If you haven’t yet heard about it, Adam Levine, Dave Stewart and the executive producer of The Voice, Audrey Morrissey, will be teaming up to produce a new series called Songland.

The whole idea behind Songland is that songwriters will get a chance to pitch their songs to a panel, very much like vocalists vying for a deal on The Voice, and the winner will, I’m guessing, get their song recorded by a big name artist.

What I’m Dreading – these will likely all be pop songs.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there ARE OTHER GENRES OUT THERE BOYS. A great song is a great song, so don’t make it all about pop, please! And I also want to remind the producers (as if they read my blog!) that not all songwriters are performers, so I hope they don’t judge according to that. My guess is that they are going to weed the non-performers out, but do give them a chance!

What I’m Hoping For – besides having more genres besides pop, I hope they’ll give some good feedback to the writers.  Not just “it doesn’t turn my crank”, but if a songwriter is not going to advance, give them some decent advice about their writing so they can take something of value away from the experience! This means you need some real songwriters as part of your panel who can actually speak the lingo and have the ability to analyze the song.  Not just big name artists who think they can!

In The End – this is about making money, don’t kid yourself. The producers want to make a hit show about hit songs that they can go to the bank with.  But hopefully, they will make the effort to show that, for songwriters, it’s about more than that.

If and when this show gets going, I’m making a commitment here and now to watch and give it a chance.  I’ll be tweeting as it happens just to prove it!

IJ