Every songwriter’s greatest hope is that their songs will stand the test of time. Although our main goal is to achieve financial success with our music, most of us also want to be remembered. There seems to be an innate desire to leave a legacy, whether it’s having children and carrying forward the family name, naming parks and diseases after ourselves, or creating a piece of art that will hang in galleries for hundreds of years after we’re gone.
As with most practices in the creative arena, there is no formula where data can be plugged into the variables x and y to produce a classic. However, when we look at the most well-known, beloved songs in history, there are a few common threads that join them together.
Melody
Much of the time, if a song is remembered decades or even centuries after it was conceived, it’s usually because it has a memorable melody. This makes sense because the melody is often the most unique part of the song; you can often find another song with a similar drum beat or bass line, but it’s much harder to find another song with the exact same melody. In essence, the melody is the DNA of a song.
This is why in the present day, children can sing along to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by heart, or why teenagers still know and listen to the entire Beatles catalogue. Above all the other elements in a song, melody transcends time.
Innovation
Another reason why songs become classics is because they were somehow an innovation for their time, or were the spearhead of a major musical or social movement. The reason Led Zeppelin became so legendary (aside from having great music) is because they were one of the first hard rock/heavy metal bands, and are often credited with being the progenitors to those genres. Many bands came after Led Zeppelin and attempted to imitate their style, but we don’t remember them because if we wanted to hear Zeppelin, we would listen to Zeppelin.
This doesn’t just apply to music; think of the painter Van Gogh. Many people hated his art during his time, and he never lived to see his own impact on the art world. Thousands, if not millions of artists after him loved his work so much that they imitated his style in their work. However, today we only remember Van Gogh, not his imitators.
That being said, many songs that weren’t necessarily innovative at the time of their creation are still remembered today for several reason. They may have just been exceptional pieces of songwriting, but there also could have been some quirky, unique quality about them, or because something from in pop culture brought them to the spotlight. For example, Simple Minds’ hit “Don’t You Forget About Me” didn’t bring anything new to the table musically, yet it sits firmly at the top as one of the most iconic songs of the ‘80s. It’s a memorable song with good arranging, but after being featured in The Breakfast Club—another classic piece of pop culture—it was launched into the top 10 US Billboard charts.
Instrumentation
Probably the least important on this list but still worth mentioning, the instrumentation in a piece of music can have an impact in its timeless quality. When we think of The Byrds’ cover of “Mr. Tambourine Man”, there’s a good chance that before we even think of the melody, we hear in our heads the distinct jangly 12-string Rickenbacker guitar that defined the sound of the 1960s. Even though the song was originally penned by Bob Dylan, the Byrds’ rendition is equally famous as the original, if not more, which I would argue is greatly due to the iconic guitar sound.
On the flip side, it’s possible to achieve the opposite of timelessness and make your music sound dated. Think of the power ballads from the ‘80s and ‘90s with the cheesy keyboards and synthesizers…those didn’t age too well. Even listening to the pop hits from the late 2000s/early 2010s, they are starting to sound dated with their bright, Swedish EDM-influenced synthesizers. In general, it’s much easier to make your music sound passé when you get synthesizers involved because synth sounds are constantly changing and going in and out of style, meanwhile acoustic guitars and drums have more or less sounded the same over the past century.