Three Reasons Your Band Will Break Up

Yes, your band will split up, and we know why   23-May-12

Page 2: Three Reasons Your Band Will Break Up

2. The singer and the guitarist secretly hate each other

In most bands the two biggest personalities will be a guitarist and a singer. Very often, personalities clash. That’s almost always bad news when you’re in a band because artistic juices simply don’t flow when two people are fighting each other.

The situation almost occurs when two people in the band want to write songs. Some bands do really well when this happens, other bands struggle to keep the style of the music consistent if there is more than one songwriter.

There are very few bands who work as a complete democracy, there is almost always a leader. Every member of the Beatles wrote songs, but Lennon was the natural figurehead. Queen have possibly the strongest case to working as a complete democracy, every member of the band had a number one hit to their name, and they generally all made key decisions. Still, Freddie was the main man.

Unfortunately for most bands though, every member is pretty bad at writing songs, but your singer and your guitarist both think they are god’s gift. There is a constant power struggle, even if there doesn’t appear to be one, and they both think each other’s songs are better than one another’s.

The singer has ultimate control, you will have undoubtedly have heard some of these classic lines when a singer does not want to sing a guitarist’s song:

• “I just don’t think it’s our style.”
• “I just can’t sing it properly.”
• “I can’t really get into a song if I haven’t written the lyrics.”

You may have your own variations on this list, my responses to the above are:

• “Okay, I’ll sing it then.”
• “Okay, I’ll sing it then.”
• “Okay, I’ll sing it then.”

Eventually it will get to the point where your singer and guitarist either need to fight each other or have sex, either way will relieve a bit of tension, but it will only be a temporary measure. Your band is doomed, just ask Axl Rose. Actually don’t.

Next page: Your bass player sucks