• Midweek Mixtape: Short Songs

    Despite being the accepted standard for radio play etc., sometimes there’s something unsatisfactory about the three-to-four minute pop song. It can, on occasion, feel like one idea has been dragged out a bit longer than it should have been, with superfluous guitar solos, incongruous bridges and unnecessary third verses, simply because it’s deemed that anything below this length is unacceptable. The best musicians, though, have the confidence and self awareness to keep things brief if they can say all they need to say in one or two minutes (or even less). Such tracks can easily be mistaken for throwaways, but…