So a friend of mine on Facebook recently statussed (i.e. posted as his status – I’m trademarking it!) this:

“If you are described as a “singer-songwriter,” I automatically assume you are awful. Sorry.”

So what exactly does he mean here?

I assume he means that a singer/songwriter simply writes bad songs that no one likes;

That this singer/songwriter writes and sings the songs but doesn’t take the time to flesh out the songs completely to a point where they can conform to a single style, or you would go ahead and call yourself a Rock musician, or a Jazz musician, or a Pop musician or a Rapper.

It may also imply that this person doesn’t get along well enough with other musicians (or play well enough) to the point where he can get a job in a band or make a band on his own that has a distinct sound.

Maybe this singer/songwriter makes songs that are strictly therapeutic and thus unrelatable (or unlistenable), or that they’re simply looking for an outlet to vent their frustrations or annoy people intentionally.

I suppose that people who write their own songs are twelve for ten cents, and some of them maybe need to be told to keep their music to themselves.

I can’t think of a lot of things to say to defend myself against this accusation at the moment: I have written a handful of songs, many of which are very therapeutic in nature, I don’t play in a band with anyone else (yet), and since I play piano, the most appropriate title for my genre of music is probably pop, or acoustic.

But I do spend quite a lot of time fleshing out my songs to the point where they have a very specific style, and everything you hear in the song is very deliberate and not just the chance sonic phenomenon that occurs from haphazardly strumming a guitar or playing white-note chords with the exact same right hand shape on a casio keyboard I got for christmas when I was twelve (I bought my own Roland FP-7 a few years ago – its actually difficult to break a key on those things and I’ve done it a few times – anyone want to donate $250 do fix it?).

So, while I do still consider myself a non-awful singer/songwriter (among many other things musical), I shall go ahead and announce it here and now, the genre that applies to me and probably many songs from other musician’s repertoire, so that you can ascribe a title to my art other than “awful”…

My musical genre is Insecuripop!

.

….

yeah, there’s no way that’s catching on

LISTEN TO MY MUSIC HERE AND JUDGE FOR YOURSELF!

…ps I tend to see Jam Bands as pretty awful, so I guess its all in the ear of the beholder.