There’a an Amazon-affliated link to this book at the bottom of the page.

Ralph Murphy was a very successful songwriter who wrote lots of hits and taught lots of classes and gave lots of lectures.  If you don’t want to spend $30 on his book or $15 for the eBook version, here’s a video that pretty much covers the topics in the book.  Caution – the second hour of that video is mostly silent because almost all the songs have been removed, so watch just the first hour and you’ll get the idea.

Ralph’s whole deal is how to write popular songs.  The focus is on following the tried and true and sticking to the game plan of all the great songs that came before.  There’s two ways of looking at that: one is to say that modern popular music is crap and if you want to write crap, you suck.  The other is what I like to call the burger argument.

The Burger Argument

This isn’t in the book – I made it up, but it’s based on a popular phrase which is “The most popular burger in the world is McDonalds.”  The obvious meaning is that good doesn’t mean popular and popular doesn’t mean good.  But here’s my argument…

If you are really serious about making a good hamburger, you likely won’t copy McDonalds.  But you probably will find a recipe that you really like, and once you get good at it, you can start playing around with the variables.

The Good

Ralph’s book covers the recipes for making some really good burgers.  They say you have to learn the rules before you break them – they’re talking about this book.  This book is the rules.  More specifically, this book covers why hits are popular, which has to do with psychology.

Maybe you write metal and you want to write the anti-hit.  Metallica got huge because of the Black album.  Why?  Because the producer understood the rules.  Some would argue their earlier albums were better.  Better is subjective.  Better in Ralph’s world was sales.  Why?  Because he made a living at songwriting.  If you want to write successful songs, ignoring the data and what works is stupid.

The Bad

The 21 year old version of me would have burned this book.  Too many people follow the formula and go through all the motions and check the boxes and people who wear ties sign off and put it on the radio, and most of it is well-constructed calculated crap.  This book is about how to do the calculations.  Some would rather paint houses than write calculated songs by the numbers.  Hell, at that point, you’re one step away from writing jingles for TV commercials.  That’s great if that’s what you want to do.  I’d rather do anything else.

The Ugly

But the 56 year old version of me understands that it’s ignorant to learn what all the great songwriters knew.  The Beatles were very calculating when they made art… so is Pixar.  The ugly truth here is that you do run the risk of losing whatever is unique to you if you paint by numbers.  By Ralph’s definitions, none of the bands I love are writing great songs.  Ralph’s book is about writing hit or popular songs, not writing great songs.  You can have a song that is both, though…

Conclusion

I think anyone serious about wanting to write whatever they define as a great song would do well to read this book.  It’s up to you to decide how much of his advice to take, but understanding all of the tricks and techniques will enable you to make more informed decisions.

Amazon-affiliated link below.  If you buy using this link, Amazon will send me a very small amount of money, which helps pay for web hosting.

Murphy’s Laws of Songwriting – The Book