When is a new good song not a good song?

It takes more for a new song to be a new good song than being good. Other qualities drive a purchase -- originality, appropriate maturity, a sense of sincerity. There needs to be some sort of essence of truth.

Take the clip above. "The Fighter" by Gym Class Heroes f/ Ryan Tedder is by many accounts a good song. The delivery and production are quite nice; it's catchy and has a good message. It's pleasant to the ears, for sure. Everyone involved is talented. But it feels phony. Expected. Calculated. As a result, it feels untrue and manipulative. Therefore it's terrible.

Even the mere fact of this particular collaboration seems inorganic. When I hear this song, between the lines I hear the murmur of producers, managers and record-label executives, seeking to produce a product with mass appeal. This is their job, of course. But the output should be independent of this objective, or at least disguise it better. When a song feels written, produced and performed for no genuine or artistic reason, it  cannot be good. This is what makes Justin Bieber's output particularly excruciating. He is talented, and some of his output has appealing musical qualities. But as a package, Justin Bieber's portfolio is American cheese.

This is the problem I had with "Payphone" by Maroon 5 f/ Wiz Khalifa earlier this year. It is right on the borderline of good. But there's something inauthentic about it. Listening to it does not feel like listening to music. It feels like listening to the result of meetings, not the result of feelings.

I have now presented a standard for goodness that many people will find naive, objectionable or impossible to measure. As a listener, I am sure I sometimes fail to detect authenticity. For example, is "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen borne from any authentic feelings? I don't know. I was not in the room when this song was conceived, produced, recorded and released. But I feels, at the very least, as though the song was written, produced and arranged by people who were enjoying their jobs, and were talented, and cared about quality. The vocals are delivered in a way that's perfectly appropriate to the material, which indicates some sense of sincerity or performance capability on the singer's part. This exact same song by, say, Madonna, would have a very different effect indeed.

Therefore, I realize that phoniness is a hard quality to identify accurately, but I think it is sufficient to say that if a song feels phony, that's reason enough to negate its otherwise good attributes.

New Good Song: Guardian by Alanis Morissette

Here's a new good song -- "Guardian," by Alanis Morissette

How I found this song -- iTunes. When embarking on any hunt for a new good song, I always start with the basic Top 200 songs selling on iTunes. The masses today don't have the best taste, but sometimes they'll surprise you. And a quick scan through this list always alerts me to the newest of the new, if not necessarily the best of the best. It was here I realized Alanis even had a new single. I adored "Underneath" a couple years ago. "Guardian" isn't as good because it's the same two chords over and over for more than four minutes. She can do better. But it's still better than most of what's out there. But if you haven't heard "Underneath," get that instead. It has one of my favorite bridges of all time, at 2:26.

What makes this song good? Instruments and a nice melody, and Alanis has a nice way with words. This isn't the greatest song on earth but it'll do.

Is the list of iTunes 200 most downloaded songs a good source for new good songs? Absolutely; this is the closest I've found to a "news alert" about what's new, although new doesn't mean good. For example, everything sung on "Glee" ends up on this list, but fortunately this poop is easy to spot and thus avoid, so that's no sweat. Then there's "The Voice," another series whose output clutters the list; these songs are not in the scope of my hunt because they're not new. They also aren't so much "songs" as "audition exercises."

Other than these shows, there are also a few genres that disproportionately take up space on the iTunes 200 list. One is American dance music, which is the worst genre of 2012 (see Jennifer Lopez, most Usher, anything featuring Pitbull, and a majority of Rihanna's output). The second is hip-hop, which used to be a good genre but in 2012 will make your ears bleed (e.g., "Get Low" by Waka Flocka Flame, "Work Hard, Play Hard" by Wiz Khalifa). For the most part, if a song on iTunes is marked "Explicit," and it's by an artist you you've never heard of, it's probably a hip-hop song from 2012, and therefore is the worst song ever made.

The final genre cluttering up the iTunes Top 200 is tricky to negotiate -- country. There are some new good songs in the country genre (e.g., "Hard To Love" by Lee Brice and "Glass" by Thompson Square), but in general most are bad, and it can be difficult to predict goodness or badness based on title and artist, especially if you're not a country fan. Fortunately, if you click on a country song preview, you can usually tell in 2 seconds whether it's the worst song of all time, by the degree of twang. Usually I only forge into country territory to find new good songs if I have exhausted the rest of the 200.

The iTunes Top 200 has been the source of many new good songs for me this year, including "Midnight City" by M83 and, ages ago, "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye f/ Kimbra. You can, of course, also sort through iTunes lists by genre. This can be very helpful in the alternative genre in particular; it's less useful in R&B and rock, because most of the songs on those lists are not new. That's when you need Wikipedia on your side. More on that to come.