Longing for the day ...

Heart's With You - NSAI feedback

Following my feedback from the Nashville Songwriters Association about Whiskey and History I thought I'd get more straight away. This time I thought I'd try my most obviously hooky song - went with Heart's With You from I am Leaving! I am Leaving!.

Again, I asked for an evaluation of its prospects for placement with another artist. Once again I put it in the Country category, which is more accurate than it was for Whiskey and History. Once again, got a response within a few days - great stuff, NSAI! Here's the version I sent them:

Here's what the reviewer had to say:

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Song Title - Heart's With You

Evaluators Comments -
EVALUATORS OPENING: I'm Evaluator #XXXXX and thank you for using NSAI's
online evaluation service. I know you're excited to get down to the song
evaluation and, as we go through it, please remember that my suggestions are
purely my opinion based on my own personal experience. I will be focusing on
the areas that need attention and give you the absolute best advice and
critique that I possibly can. So let's get started!

FORM/STRUCTURE: Everything here is good.

TITLE/HOOK: It's a pretty generic title. You'll heavily rely on a great idea,
lyric, and story line to support it.

IDEA/LYRIC/MELODY/METER: I'm combining all of these for this eval. I feel
this song is just very dated as a whole. It's lacking the factors in all
categories to get a radio hit single in today's country market. I could see
it being a jam band type of song that would be fun live and maybe an album
cut where the band members from someone like a "Brad Paisley" or "Zack Brown
Band" would like but even at that, I just feel the content of the lyric is
too dated and doesn't really dig in and paint a picture as well as it should.
It needs some freshening it up.

CLOSING STATEMENTS: I hope this advice helps you make the best of this song.
Good luck!

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Well, as before, that stings a bit but is pretty much what I expected. I'm glad the form/structure is OK and mildly anoyed about the title deficiencies ... but what can I do now? It's already release with that title ...

Actually, this feedback is kinda flattering because I intended the song to sound dated and classic. That was the point of writing it as is - it's not intended to be a fresh radio hit. It's VERY flattering to be considered in the same sentence as Zac Brown and Brad Paisley, event if it's highly unlikely they would ever do the song.

The phrase "doesn't really dig in and paint a picture as well as it should" catches my attention because THAT is something I can work on. It's the same comment that was made about Whiskey and History and it's something I need to improve on ... so I'll have a crack at it.

What do you think? Is this feedback spot on or way off? How would you respond?

Let us know in the comments below ...