In and Out: A Death of The Hit or "Closing Time" in a Modern Historical Context

We all come here for the same thing. We are all here in some form of the same pursuit of pop music. You can dress it up any way you like but the facts remain: Whether you like The Flaming Lips, The French Kicks or (and this should be obvious) The (fucking) Fray, you're all fans of pop music. Even the most hard-core, un-signed "indie" bands use a form, albeit at times a confused form, of pop song-writing. It is our one unifying characteristic. These are all pop bands writing, or trying to write, pop songs and we are pop fans listening or trying to listen.

So why are they so bad at it? Why are so many indie bands so bad at writing little pop songs? Where are the hits? And just what are they hiding?

Last week I was listening to my iPod Shuffle and in the midst of the 265 random songs, a shotgun blast-sample of my larger music collection, came through Semisonic's 1998 smash-hit "Closing Time." As far as I can tell there are two kinds of people in the world: people that like "Closing Time" and respect it's infectious 4-note piano riff, and then there are people who hate "Closing Time" and generally don't like balloons and puppies and sit in their basements listening to Pavement, bitching about that one time their college girlfriend asked to listen to Coldplay while they "did it." Fair enough? Good.

"Closing Time" is close or pretty close to being a perfect pop-song. You've got a catchy opening-riff, meaningless yet tautological lyrics ("every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"), a memorable hook in the verse ("Closing time ...") and an anthemic chorus ("I know who I want to take me home"). It's an almost perfect storm of the last 50 years of pop song-writing and in the summer of 1998, we were all swamped in the middle of it. Semisonic's album was certified as Platinum and the band went on to never recapture their one most brilliant moment.

The problem is not that all bands should be able to write a song like "Closing Time" for it surely takes a lot of talent and little bit of luck. The problem is that talented bands seem to be intentionally avoiding trying to write a song like "Closing Time." What is the fear of the hit single? Even though we all can agree most bands are using pop song-writing techniques, there appears to be a desire to not write a catchy, radio-ready single. Does this preserve underground credibility? Sure. But ask Dan Wilson of Semisonic. Would he rather be a cool "underground" band from Minnesota that never made it? Or would he rather pick up his Feeling Strangely Fine royalty check every month and pay his mortgage and then blow a couple thousand dollars at Crate and Barrel? Exactly.

So why the fear of the hit single? Would it really kill your credibility? How much is that credibility worth in the first place, especially if it doesn't translate into album sales and band revenue. Does being credible necessarily mean being poor and unknown? Didn't you start your band in the first place to be heard? Didn't you want to play music for The People, not just for a few people?

All this means we have to ask some hard questions. Are these bands, talented as they may be, afraid of writing the hit single or completely unable to? Like a chicken shit sky-diver, some indie bands claim they don't want to write "radio music" when in reality they might just be scared to get out of the plane. What if the chute doesn't work? What if they can't fly with the bands who get their (so-called shitty) music on the radio? What if they actually can't write the hits they call "formulaic" and "three-chord monstrosities?" Are they too sophisticated to be so simple? Are they too elitist to be so popular?

We might never know. But when you listen to a song like "Closing Time" you wonder, where has the song-writing gone? And what the hell are you so afraid of?