Have you entered a song into the American Idol Songwriter Contest?

OK, finally a number of entries 25 to 30 thousand…. thats a lot of songs… more than would fit on my 80GB Ipod wow!

Out of all the thousands of songs submitted we were the only ones to let the world hear what we submitted…. what, 100 songs or so.

Eric, I don’t think a montage would discourage people from sending in songs the next time, look at all the Idol wannabe’s that get turned down every year and they keep coming back for more.
I think next year they will go about it differently and give more time to submit songs and they will receive 100,000 songs and not only 25K.

In closing I think the Top 20 will be notified no later than this coming Wednesday April 25th.
It wouldn’t surprise me if those 20 have to keep a lid on it til May 2nd.

What an accomplishment for those 20 songwriters to have been picked out of all those entries.

I expect the 20 will be top notch and will blow us away. The voting for the #1 will be tight and hard to decide.

Will this forum live on after the 20 have been decided?

I do not mean to offend in saying this. I have listened to every song posted or linked from this thread(more than 100) over the last several days and I haven’t heard one that is memorable. Many “songs” seem to be little more than extended riffs and the production qualities are either very crude or over-produced.The lyrics do not seem to tell a real story. A good song tells a story that you want to hear over and over again.

AI: If you’re listening. After you pick the Top20 and get their source material “immediately”, give them another 48 hours to get you an exact same version with a little better production (ie Antares treatment, etc) if they want to.

After all, if you will re-read your original contest rules and guidelines, you did mislead ppl as to the value of production and received your entries under a false pretense. I don’t think you intended to do this, but you did and I think you owe the Top20 a chance to clean-up out of pitch vocals, etc IF they want to. At that point the Top20 will know their is some economic value in doing so.

Also- this allows you the luxury of REALLY picking the Top20 songs because you have less worry about putting a really poor production up for voting which is probably not in your best interests anyway – and would be a shame if that in any way would keep you from really chosing the best songs.
Which was your stated purpose.

ok, so finally we have a ballpark figure of 25,000 songs submitted for this contest, hopefully that post above is a truthful one, but that number is pretty reasonable considering how everything played out and from what Ryan Seacrest mentioned about the 5,000 from the first week, it makes sense to end up with a 25k range of songs entered.

so that roughly equates to a 1 in 1,250 chance of getting in the top 20 just based on number of entries. if you account for the load of crappy songs and take them out (probly 90% crap) then you have 20 out of 2,500 or 1 in 125 chance of getting in the top 20 if you have a good song. but if you consider that only the top 10% of those good songs will make the cut of quality of songwriting, then that means about 250 songs in the running, or 20/250, or a 1 in 12.5 chance of making the Top 20 if your song had great lyrics, great hooks, and great production. most of us don’t fall into that top category from what i have heard so far.

i think tatrix’s song “without you” is an awesome pop song, but doesn’t really fit the AI theme enough. i think that dave’s song where his wife teresa sang it “blooming” is also really well done, great singing, great chorus, great production, but yet again the AI theme is not strong enough for me.

that is what i think i have been seeing mostly…if the song was bad, it fit the AI theme in a really cheesy cliché way, but if the song was great (like tatrix’s and dave/teresa’s) then the AI theme was vague at best and not strong enough.

i guess the problem is the precendet of the type of songs from all the previous seasons. they were all ballads just on the verge of cheese and not terribly original. but hey, that is what “wide appeal” is whether we like it or not.

for the most part, i don’t think any of us will make the top 20 (hate to sound negative, but the odds are realistic). i think what we should do is once the top 20 are chosen, we should make our own album of the best songs. we could have more time to produce them, then revote for our own top 20, and put out a cd of the songs. we could include this site, and jpfolks, and others if we want. i think that would be cool. and we could throw the idol them out the window as far as the judging is concerned or at least not make it a basis to vote on.

anyone else like that idea?

hehe, sorry for the misspellings, i having a hard time this morning….lol

I have heard some really good stuff. Remember with 30,000 entries though the chances of hearing the whole jist if the song I believe will not happen. If you don’t have it within the first 20 seconds chances are slim. Although you and I both know when we listen to music it takes hearing the whole song to really like the whole song and story behind. At any rate I have tried to listen to all the songs available and I found myself wanting to hear one of them over and over “Without You” a great tune and the melody is addicting. Great Job. I feel the folks that did just the singer and guitar is truly at a disadvantage especially for folks that vote and do not know the rules indicated not to worry about the production of the song. Anyhow Best of Luck to all of you and myself.

It’s just funny to me that a lot of us are commenting/worried about cliches in our lyrics. Have you ever read the lyrics for Carrie Underwood’s AI first release “Inside Your Heaven”, which became a Billboard record setting single?

If that’s not the most silly string of cliches and banality. . . I don’t know what is.

So, you have to keep in mind what AI’s (and America’s) definition of a “great song” is. Subjectivity universe. The bottom line is that no one here really knows what songs posted here do or don’t have a shot at the top 20.

Besides, can you really take seriously negative comments from other entrants competing for one of the biggest songwriting competitions ever?

“And the only question with me now” ha HA! I noticed that too, and think it’s the most ridiculous lyric line EVER. In fact, as I was writing my submission, I was agonizing over one line of lyrics, trying to choose between the one that was safer grammatically and the one that sounded better to the ear, and THAT line is the one that pushed me toward the better-sounding choice. Obviously they don’t care about grammar, not to mention normal English usage. Although I do still feel insecure about that line…

Hi everybody,
I am knew to this site, but I have enjoyed what I’ve read hear…lot’s of feedback and opinions.

I have also submitted songs to american idol songwriting contest, one of which, I will share with everyone as a point of getting honest feedback from you all.

Jus go to: http://www.buymusicfromus.com/music.html, and click on the song called “Grateful”.

Let me know what you guys think about the song. Even if i don’t win, i enjoyed writing the tune.

Michael Bell

ME TOO! The word “eventually” in my song wasn’t what I’d usually put…but no matter how hard I tried…it just wouldn’t budge…and it works ok…makes you wonder if when they pick a song if their team will “tweak”

love and light!

Jamie Southworth
http://www.jamiesouthworth.com
“You’ve Already Won”

I recently took my song down and then after further research, decided to put it back up. There are several songs that I believe are extremely good. Listen to “Without You”, “Round the Bend”, “Waking in a Dream”, “Waking the Angels” and “Shine Your Light on Me”. I really like these. I think they each have a great hook.

If you want to listen to mine:

“How to Fly”
http://www.songramp.com/mod/mps/viewtrack.php?trackid=55980

I have a few other songs I’ve posted. I write mainly for our church praise team and choir. This is my first time writing for anything like this.

Ugh! My post got truncated. The post read:
25,000 songs with 20 listeners at 30 songs an hour will take 10 4 hour work days. Point being I don’t think there should be any worry about not having your song heard at least for 1 to 2 minutes. I think it will take them 5 days from the deadline to wittle it down to maybe 100 songs. At which point they’ll take much longer to select between those. 95% of what they’ll get will be obviously unsuitable after listening to 1 minute. So they’ll spend most of there time looking at the other 5%. I used to listen to tapes for unsolicated material and I could size up a CD in a couple minutes unless it was truly exceptional which in my experience was far less than 5% of the time.

The songs that I’ve heard, even the ones that I don’t think are all that great, are still much better than “Do I Make You Proud” and “Destiny” from last year. I mean, what were Simon’s A&R people thinking?

I think tatrix’s song would sound really well for Phil. I think Melinda and Jordin have a stronger chance to win than Phil, but then again, we never know.