More Love Yourself

bob,

what people don't seem to realize is that these folks that make it before they're thirty and even more so before twenty years old, have to deal with all the crap that we dealt with trying to become adults while they also deal with the psychophants, the fame, the wealth, and the potentially complete lack of veracity on the part of anyone around you.

I firmly believe if i had made it in my twenties, i would probably be dead long ago.

the fact that many of these folks survive and go on to make the best art they know how is heroic.

think about how well we'd have fared if we had had a klieg light on us during our teenage years.

i said the same thing about britney when she was going crazy. she had to make all of her mistakes in front of millions of people. we got to do it in the shadows.
god bless anyone who makes it and more blessings to them if they survive.

james lee stanley

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Very interesting and I have to admit the guy can make a pretty damn good contemp pop song.

The Adam Watts email at the end is kind of telling. He reminds me of my 95 year old grandmother confessing that the world was just going too fast now, it was exhausting trying to keep up. She'd gone from horses, to cars, to jets to a man on the moon and computers and she was just plain tired. As baby boomers we thought we'd seen everything and there was no way the future could leave us behind, but it rapidly is.

The limitless vitality of youth is what's required and it takes a lot of energy because change comes at warp speed now and you have to be built for it. We aren't. We are basically autistic. Our brains can't filter so much input and so we cling to that which is safe, the past. We understood it and it was all we needed.

John Brodey

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Get a grip.

- Bruce Gow

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Yes!! Thanks Bob for putting my comment in the letter. Really, I love it!!

But really that song sucked ass Bob, and I'm surprised you found love in it.. Different strokes for different folks..

Keep em coming!

Evan Bautista

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Garbage, clueless post below. It is a great song….and the lyrics are spelled correctly. (Well - Ed Sheeran. Brilliant. English. Innit?!)

Hugo Burnham

"Beiber.. Best shit really.. This is a fucking joke Bob. Your working for the man..

All these songs are garbage..

Evan Bautista"

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I see some disagreement, and what I want to kindly stress to you is that this song contains ZERO songwriting craft. It's just a few guitar chords in a loop with talking on top if it. No melody, and it doesn't even try to rhyme. No hooks. Nothing but words, and words that aren't even lyrics.

I understand, Bob, that you are a passionate lover of music, and that you glom on to songs that say things you relate to. We all do. But a lot of us need to hear that the artist cares enough about his art to actually practice it, to put some work into it. And believe me, this song was words scribbled on paper and then spit out over an utterly unengaging loop. No one sat down and WROTE this song, see? It was simply spewed forth as self-expression. Maybe he hit on some meaningful thoughts, but he didn't write a song. I mean, really, fucking "Wooly Bully" has more melody than "Love Yourself". NO CRAFT.

Some of these folks need to stop pretending they're songwriters and just write blogs. Merely having something to say does not make you a songwriter! In fact, 90% of Lennon-McCartney songs had nothing to say! But they were wonderfully crafted, by guys who LOVED the art of songwriting, by guys who strived to be better and better at it, by guys who weren't satisfied to just vomit their feelings over a couple chords. No one gave a shit about George and Ira Gershwin's fucking FEELINGS.

OK, I'm rambling on here, but I wanted to explain to you why a lot of us listened to that track and came away totally nonplussed.

Best,
Rob Meurer

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First I agree, Love Yourself is just an amazing song…. period. Thanks for the mention of Suga Suga with this story too. Funny truth of the Bash record was that I managed him, the featured singer, Frankie J and the producer, Happy Perez at this time. Frankie and Bash did two records and they wanted the other one to be the single. I thought Suga Suga was so special, I tried to get Frankie's label (Columbia at the time) to write Bash a check so it could be Frankie's single. They didn't get it. I then told Bash I would go get him a deal but needed him to go on the road with Frankie to help promote the single. I believe it was at least 7 labels that turned us down before we took a singles deal with Avery Lipman. The song went on to be a global hit. More proof as you mentioned with the Bieber song that it truly is and always will be ALL ABOUT THE SONG.

Great songs live forever.

Charles Chavez


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