Tony Scott: 0:13

Welcome to The Jay Franze Show, a behind-the-curtain look at the entertainment industry, with insights you can't pay for and stories you've never heard. Now here's your host, Jay Franze.

Jay Franze: 0:42

Well, hello, hello, hello and welcome to the show. I am Jay Francie and this is your Backstage Pass to the Music Industry this week. Well, this week it's going to be a little different. I've asked my good friend and fellow engineer, Jenny Wick, to join us in talking with singer-songwriter-recording artist Mike Errico. We'll talk to him about the importance of storytelling, song structure and just the overall value of humor within a song. Now, Mike, he's been on the show before episode 9, if if you're keeping track and I can't wait to talk with him tonight. So if you would like to join him, comment or fire off any questions. Please head over to jayfranze. com now. Let's get started, mike. Sir, how are you, hi? How you doing? Very, very good sir. We are so happy to have you here.

Mike Errico: 1:35

Very happy to be back.

Jay Franze: 1:36

People seem to seem to like you for some reason, so we figured it's not often that I get re-invited.

Mike Errico: 1:45

I'm usually a one and done kind of guy. So it's nice, it's nice to be here for a second time.

Jay Franze: 1:49

Well, it is good to have you, my friend. Thank you.

Jenny Wick: 1:51

It was a second time. Well, it is good to have you, my friend.

Mike Errico: 1:53

Thank you.

Jay Franze: 1:54

It was a good show. Glad to have you back, thank you. Well, we are going to jump into songwriting tonight. You've written a book. You teach at some fine institutions, so we'd like to get some of your opinions. So, if you don't mind, let's just go ahead and start off with storytelling. How important is storytelling to the craft of writing songs?

Mike Errico: 2:11

I think it really depends on the type of song you want to be writing. I personally think that that's a great way to get a song over, to have a narrative, because it gives an arc. And a good story needs an ending and you need to hang around for the ending. Getting people to hang around is kind of an issue. It's a little difficult. So having a good story is a great way to do it. But there are other ways to write. I mean, how important is it? It's very important if that's the thing you want to do.

Mike Errico: 2:41

There are lots of other ways of going about songwriting. Of course, A lot of ways are emergent in a way. That is like when you write songs and you have a melody and you just start mumbling words and it begins to emerge and vowels begin to arrive and then words come from the vowels and, like, at the end of the day, you might not really get a story per se, but you might get a series of images that are provocative enough to create an arc in someone's brain. So lots of people do it that way. I guess you could call that storytelling, but it's like different type. Who knows what the story is? It's a much more abstract sort of journey.

Jay Franze: 3:18

Well, that's a good point. Do you start off with music before lyrics?

Mike Errico: 3:26

then, yes, I'm just finishing an EP and I definitely tried to do that. Before I was very lyric-based and I was like you know what, I'm going to give this other thing a shot. It was a lot of fun to just start with melody and then just have things emerge. What happened was the stuff that I was reading the books I was reading began began to sort of like bubble out into these lyrics and into a series of images that were really sort of like unexpected. So it's a very unexpected record, or EP, whatever you want to call it. So it's like you know, switching it up. So I switched it up this time and I got some really cool kind of surreal stuff.

Mike Errico: 4:13

I'm always kind of surprised by it now as I listen back to it. We're not quite finished yet, but I'm always like where the hell did that come from? And now I sort of know it was the books I was reading. Murakami, so his stuff is very sort of like people can walk through walls and there's a lot of that kind of stuff. Ocean Vuong, who's a poet turned novelist, scanning my books here, Dennis Johnson, amazing Dennis Johnson.

Mike Errico: 4:43

There's a book called Train Dreams Crazy. I just read constantly. So when you read constantly and then you start doing like this, like Rorschach test of your own brain, like stuff comes out, it's really kind of weird.

Jay Franze: 4:56

I've written several songs in the past and I always start with the lyrics first. I've never started with the music first. Yeah, I mean, that's my thing. I'm not as good of a musician to start musically first.

Mike Errico: 5:09

But yeah.

Jay Franze: 5:10

I always enjoy doing the lyrics, and to me that's another thing is it's always based on inspiration. So I'm always inspired by something to write about something. So I can see how you can get inspired to write lyrically first, but how do you get inspired to write musically first?

Mike Errico: 5:27

You know, it was really weird. One thing I tried which was interesting was I tried different types of guitars. I have a ton of. I have lots of different types of guitars. So like the one that you can see in the back is like is a real old sort of gretch, but then, like I have like a baritone or a ukulele I have ukulele on this, uh, on this album and like just having those different, different tunings. I like different tunings as well. So I tried to start with melodies and like have the chords follow the melodies in some way and then the lyrics would come after that. Totally opposite of what I used to do, I was like hate, this girlfriend going to bury her. I'm to use the details from the story and that's it.

Jay Franze: 6:16

Well, those are the songs I love. By the way, just throwing that out there.

Mike Errico: 6:19

Those are fun, I mean, they're really fun, right, but they're very much a thing and I was like you know what, let's try a different thing, I don't know, almost as a challenge, I guess. Here's another thing I tried to do I tried to write in different registers of my voice. So I tried to do like low stuff in my voice and like my voice isn't like super low. The lower I went it's like sort of the gravelier I got. But then the story got weird. You know, because you can, you can feel that I'm like I don't know and almost like some of it, like almost has like a hungover sound or like a ghost-like kind of sound, and it's just a. It's just a different, it's a different storyteller, right, telling a different type of story. So I tried it. It was hellacious in the studio because I couldn't hit my own notes. They were like, they were low, you know.

Jay Franze: 7:15

So I was really I was digging so you literally wrote out of your range a little bit.

Mike Errico: 7:22

Well, not quite out of my range, but like we would have to, like some of the stuff we had to record in the morning where, like, my voice was lower, or on off days from teaching, cause once I teach, like you know, my, my voice just gets like weak and horrible, it just gets tired. You know what I mean. Like three hours I taught today, three hours of lecturing straight, you know, and it's like you know this is not a recording day today for for music.

Jay Franze: 7:51

So when you're creating new melodies, like you're saying, is there some sort of technique you have or do you just come up with a progression or something that inspires you?

Mike Errico: 8:02

I tell my students to make a playlist of songs that they love and they can't live without, because I think inside those playlists are clues to what's going to eventually emerge from you, and that can be lyric, it can be a songwriting approach, it can be song form, but it can be scales, like literally could be scales. And one of the songs I co-wrote with Ben Mink who is best known, I guess, for working a lot with Katie Lang did the Ingenue album, which went crazy or whatever. But he told me to search my own roots, right, like don't be digging into Stevie Wonder, because you like him, you know what I mean. Like that's not your roots, what are your roots? And I was telling him that Southern Italian.

Mike Errico: 8:58

And then I looked into Southern Italy and it turns out that Southern Italy, and Sicily in particular, was owned by Spain for a long time. So like flamenco stuff, those types of minor scales, that kind of stuff, that's what came out. So that's where I would start and then I would move forward sort of from there. So that's sort of the journey. Was that too long? That was probably too long.

Jay Franze: 9:24

That's where my family's from too, by the way, Both southern Italy as well as Sicily.

Mike Errico: 9:29

Right Me too. That must be the connection. That's why we're cousins. Precisely Right Me too. That must be the connection. That's why we're cousins.

Mike Errico: 9:33

No that makes sense I guess that might be why we very well might be. But yeah, there's like sort of an ethnomusicological sort of direction that I've been trying to take, because it feels sort of subconsciously honest and you know, everyone's's got an incredibly rich history. So digging into that is something I tell my students to do, especially in the summer, my summer classes. I have a lot of international students, so I had a Turkish student, a Russian student, chinese student, southeast Asian student. I'm like dig into your stuff and if part of it is a verse or a chorus in your either native language or second language, like absolutely do it. Incorporate that kind of stuff into your, into your songs and into your bag well, some of the biggest hits commercially right now have been like that oh, I have a great former student.

Mike Errico: 10:32

His name is Mishal Tamer, t-a-m-e-r. He is below, he's just blowing up and he's like Saudi and a lot of his stuff is God it's. It goes in and out but like you get a lot of the, you get a lot of the, you get a lot of uh, the eastern sounds. You know, I have another former student. Her name is ria raj and she just said it very, very honestly. She's like I want to be like beyonce or ariana grande, but I want to use eastern scales and like that's what she does and just that itself creates a whole personality.

Jay Franze: 11:13

Does that translate to commercial music?

Mike Errico: 11:17

Absolutely, absolutely, and they do like the videos and the choreography and the dresses and all the stuff that you would recognize in a quote unquote Western sort of American pop singer. But you know it, just it comes out like an accent which comes out differentiated. You know it comes out something individual, you know which is cool. It's really cool.

Jay Franze: 11:45

Sounds awesome.

Jenny Wick: 11:47

Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna have to look them up after we get done tonight.

Mike Errico: 11:51

Oh, I make you a list. Yeah, I would certainly make you a list. I definitely keep in touch with as many of my former students as I can, because what they're doing is just so cool yeah.

Jay Franze: 12:01

Well, if you send me links, I'll put all that in the show notes, for sure, oh sure, absolutely, that's easy.

Mike Errico: 12:06

Yeah, I keep running playlists of all different types of music. I'm running playlists of all different types of music. I do it by like release date, but I also do it by just like genre or playlist. Or there's one called like songs for roller skating and it has that kind of stuff and that's like sort of like it's like kind of updated disco, like seventies disco, but it's, you know, it's updated. So like people like blue de tiger, who's kind of blowing up now, and others like her are kind of doing that because it's fun, disco is still fun, dancing is still something people do you know what I mean.

Jay Franze: 12:45

I used to work in a roller rink when I was a kid. That memory's been so far away from my head, amazing, amazing. But I remember it now. Yeah, you know.

Mike Errico: 12:53

I think of it like in Central Park in the summers they still have it, there's a little clearing and they'll put a DJ booth in the center of this sort of clearing a paved clearing and people will roll around it with the big fat wheels. It's like no rollerblades here around it with the big fat wheels. It's like no rollerblades here. It's like the old like with the you know old school rainbow laces and and and all that and the short shorts and the whole thing. It's really kind of cool bringing it back.

Jenny Wick: 13:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good. So are there different song structures and what are their impacts?

Mike Errico: 13:28

there are a few main song forms. The one that is so predominant, really, it's called the verse-chorus form, and the example I give, and I still give, is, since You've Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson, which is the song that everybody knows it will be the one that is going to be shot out into space to represent humanity and the aliens will come back, you know, humming along.

Mike Errico: 13:59

But that song, written by Dr Luke and Max Martin, is a prototypical, you know, verse, chorus kind of form, and they did so many and Max Martin in particular has written so many, so that's really the most the predominant one. You know there's like Wrecking Ball by, like by Miley Cyrus to Roar all the Katy Perry stuff, all that kind of like big pop stuff All the way up through it. Max didn't write this, I don't believe, but Harry Styles. They all drive towards a chorus between 35 and 40 seconds and they're like little rules and stuff like that that are kind of interesting, that are based off of something that is referred to as melodic math, which is like really the mirroring of melodies and repeating them so that they stick in your mind. Since You've Been Gone is a great again. It's just a great example.

Jenny Wick: 15:03

Super catchy.

Mike Errico: 15:04

Super, I mean unbelievably catchy, right, Because it just grabs. It just grabs the human brain and it's never been different. If you think about it 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, all those places, the technology back then to the technology now, the difference is unbelievable. You would not be able to conceive of what the studio is now if you were back in the 40s or whatever. But song forms are really stubborn and they've really stayed. It's really because, like, the human brain really likes certain things. You know, it likes the puzzle, nature, the ability to solve problems and solve sort of rhythmic puzzles, especially when they repeat. But they don't like it to be boring. So there's variation.

Mike Errico: 16:00

That has to happen yeah we see that in like, in, like algorithms like facebook and and such, where they will give you repeated information. But it will not be a hundred percent. It will be like you'll get what you want. You'll get what you want. Then you'll get something new and something different. And it drives us a little nuts because, like, the pattern breaks and that's what creates the addiction and the scrolling and all that. So, like that, that sort of insidious little law, is something that can be used, I think, to positive effect in.

Jay Franze: 16:32

In songwriting I seem to throw that in there in production. So I do that when I'm mixing songs. I try to take a typical verse chorus song that would have repeated melodies or repeated instrumentation and I change it up. I try to take a typical verse chorus song that would have repeated melodies or repeated instrumentation and I change it up and try to make the different instruments come out, step out in front or come out maybe with a little bit of a different tone to it.

Mike Errico: 16:53

Right.

Jay Franze: 16:53

So I think that helps as well.

Mike Errico: 16:55

Variations on themes are really interesting. I tell my students it's like it really depends on, like where you want to fall on the line of solvability. So it's like you have Kelly Clarkson's on one side. Since you've been gone very solvable by the third chorus you can sing the chorus, you can join, you can join the band, you can probably sit in, you know, and then like all the way to the other. There's very you know these long 45 minute DJ sets or very artful stuff where you just get lost and you're you don't know where you're going, the song is in control and you, because you can't anticipate it, you can't. There aren't enough puzzles to solve, there aren't enough patterns to recognize, and that's where you get like the Radioheads of the world and I don't know if you've. Get like the Radioheads of the world and I don't know if you've.

Mike Errico: 17:44

I feel like Radiohead keeps getting better and I feel like their last album, called Moonshape Pool, is just so gorgeous and I never know where the song is going. I've heard it a million times. I can't even tell you where the one is Like. I can't even tell you what the time signature is. And that's the great part about it, because you're freed and you're on just a completely different ride. So that's why I sort of tell my students I'm like, do you want to be solvable, do you want to have that 500 foot home run or do you want to have like the 30 fans who will literally kill for you? Like you know, those are the different rides that you can take. I think all within that one form right, that one sort of verse, chorus form it's really cool.

Jay Franze: 18:29

Do you have a preference for yourself?

Mike Errico: 18:34

yes, what I did with this new one that's coming out was like I want to, I wanted to break some of those rules if we could go a different way. So I have a couple of like really big chorus type things, but the song then goes off into a, into something in you know, I. I think more um, dreamy and maybe noir, but maybe like surreal and stuff like that. So I have one song that's like absolutely like pop song, bing, bing, bing, bing. But the outro goes and I'm like, oh, my god, I'm breaking. This is insane, dude, you crazy, you know. And I'm like, no, I'm just gonna let it run because I'm gonna let people have that time and just see what the story is with that. Before this, when I got on labels and doing all that kind of stuff, it was really like, and you have to make that form not feel like a form right. So once you can do that kind of thing and you know it happens.

Jay Franze: 19:54

It happens not every time, but it does happen when I'm writing songs, everything is mathematical to me, so it's verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. So even though I can play, I don't think in that way. To me everything's lyrics and melody different forms.

Mike Errico: 20:24

There are others like the AABA form is another one that I sort of mess with sometimes. The obvious one for that is, you know, somewhere Over the Rainbow where you have these two section forms and I just played a couple of them in class today. One is Say Something by Great Big World and another is the Less I Know the Better by Tame Impala Just two sections, the Less I Know the Better by Tame Impala Just two sections, and they run against each other and you never really feel like a chorus has arrived, but you also kind of feel like it's all kind of chorus. You know it's a completely different type of ride. I tell my students to find a song you love. When you find a song you love, chart it. That chart can be a model. So I don't know what you listen to, but chart a song and see what's going on. That can be really instructive, I think.

Jenny Wick: 21:12

Yeah, I was wondering which one you would suggest doing us to start with first. But yeah, if you have them, pick one of their favorite songs and chart it and see where it falls.

Mike Errico: 21:21

That's exactly what I tell them to do, because I don't know. I don't know the genre that they're into. I don't know. You know, even if I do know the genre, I might not know the artist. They don't know the artists that each other are talking about either, because there are so many and it's such a varied sort of field at this moment. But we know what the human brain likes, regardless of genre, and I looked at the billboard charts today. It's fast car, the tracy chapman song, right, I've covered by the crumbs. And then there's another dude, what morgan wallen has, um, a song about last night, right. And I think third is vampire by by Olivia Rodrigo. So chart them. If you chart them, you see it, you see the forms, they are very recognizable and they're alike even though they're going different places. As it Was by Harry Styles was up there recently. We charted that. It opens with a half instrumental chorus. Other than that, it's the whole thing Awesome.

Jenny Wick: 22:26

Yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting stuff you don't always think about when you're listening to songs and that there's themes behind it.

Mike Errico: 22:35

There are themes and there's a critical kind of listening where you wait, you know, sometimes I'll listen and it's not very. Maybe it's not very musical, but it's like, oh, how are they going to solve that? How are they going to pay that chorus off, or what is the thinking behind this? And Taylor Swift is a great one for that Cause I I can always feel like I can kind of hear her gears moving, like she's not the antihero. You know what I mean. But there she writes antihero. It's a sympathetic place to be the antihero. But just because you wrote it, taylor, doesn't mean that, like you know, I understand maybe why you would do that for others, but I'm not hearing it for you personally. You know a genius, this is. Put that out, you know.

Jenny Wick: 23:28

Yeah, I was gonna say that's another thing I was wondering about with songwriting and collaboration, and are there some pros and cons that you see to doing that?

Mike Errico: 23:36

Sure, yeah, that's, that's really. It's funny's funny. I I had, um, I had a class just recently and, uh, I broke them up into songwriting teams. There was six teams of three. Five teams showed up for class and three were in tears in the hallway.

Mike Errico: 23:58

The other, the other uh songwriting team was like, and it was bad, and there was like, and it was bad and there was an administrator, and it was just like creative differences and someone wasn't paying attention to whatever. I never got the whole story, but putting the ego aside and being like I'm not going to write a song, I'm going to co-write a song. So it's not about me. It may have pieces of me, but I have to be open to going into a spot that is, you know, can go anywhere. And one of the songs I played again today was there's a song called Meant to Be and the co-writers are Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line.

Mike Errico: 24:41

Right, there you go, and I can just imagine that call you know that song right and that's a b and that's a b anyway, like it's a very strange sounding pairing well, they're great writers, though they're great writers, right they made it work.

Mike Errico: 24:57

They made it work. And it wasn't florida georgia line and it wasn't bb rex, it was the third thing, which is the combination of the two of them and, um, it really works. And I also played timber, which was pitbull and kesha right, and they came together and it kind of sounds like one and it kind of sounds like the other and it's just a great co-write. It's just really cool. I'm sorry if I'm running off at the mouth, but I hope you guys have seen the Beatle documentary.

Jay Franze: 25:28

I've seen the first 16 hours so far. I'm waiting to finish the rest Right.

Jenny Wick: 25:33

I've added it on the list after hearing you guys talk about it before.

Mike Errico: 25:40

It's so crazy, because part of it is the length of it and the avenues that are fruitless that they go down, and then the areas that are just like, oh, that's part of something, you know what I mean, or part of whatever.

Jay Franze: 25:54

That eventually turned into this.

Mike Errico: 25:56

Right, right, oh, that's the bridge of come together, but they don't know it yet, and so they're literally working it out and then looking for lyrics by like, flipping through magazines and like, oh, there's a line, there's a line, and you're like this is like basically watching the bible being written you know what I mean and you're like they don't know what it's going to turn out to be the genius that's coming out here, holy crow so cool, yeah, but because it's going to turn out to be I don't know the genius that's coming out here.

Mike Errico: 26:23

Holy crow. So cool, yeah, because it's also serendipity at the same time. And then there's like Ringo talking about it in an octopus's garden. You're just like that's going to be a thing as well, when? Does this come from oh it's so crazy, right, it's super crazy.

Jay Franze: 26:47

Well, let's talk about that for a minute, because I've told you this before that I find your lyrics to be incredible. I really like the stories that you tell and I like some of the humor that you put into them, and to me lyrics can be inspirational and so forth. But how do you find the piece to write lyrics that resonate with people?

Mike Errico: 27:02

Well, part of that, I think, has to do with your artistic voice, and in my book I actually spoke to George Saunders, the short story writer, and I asked him what sort of power do we have to use our voice and to create an artistic voice? And he was like we have no power to do that we either do something like that or we don't.

Mike Errico: 27:47

So I felt like I feel like if it resonates personally and you are in your voice, whatever that is, you have the greatest odds to resonate, sort of in a larger sense. It's like the personal is universal, I think, is like one of the things that they talk about. I think, like Taylor Swift is a great example also because, like, the verses that she uses and lots of people use are very specific. So that's something that's never happened to anyone else. The more specific those things are, but the feeling that has arrived from those specific things if you put them in, like in the chorus, it's something that all of us have felt.

Mike Errico: 28:20

So you know, you know this person was terrible to me. This terrible person, whatever this kind of thing very specific in like the verses and the setups. And then it's like don't you hate when people aren't nice to you? Like there's your sort of the general sort of conclusion to the specific moment that's occurred, kind of where we go, like in our classes, when we, when we're writing do you ever feel that your lyrics are a little too personal?

Mike Errico: 28:51

you know?

Mike Errico: 28:54

no, I feel like I signed up for the ride, so I mean you throw it out there, for sure well, I try to, and it's funny because you can throw anything out there and I think what people see is themselves and that's actually a sort of defensive, sort of armor. It's like going shopping right, they don't totally know what they're going to buy. You go to target and you're like, oh wow, look at this and look at these things, fit, I'm gonna take these and the rest of target can go to hell. It's songwriting is a lot like that and lyrics are like that and the chorus is like that. So I don't worry about being like overly seen. I worry more about that in prose actually than in than in songwriting, because I just think that there's more. There's more window shopping, that goes on, and there are more distractions. There's lyric, melody, guitar solos, drums, whatever. There's a lot of that kind of thing going on.

Jenny Wick: 29:49

Yeah, that makes sense. So having something that's relatable, personable to you and then relatable to them, that they can immerse themselves in.

Mike Errico: 29:58

I don't have my address.

Jenny Wick: 30:01

Yeah.

Mike Errico: 30:02

I don't want to do that. My. Pin number social security like my, my, my address, yeah, my pin number, social security, like those kinds of things I leave out. Other than that, I kind of feel like it's all sort of up for grabs.

Jenny Wick: 30:12

So what do you think about incorporating social or political themes in the songs?

Mike Errico: 30:18

I don't think it works. I'm sorry, I don't think it works Well. I don't think it works. I'm sorry, I don't think it works Well. I don't think it works when it's dead on, when you're saying like you, and it's also a very viral kind of form, and we do a class. Actually, one assignment is to do a parody song like that and to find the way into something very, very serious by making us laugh about it at first. And one of the videos I use as an example is from spike jones from the 40s, like the original spike jones, who did a couple of songs that charted about hitler, right, and so it was this idea about like making fun of adolf hitler and the axis powers and all this kind of thing, and it was like very funny and he had, like you know, these little like raspberry sounds and goofy trombones, you know, like that kind of stuff.

Mike Errico: 31:28

But what it was is, if you're making fun of the scariest person on earth yeah we know that the scariest person on earth does not have total control of the situation, and so that kind of parody and that kind of satire of that person is empowering, and it was empowering to Americans. And he used to play his song before films in movie theaters to drum up funds for the war effort. And it's on YouTube, you can check it out. I think it's called Diffurer's Face or something. And yeah, spike Jonze, who was a kind of a star back in the day, I think he had a TV show and he was a big composer but he did very funny songs, and so that is one thing. And there the tradition goes all the way. To like Bo Burnham I don't know if you've seen like the show Inside.

Mike Errico: 32:18

Welcome to the internet. Like there's a show inside. Welcome to the internet like there's a song called welcome to the internet, and it is. It is brutal, but you're laughing. But you're kind of not laughing because what he's saying is I mean, he's just taking jeff bezos and dragging him. But if he just dragged jeff bezos in a song like it, wouldn't. It wouldn't have the same it wouldn. It wouldn't have the same power, wouldn't have the same virality as well. I wouldn't be talking about it if it weren't also funny.

Jay Franze: 32:50

Humor is what drives it all.

Mike Errico: 32:52

Yes, I think so, and if people are laughing, it is shocking what you can say to them. It's incredible.

Jay Franze: 33:02

Comedians get away with that for years, yeah I've been watching a few comedians lately that I really love, but if you just took the transcript of what they're saying and put it out there, it would be brutal dave chappelle when they're on stage, they're making people laugh. Oh it's crazy. I mean even even Matt Rife. I know, jenny and I talk about him all the time, but he's out there and some of the things he says on stage are just brutal yeah.

Mike Errico: 33:30

You can't just say it straight, but people laugh Right. I used to love well, I still do love Chris Rock Some of the stuff that Chris Rock would say. I mean like you would not know whether or not laughing was appropriate because it was funny. But wow, and Bo Burnham's like that, I think.

Jay Franze: 33:50

I heard Tom Segura did a joke about Ted Cruz. I watched that and it's part of his new special, but I watched it on YouTube, If you want to check it out, I won't repeat it here, but it is funny.

Mike Errico: 34:01

He's like walking down in his neighborhood. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Franze: 34:05

Yeah, walking down the street Right, all of a sudden he meets up with Ted Cruz. Crazy, that's it. I'm not going to tell you who I met. Yeah right, he may or may not be a senator, he's really good. Yeah. Yeah, but if people are laughing, At the end of it yeah, and it may or may not be Ted Cruz.

Mike Errico: 34:22

So that's kind of the way I personally approach or would approach social, political songwriting. Maybe I'm just not good at just putting it straight out, and I think some people are, but I think it comes off as earnest in not necessarily the best kind of way, maybe a little heavy-handed some people like that well, I think, like you were saying earlier, if you do that, you're kind of picking a side.

Jay Franze: 34:50

Yeah, where? If you, if you put it out there as humor, you're not really picking a side, you're just pointing out the obvious I agreed completely.

Mike Errico: 34:58

we've had some hilarious songs and also really just crushing songs at the same time. So it's exciting, it's fun. It's fun to try and weave those two things together.

Jay Franze: 35:12

You talked about Kelly Clarkson earlier. Can you tell me how important in a song like that, the hook would be?

Mike Errico: 35:19

Oh, yeah. Well, there are all kinds of hooks all over that song and if you go just line by line, it's insane. I could say, like the first verse is here's the thing we started out, friends. Uh, it was cool, it was all pretend. Yeah, yeah, hook since you've been gone. Title setting, you know. So the. The first part is this sort of conversational pulling in of the uh, of, of the narrator and the conversation. Then you get that yeah, yeah, which happens all over the song, and then a title setting which is placed at the end of every verse the top of the chorus and the bottom of the chorus and three times at the end of the song. So it's just like if you don't know the title of that song by the time the song is done, I honestly don't know what to tell you. It's impossible.

Mike Errico: 36:16

Another thing that's interesting about that song is that the verses happen.

Mike Errico: 36:22

This is a melodic math thing, but, like the, the verses happen after the one of the first bar, right. So it's like one, here's the thing, right, but the top of the chorus starts before the one, right, since you've been gone and and it hits on the one there. The idea of placing things after the one gives it like a casual sort of feeling and you get that in verses and you work this sort of casualness out. But if you hit on the one, that's a very powerful statement melodically and if you go before the one melodically and if you go before the one, it gives a real urgency to it. So like the hook itself is super urgent, not only because of what it is and not only because it's also the title setting, but it happens before the one, like that, and that's kind of that's kind of this cool little. You don't notice it until you notice it, you know, never mind the fact that now I'm, now I'm going, but like, since you've been gone, the title is like a leading is a leading title right.

Mike Errico: 37:30

Since you've been gone, something happens right. So what happens? We don't know until the chorus. Since you've been gone, I can breathe for the first time. So, like the, not only does it give you that huge hook, but then it also gives you the answer to the title right In the first line of the chorus. So it's like this it's kind of a miracle. It's a bit of a miracle of pop songwriting.

Jay Franze: 37:54

Well, while we talk about her songs and hooks, it's easy to see the lyrical hook in her songs, but there's also musical hooks. So can you give us some samples of some musical hooks?

Mike Errico: 38:10

In that song, no, in any. Oh, okay, well, I mean again in that song with the yeah, yeahs is a great one. But here's a totally different thing because it's completely out of the formula and one of my favorite all-time songs and it's called sing a simple song by sly and the family stone. That song is this sprawl, and if you don't know sly and the family stone I don't know who's listening. But if it weren't for sly and the family stone, there would be no prince, and if there were not any prince there would be no bruno mars, and if there were no bruno mars it'd be no anderson pock. You know whatever, and so and so, on and on and on it goes. But Sly is really one of the I don't know godfathers or whatever, one of the most important people in pop music. I would absolutely go see. This is a sidebar.

Mike Errico: 38:57

Questlove put a movie out, a documentary called Summer of Soul. I think it came out last year. A movie out, a documentary called Summer of Soul, I think it came out last year, amazing Sly and the Family Stone stuff in there. But that is just like a fire hose of hooks and it works without using the formula, the Max Martin sort of formula and the hooks are like, not lyrical, they're just like yeah, yeah, yeah, or he just yells and it just crosses right across the stereo spectrum. It's so worth just checking out. It's also one of the most sampled songs in the history of sampling. But that song breaks the form entirely and is insanely hooky from start to finish. They talk about desert island discs. There's a sly in the. I got it as a kid. It was sly and the family stone's greatest hits. I don't know if that counts as a desert island disc, because it's the greatest hits.

Jay Franze: 39:58

Oh my god, I think it's better it's probably better, but there are no skips that's for sure.

Mike Errico: 40:03

But it is, it's just it's. It's so fun, it's insane. His songwriting was so inventive. It's, it's really worth it. It uses all these hook ideas, but in a completely non-trivial way, like it's just its own thing it's funny that you mentioned that progression of artists, because I was just talking about that today you know, Prince, leading into Bruno Mars and stuff.

Jay Franze: 40:30

but you talk about other people's songs. I wanted to talk about one of yours for a second and I mentioned this to you the last time you were on that. It is my favorite song of yours and that's daylight, which it's to me a great song and it has a great hook and it has humor. Yeah, so it seems to have the trifecta there, so can you tell us a little bit about how you came up with that?

Mike Errico: 40:54

uh well, daylight is a song that came from, you know a bad experience ex-girlfriend, whatever, who I really I think I owe an apology to at this point, but I'm going to get around to that, I guess at some point.

Mike Errico: 41:09

But I was really sort of in the weeds, trying to find my own sort of artistic voice because, like, being super earnest wasn't really like, wasn't really hitting, like it's not like 100, 100% what I'm about. And then I bumped into, I was taken to a show to see Ani DeFranco at the Beacon Theater and I will never, ever, never, forget it, because Ani plays the acoustic guitar so freaking well for one, really rhythmic for two, and her lyrics are biting and hilarious and maybe, maybe even like a little italian.

Mike Errico: 41:54

I don't really know can just hear her singing with her hands right and she, uh, came very, very much out of the folk tradition. So she's a folk singer and that was something that I. Another thing that I could reach because I didn't have any money for a band, so you could do it alone. You can do it just you and the guitar if you wanted to or you had to, and I did for a long time if you wanted to or you had to and I did for a long time. So putting those kind of elements together was really like part of me was like how do I get laugh lines out of an angry kind of approach? That's also kind of rhythmic and you can do it, because I saw it done. I saw her do it song after song after song after song and like I don't know, someday I'll meet her. I saw her do it Song after song after song after song and like I don't know, someday I'll meet her. I don't know, Maybe not, but I have her to thank for that approach.

Jay Franze: 42:51

Lyrically the best second verse ever. I mean I will put it in the show notes, I'll put it linked to the video, absolutely go check it out.

Mike Errico: 43:02

It's hilarious. I was pretty mad, I gotta tell you, but I'm very much over it. She made it work and made it relatable yes, and and it was it was relatable for.

Jay Franze: 43:11

Yeah, it was really fun it is by far one of my favorites. Can you just tell us a little bit about the art of writing for tv and film?

Mike Errico: 43:19

uh, tv and film. I've done quite a bit of that. I really like it again. I think humor has something to do with that, but also the fact that there is kind of no such thing as a rut when you are, when you have no idea what the assignment is going to be right. So I think people who are very versatile musically go into that, because you get to put on a ton of different hats. It can absolutely be.

Mike Errico: 43:50

We need a string quartet that sounds like eleanor rigby, and then the next day it's like we need something that sounds like baby shark. Have you heard of baby shark? You know? I mean like we need it's like a baby shark, but we need a different fish, you know, whatever, because it's going to be for for red lobster, and so it keeps you very much, keeps you on your toes. So I I have definitely looked for instruments in pet stores.

Mike Errico: 44:15

You know, like squeezing, squeezy, like toys to like find, like the perfect pitch of like a dog bone that like that squeaks when you squeeze it. That kind of thing is really fun and it's really not. It's not so serious. You know which is. It's positive and it's negative.

Mike Errico: 44:35

I personally always found it a positive until I got, until I started like compiling ads and I started getting like ads and stuff like that, I was like not so excited. Right, I was not so super excited that, like dunkin donuts took my my track you know like which is great, remunerative and not why I'm here, so that was a bummer. Eventually became a bummer. It was very exciting until it just wasn't so exciting anymore. But getting your songs like your song songs in TV, that's a little bit different, although once you attach a song to an image the song changes. I have a song called you Could Be Anywhere which is like this bereft sort of like you know I'm looking for this love and the love I can't find, or whatever, and it was used on 16 and Pregnant on MTV I guess it was, or whatever.

Mike Errico: 45:41

My wife's favorite on MTV, I guess it was, or whatever where someone's baby mama brings the baby to a graveyard and points at the headstone and says to her baby there's your daddy. And it was like the darkest moment ever. And my song starts playing and I'm like, no, no, this is not, this is not cool, this is like I didn't ask what I signed up for well, no, it's not that I didn't ask my permission. I was like, um, that's not what the song's about, you know. Like that's not at all about and there was another.

Mike Errico: 46:18

There was another. I was like really excited because shameless, the uh, the show, uh on showtime took a song and I was like, oh, mom, because shameless, the uh, the show, uh on showtime took a song and I was like, oh, mom and dad, this is gonna be great. Like did a song of mine, it's gonna be on on shameless. It's gonna be awesome, whatever, you know, william h macy, whatever. So we're watching the show. We're watching the show not happening, not happening. Finally, there is this completely raunchy moment with like three people are like getting out of bed and they have like kind of just destroyed themselves sexually and they're just like exhausted and they're holding their backs and like there's like sex toys, like bouncing out of the bed and everything else, and I'm like, oh god, yeah, I the worst part with your song this is not good for my reel.

Mike Errico: 47:09

You know what I mean.

Jenny Wick: 47:10

Yeah well, you talk about that I wrote a song.

Jay Franze: 47:15

It was just a sappy love song, just a typical ballad, and it was picked up and used in saturday night and John and Paul from the Beatles are sitting at a piano and they're acting as if they're writing a song and come to find out they were talking about opening a fried chicken joint. Oh, my God, and it's my song that they're using to write and I'm like, no, not at all what the song is about.

Mike Errico: 47:39

But I know it's hilarious. There's just one more that's crazy. Like I did one. It was like a 50s striptease kind of thing and it was, like you know, old timey jazz and I got like a trumpet player who plays like Bubba Miley, like you know, like it's all that you could picture, like pasties and whatever, like 50s stripping like burlesque.

Mike Errico: 48:01

You know, it felt like it like a burlesque you know Pasties and pasties it felt like it was like a burlesque thing and I was for a TV show and the show was canceled or whatever. And then so this thing goes into a library and now in Real Housewives, in the Real Housewives series, whenever like one of the Real Housewives like comes out of a fitting room with like some sort of hot number that they're wearing and that's like looks terrible or whatever, my song plays and it's like, and I'm like this is inside a really, um, surreal kind of moment not what you envisioned when you wrote the song but you know, once it leaves, I can't bet you're watching these shows once it leaves your hands, it leaves your hands

Jenny Wick: 48:46

then it could go viral in other ways there go.

Mike Errico: 48:48

It goes viral in lots of different ways, like I. I feel like it happens in in the other direction as well where, like something like you know, jack white had like a seven nation army and that became a soccer chant at a European soccer team. I don't know, I forget which one, but when they win they play Seven Nation Army Songs like we Are Family. It was the theme song for the Pittsburgh Pirates for the baseball team.

Mike Errico: 49:18

You just never know, and that's kind of the fun of it. So that's TV and film. It's like you crank this stuff out and just kind of duck and just see, like, is this going to work? I don't know.

Jenny Wick: 49:29

Well, I've loved this tonight and breaking down all the songs, it's been so fun. I would love to sit in one of your classes. I feel like we've had a class tonight Come on down. Awesome Is your book, book similar to what you're teaching in your classes.

Mike Errico: 49:41

Very much, so I use the book. Actually, it's the other way around. The book came from the class I taught the class for about seven years, or something like that, and I was like you know what. I should put some of this on paper, you know. So a lot of the stuff that I talk about is actually in the book, and it's probably more concise than I generally am on any given day. It's on Amazon if you'd like it.

Jenny Wick: 50:09

Definitely going to get a copy.

Jay Franze: 50:12

All right, folks, we have done it. We have reached the top of the hour. We've passed the top of the hour, but if you found any value in tonight's show, please tell a friend. You can also keep the conversation going over at jfranzycom, where you can talk to myself, jenny or even Mike. If you would like to Miss Jenny, my friend, where can people go to find you?

Jenny Wick: 50:29

They can go to jennywickfitcom.

Jay Franze: 50:33

Mr Mike.

Mike Errico: 50:34

Yes.

Jay Franze: 50:35

Where can people find you at?

Mike Errico: 50:37

I'm at ericocom and there are links all over the place on that. I'm pretty active on Instagram and TikTok or whatever. If you do that, I'm around and available.

Jay Franze: 50:50

That's awesome.

Mike Errico: 50:51

Like I said, I don't get a lot of re-invites and I really appreciate it and I enjoy talking to you guys. It's really fun, thank you.

Jay Franze: 51:04

A big thanks to Mike for taking the time to share his stories with us. Thanks to Jenny for joining and thank you for taking the time to hang with me here. I really do appreciate it. If you know anyone that would enjoy this episode, please be sure to pass it along. You can do that and find the links to everything mentioned over at jayfranze. com/ episode 93. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.

Tony Scott: 51:32

Thanks for listening to The Jay Franzy Show. Make sure you visit us at jayfranze. com Follow, connect and say hello.