I ain't ever gonna understand...”. In “Castles Made of Stand”, the adjective used in the refrain changes each time; castles made of sand “fall”, “melts” and finally “slips” into the sea. These slight alterations are unexpected to the listener’s ear and so catch their attention, keeping them engaged and