Crossover Musicians: Success is an Uphill Battle

Most musicians start with one music genre and stay with that genre throughout their careers. The primary reason is that each genre has its own unique approach to songwriting. The difference primarily comes down to the way lyrics are written. There is generally a formula that must be adhered to for each type of music.

Country music (and country rock) tends to be very literal, spelling out the entire story. A good example of this type of songwriting would be Jason Aldean’s “She’s Country”.

Pop music tends to be written with lyrics that are vague, make no sense, and/or are catchy and repetitive. Justin Timberlake’s “Suit & Tie” is an example of the inanity of the lyrics of some current popular music.

There are also a few musicians and bands who have basically been able to define the rules for their genre like the band Rush for progressive rock. The songs of Rush tend to be longer than other genres with more cerebral lyrics, that require the listener to think about the lyrics to understand the meaning behind the song. This is encapsulated in their song, “The Trees”.

We named our band Eclectic Verve because we knew from the beginning that although our first album had a distinctly 80’s influence to it, we would delve into other genres as Kent experimented with his songwriting.
As Kent’s songwriting has progressed over the last 2 years, he has explored a number of different directions, including country, folk, and alternative rock, among others. The beauty of our story is that we’re able to experiment.

Most musicians and bands who achieve some level of success lose the ability to experiment, because their fans expect and demand the same formulaic approach album after album. There have been some notable exceptions such as Taylor Swift’s migration from country to pop. However, there have also been some negative hits to some musician’s careers when they attempted to step outside of the proverbial songwriting die that had been cast by their fans (e.g., U2’s “Rattle and Hum” album released in 1988).

We’re thankful we are perfectly situated to continue to explore and discover, and we’re thankful for our fans that support our music and allow us the latitude to continue to create our own unique path.