How to make hit records, free advice on writing, making and producing hit records.

Sorry for delay ... been living at Cumberland Hotel, London for a while with back to back TV/Radio etc.

Reading from lyrics on stage is a bad habit to get into. I would suggest that, if they are your own lyrics, then they may not be 'great' lyrics? I have always found that great, well written, commercial lyrics are easy to remember and badly written ones are hard .... perhaps you simply have too many words? As my brother always says when he is expected to remember a huge amount of words: "how the h*ll am I expected to remember all these?" ... Great songs have very few words ..

'Somewhere' which is getting huge reaction on our chart album 'I Believe - The Best of The Bachelors' has so few words ... but it is a classic.

Yes, we all find it difficult to remember lyrics for the first half dozen times we sing them .... some guys write cue words on their hands ... or even on shirt cuffs! Some will write in big type ... the cue words to lines, and place them on the floor or on a monitor speaker.

Most big artists now have the lyrics running on autocue ... a computer screen that looks like a wedge monitor. Barbra Streisand got bad revues for having them projected on the back wall of Wembley Arena .. I am told she has big trouble remembering words. Mainly because she does not tour constantly as Con and I do.

The big problem is with artists who are not performing regularly .... there can also be problems with performing in strange venues ... we have that problem .. for instance, performing one of our hits on TV .... it is so easy to be thrown and forget the words to one of our hits ... but we may ask for large cue cards or the like ... or even autocue.

I recently saw Tony Hadley [Spandau Ballet] sing an entire set of songs he had never sung before .. live with an 18 piece swing orchestra and he read every word from a TV screen in front of him! We laughed about it afterwards - the audience did not suspect a thing.

There are various systems for learning lyrics, just as actors have to remember their lines ... read them three or four times immediately before you switch the light out to sleep ... read them first thing when you wake in the morning. Because your brain is half way between the waking active brain and the subconscious sleeping brain it will imprint into the subconscious.

With difficult lyrics, you can memorise the first letter of each line like a rhyme ... so it would be B, D, T, S ... for American Pie ...

I use that method and also a method of designing a choreography for the song ... so when I wave a finger that would be 'Bye' ... two hands as if I was steering a car would be 'drove' .... Spreading my hand to encompass a load of people would be 'Them' .. and finally two fingers to the side of my mouth would be 'Singing' ... that would give me the entire chorus of American Pie .... that is my favourite method ... and looks good ... it is part of the NSP system: Neuro Linguistic Programming.

Finally, having learned a new song ... go on stage with the lyrics written on a sheet and placed in a pocket .... it is surprising that that trick works ... it is a mental reminder ... a comfort blanket.

Regards - I hope this helps

'One Minute With Dec'

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