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Steve Barger is the greatest songwriter of this generation.
That's a pretty bold claim for anyone to make, let alone an obscure musician from Indiana who is only known by a few thousand people. We don't even have any testimonials from this or that certified music legend or critic to make the claim "legitimate." In short, the only external authority supporting this statement comes from Steve's webmaster and devoted brother aka ol' Al Barger speaking on behalf of my belly button. He does not have outside validation for this assertion.
He does, however, have the REAL backing to make this claim: the most kick ass catalogue of original songs since Dylan went to seed a couple decades ago. To make a comparison among contemporaries, hardly any songwriter under the age of 40 could stack his actual writing side by side with Steve's and not look positively pathetic.
Songs are built most importantly on melody, and also lyrics, harmony, and rhythm. Steven excels in all these areas.
His compositions feature strong melodic hooks, the number one starting place for a great song. Not just hooks, though, but follow through in the development. In other words, the hooks go somewhere; there are full fledged tunes to go with them. Even a simple two chord riff monster like "Placebo" has a hummable verse, with a whole separate memorable theme from the main chorus. The apocalyptic charge of "Just Like a Kid" still accomodates an intricate melodic development to go with the adrenalin rush of the guitars.
He gives not just catchy tunes, but soulful songs, full of feeling, and in a variety of styles. He achieves a beautiful dramatic flow and great dynamics behind his own high-powered ballad style in songs like "Elixir of Love" and especially "Plymouth Rock." From country/western narratives such as "Doctor Dope Dealing Cowpoke" to the rockabilly styling of "Have My Baby," Steve can lay it down across a great range of sub-styles. He could write blues-pop classics like "I Think I'm Better Than You" in his sleep. He can even do latin, such as the Ricky Martin parody "Cylinders."
As a lyric writer, Steve has learned a respect for discipline and structure from the Broadway writers to counterbalance the gross abuses of the freedoms gained by the rock generations. He surely doesn't feel constricted to moon/june/spoon. He has the nightmare dream flow of "Living Life Among the Zombies" and the Book of Revelations inspired "The King's Library." He has the biting satire of "Selling My Birthright" but also the tender romanticism of "Volatile Brew."
What he does NOT have is self-indulgent puked up faux-artistic crap that doesn't really mean anything. After winning the right to write whatever lyrics he wanted, even Dylan quickly took to crapola like the infamous "dancing child with his Chinese suit/ He spoke to me I took his flute." All of Steve's lyrics actually mean something discernable, though they come from a variety of styles and emotional meanings.
Also, when Steve writes lyrics with social significance, he really says something serious. Many topical writers (Tracy Chapman and Sting spring to mind) come up with stuff that reminds me of Tom Lehrer's "Folk Song Army." "We all hate poverty, war and injustice-unlike the rest of you squares." Steve wrote "The Ballad of Fred Sanders" in defense of a guy who killed a cop in self defense, not another unlikely he-didn't-do-it story. Not strident leftist ranting, but a reasoned though controversial take on a crucial story. In other words, he will say something challenging to an audience, sometimes dramatically sometimes with his trademark dark humor. Nor would he come up with cheap feel good narcisstic solipsism disguised as altruism like "We Are the World." No, when Steve speaks, he has something different and unique to say.
Harmony is definitely the weakest suit for rock era songwriters. Most have been absolutely criminally lazy about learning much of how it works. You might intuit some good melodies just flowing spontaneously from your mouth (for awhile anyway) or beat out some rhythm, but if you want to do much past the most rudimentary tonic-dominant-subdominant, you actually have to make the effort to study at least SOME music theory. Most rock singers won't or can't be bothered simply to learn to read sheet music, much less how to manipulate chord structures. Even Bob Dylan never bothered to learn, and has relied on the same three or four chords in almost every song to this day. You can only play C-F-G for so many tens of thousands of songs before it becomes boring and predictable.
Years of studying harmony has allowed Steve to create an exceptionally rich musical landscape. You don't have to understand aeolean cadences to hear that he put some unusual and memorable chords in "Fluffy and the Spook Tree." You'll just know that they are dreamy and atmospheric.
It's not just a matter of sticking in some weird chords, though. Any half-wit could buy the same chord book that Steven has showing 7,000 chords and voices. It also takes extensive study of harmonic structure to see how they all relate.It also takes a great deal of imagination and patient experimentation then to acheive an effect like "Chicken with His Head on Straight" where he modulates through three different keys and tonal centers before deftly landing back at the start. The real trick was making that sound natural and smooth so that the layman wouldn't even realize how much high math was involved.
Of course, working in the rock music tradition you must have strong commitment to the rhythm. In the immortal words of Duke Ellington "it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing." This requires not just a bludgeoning beat, as is the pitfall of many metal and hard rock acts, but supple syncopation- the roll to go with the rock.
Steve learned rhythm and groove from the masters of American music, such as Howlin' Wolf, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Buddy Holly, certainly Little Richard, and the advanced PhD groove architecture of Prince. He would think me remiss if I didn't include some of the original down home country dance masters of our youth such as Jerry Reed, Jimmie Rodgers, Merle Haggard and Chuck Berry. A special shout must be sent out to Porter Wagoner and the underappreciated Wagon Masters who kicked Steve's ass every week growing up- a HUGE influence on a couple of generations of country boys.
You may wish to start considering Steve's ideas of rhythm by scoping out out the jazzy drive under "Fluffy and the Spook Tree," which may be his greatest all around song. Perhaps even better rhythmically is "You'll Leave a Beautiful Corpse." Notice how naturally and subtly he drops from 4/4 time to 3/4 in the chorus as he riffs on the title. (We describe this as the part where he "channels Van Morrison.") Yet he never loses the consistent dance groove. Good trick. It's not quite a dance monster like "Corpse," but you may wish to note the tricky but smooth sections of 5/4 in "Trying Not to Breathe So Hard." (It's the "I guess I must be dumb" part.)
Steven has learned and absorbed a great deal of technical knowledge about music theory, but not just for showing off or to look smart. He uses these skills in the expression of real human feelings. More complex and subtle shadings require a broader and more sophisticated palette of tools. He's not just another alterna rocker bitching about how alienated he is and how much the world sucks (see the cryptic parody "I Roll My Rock Up the Hill"), so he needs more than just dissonance and boring guitar noise. [For the record though, Steve wishes to note that the world does suck, and he is very alienated. :)] He's got a lot more to say than "I love you truly," and this requires more than simple I-IV-V harmony.
Not that he doesn't write love songs, it's just that they usually have an asterisk. He hasn't listened to Elvis Costello for a quarter century for nothing. Sometimes it is the relatively straightforward possessed blues of "I Won't Rebuke You Baby," but more often he comes up with the tender troubles of "Volatile Brew." Which only makes it all the more wondrous when occassionally the love light shines with no question marks or asterisks. (Steve singles out Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" as perhaps his greatest song.)
The last point here concerns pure quantity of quality. Fairly many songwriters manage to stumble into a good hook and come up with one really good song, or two if they're lucky. Three or four outstanding songs and you've got a legitimate career. REM are widely considered legends- and have certainly had a huge commercial career- but it boils down to maybe a dozen truly outstanding songs over a couple of decades.
Steve, on the other hand, has a whole hidden continent of songs. You could get several dozen songs deep into his catalog and you'd still be in the top tier of his songs. Some prefer his more raucous songs, some really dig his more countrified side, others prefer the deceptively normal sounding love ballads. Whichever door you come in, you'd have to go at least 50 or 60 songs deep before you start getting past the very cream of the crop.
You could go on for a long time about the complex of different styles and emotional threads running through his work, but my words can only say so much. With all due respect to Ben Folds, Sinead O'Connor and maybe a couple of others, Steve Barger is the most accomplished songwriter of a generation. Give him a listen and judge for yourself.