State of the Demo

In an era that birthed more popular music brilliance than any in history, George Gershwin was king of the pop tune — on radio, in the movies, and on Broadway. Even now, a century after his birth, our greatest artists perform his songs with gratitude and respect.

But even George had a day job, and he was superb at it. Every morning publishers would hand him their hot-off-the-presses sheet music (which is why they called themselves publishers) and he would go from office to office and perform the tune of the day. He was such a dazzling piano player and singer that he became the most successful — and well-paid — songplugger of his time. If you wanted a hit, you paid George to demo it.

Eventually the live songplugger gave way to the demo record, then the tape, cassette, CD, and now the MP3. But even as the technology evolves, one rule stays constant: No matter how strong the song, you still need an effective demo to close the deal.

To put our finger on the pulse of the demo, I queried Michael Laskow, the man who puts more demos in the hands of more industry people than any person living. Michael is the President/CEO of Taxi — the largest and most respected of the pay-to-play A&R services. For a fee, Michael’s staff of industry pros will screen your song, offer feedback and, if the puzzle pieces fall into place, get you a hit song. Or at least a foot in the door. See taxi.com for all the impressive details.

Michael’s attitude about demos is: Do whatever works. “If the best way to get a particular song across is ukulele and helium vocal,” he says, “then by all means! If you need the Budapest Philharmonic and Tuvan throat singers, go for it! Remember, if you’re pitching yourself as an artist, you need a bigger and better demo than you may need if you’re just pitching songs.”
But Michael insisted I speak with a higher authority, in this case his buddy Kara DioGuardi who, if you haven’t read a song credit list in the last five years, is the reigning queen of Getting Big Stars To Record Her Songs. The 2007 BMI Pop Songwriter of the Year, Kara has had hits with Celine Dion, Faith Hill, Christina Aguilera, Santana, Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, and scores more. I asked Kara the secret of her demos.

Her answer, “I don’t do demos.” Well, did she have somebody else do them? In a sense, yes. “I don’t think there are demos. People just make records. I try to get in the room with producers so the final outcome is a record rather than a demo.

 “People in the high positions who are accepting songs need to hear what the record is going to be like. It’s become a much more producer-driven market. If you’re not a producer, you should team up with one when you write so you’re not wasting time making demos. I’m a melody and lyrics person, but if I’m writing a song for Alicia Keys, when I’m writing it I’m thinking about how to produce it in a way that’s right for Alicia.”

Well if you’re a producer, and if you’ve written with a lot of melody and lyrics folks, then you may be a little flabbergasted at how much more time you put into the project than the other writers. Kara explains that she spends from 15 minutes to two hours on a song, while the producer puts in anywhere from two to five days. Which means the producer is spending anywhere from 20 to 60 times more effort on the song than the person who comes up with the words and the tune. With this startling ratio in mind, you may wish to conceal the fact that you own a studio and become exclusively a melody and lyric artist yourself. Of course, you then have to find producers who are better than you who also want to write with you. You also have to be brilliant like Kara. It’s a cruel world out there.

For a very different look at the demo scene, I went to publisher extraordinaire Whitney Daane. Whitney is so direct and charming in that not-holier-than-thou Nashville style, that it’s very easy to forget what a formidably successful country and pop publisher she is, with No. 1 hits with artists like Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, and Lonestar. If anyone knows what demo creation is like down here in the trenches with the rest of us, it’s Whitney.

She says, “Demos have changed over the last few years. They’re more expensive. Studios, engineers, musicians, they all cost more. Very often we’ll go into the studio paying union scale to five or six session players. On a country tune you might have electric guitar, acoustic guitar, pedal steel, bass, drums, a utility person (who might play fiddle, banjo, mandolin, digeridoo, whatever), a singer, and backup singers. The demos wind up costing $800 to $1,000 a pop. We usually do five tunes at a time. Once in a while the musicians will do six if you bring them expensive gifts attractively wrapped.”

Whitney says that because people are demoing less and doing so more selectively, it’s becoming harder for a young writer to build a catalog. “And when you’re looking at reduced royalty streams from record sales, sometimes you can’t even recover the cost of the demo.”

So Whitney, too, has become more selective as a publisher. Still, when she’s got a tune she loves she’ll go through fire for it. “You better make sure that if you’re not ready to stand up and pour kerosene over your head and light a match,” she admonishes, “if you’re not that passionate about it, you better not be pitching that song.”

In spite of rising demo costs, Whitney will tweak a demo ruthlessly to get it where it needs to go. She points out that in the case of Faith Hill’s super-mega-hit “This Kiss” (by Robin Lerner, Annie Roboff, and Beth Nielsen Chapman) she had the writers demo the song three times — in three different styles — for pitching to three very different artists. Go to the keyboardmag.com website and you’ll hear the original demos as they were pitched. The first is a very busy pop version á la Scritti Politti sung by two of the writers in unison. Next they did an R&B demo with vocal and rhythm track to match. And finally the winning direction: a country setting with Nashville session ace Jamie O’Neal cutting the vocal. Whitney credits much of the demo’s success to Jamie’s fantastic vocal. 

I think this is a powerful object lesson in the demo-commitment that’s often necessary to succeed in today’s song market. Every once in a while, though, lightning strikes early in the process and the worktape has a magic that nothing else can match. “I was lucky on the song ‘Tequila Loves Me’ by Jon McElroy and Arnie Roman, that Kenny Chesney cut,” says Whitney. “It was raw, almost a worktape. I’ve been lucky. I’ve had $2,000 demos get cut and scratchy, Radio Shack cassette recorder demos get cut. You just never know.” The “Tequila Loves Me” demo is also on the website.

There are certain rules of thumb in the demo world. A lot of people believe that it’s easier to convince a female artist to cut a male demo than the reverse. And it’s a truism that it helps to hear the words and clarifying the vocal in a demo mix with EQ or processing (or just making it louder) can’t hurt. But the bottom line is still this: Do whatever it takes.
Hell, it worked for George.