What non-magical songs should a bard know? There’s more to it than you might think.

The Wedding DJ

At a wedding some years back, I got to talking with the DJ about song selection. It was a fascinating conversation that I’ll do my best to recreate, but it was so long ago that I don’t think I can do it verbatim.

He started with a mixtape of generic pop. The main factor was that anything to be chosen for a later purpose was excluded – this is what was left. It was intended to play at the reception while people ate and chatted.

After that, he would go to his library and start selecting music based on crowd response.

He started with some easy listening, even softer stuff than had played through the meal. Again, this was to facilitate conversation until the toasts and such were completed.

Then it became more complicated. Once the toasts were completed, he turned to his list of crowd favorites – “bangers” that never failed to pull people to the dance-floor. He had about ten of these, and would play only two or three of them at this point.

He would then switch to rock and pop classics – songs that you could dance to but that didn’t have the “X” factor that brought people to their feet every time. These gradually grew lighter over the next 45 minutes or so, and then it was time for him to take a break – just in time for the bride and groom to return after changing, and some more speeches.

When those were over, it was round two for the “bangers” – another 2 or 3 of them.

His next selection was based on the age of the bride and groom – if they were kids of the 70s, he played 70’s rock. If they were from the 80s, he played 80s, and so on.

After about 45 minutes, he made a conscious switch to the dance music favored by younger crowds.

About 45 minutes later, as older guests started to say their goodbyes, he played non-dance music from the 50s, 60s, and 70s – the sort of thing that would be inoffensive to the older audience, and he turned the volume down.

Then it was time for the last round of Bangers, including a couple that were a little on the risque side, as he announced that it was time for the party to really begin. The rest of the night was filled with a variety of music, with every fifth song being a non-dance tune to give revelers a chance to have a drink and rest.

If ever the energy began to dip, he would repeat one of his early bangers.

But that was for a standard wedding reception. He also needed a separate playlist for more religious types, and another for Jewish weddings, and a completely separate selection for a wake, and still another for a Birthday party.

All told, he said that he actively maintained about 200 specific variations on different tapes and CD-Roms.

Interpretation

All this was a reflection of applying his music supply to different purposes and different segments of an age-differentiated audience,

Sometimes the purpose was to permit conversation while providing some background filler. Sometimes it was to fill the dance-floor or keep those already there dancing. Always, because weddings are supposed to be happy, upbeat affairs, it was light and positive – no blues or sad songs or breakup songs permitted!

If he was to provide services to a wake, the song selection would be completely different. And, while the selection would not be all that different at a Birthday Party (for an adult), the purposes would be somewhat different, and the whole affair would probably be less rigidly formalized.

Bard Tales & other applications

All this is very useful to a GM because it can be applied to a Bard’s repertoire and things like a jukebox or playlist in any modern/futuristic era.

All that needs to be done is to list the different purposes that a Bard would need to cater for, then come up with 2-3 songs for each purpose.

The list of 10 major categories (and several sub-categories) that I’ve come up with is not exhaustive. Each GM can and should amend it or add to it as they see fit.

    1. Travel Songs

    Songs to make the miles at least seem to pass faster. Often martial in theme, stirring listeners to a March, but some can be more gentle and numbing to the senses. This category also includes epic ballads and such never-ending stories.

    2. Working Songs

    Like Travel Songs, this category is all about setting a rhythm for the performance of some task like chopping wood or harvesting fields.

    3. Celebration Songs

    There would be a couple of generic celebration songs, but for the most part, these will differ according to the subject of the celebration. So I need to go to subcategories.

      3a. Weddings

      Always a festive occasion, even when the bride and groom (or their parents) are at each other’s throats.

      3b. Births

      Children meant a chance of succession, of an heir. All the wee bubs have to do is survive, and sometimes that’s a tall order. Every birth is something to be celebrated in a medieval culture. And at most more modern eras, children tend only to be born when wanted and when the economic circumstances permit it (yes, I know, that’s not the sad reality). But by and large, a successful birth is still something to celebrate.

      3c. Royal Weddings

      I could have put this under several categories, but ‘Weddings” was already here and undeniably appropriately so. A King or high Nobleman becoming married raised the prospect of a royal heir, and a stronger chance of avoiding civil war. That last is worth celebrating, if nothing else.

      3d. Royal Heirs

      Which, logically, leads to the next subcategory. Children always represent hope for the future – if their parents are despotic, you hope that the children will be more enlightened, if their parents are more enlightened, you hope that the child learns from them and becomes a continuation of the same policies.

      Of course,.there’s no certainty that an heir will survive long enough to inherit, especially in more ancient / feudal societies. Heck, right up to the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, medical science was barely begun.

      In modern times, we routinely prevent, cure or treat conditions that were almost-universally fatal back in the day, and infant mortality rates have fallen dramatically as a result. But that’s no reason for complacency, as COVID clearly showed.

      So births were, are, and will continue to be, causes for celebration.

      3e. Age Milestones

      By the same logic, age milestones would or should also be celebrated. At their most general, we’re talking about Birthdays; but there can be many special ages marking the road to maturity that would also be celebrated in song.

      That being said, it’s easy to forget that until it was invented as a target demographic in the 1950s, there was no such thing as a “teenager”. Instead, you went from infant to child to youth. The differences may be subtle, but they can be profound in terms of social expectations.

      It doesn’t take much logic to extend this practice through the age of maturity to milestones later in life. Medieval Cultures had no concept of a retirement age, but they would have had an age of infirmity at which most people who lived long enough were no longer fit to fully work within their profession.

      A Slight Digression: Average Lifespan under the microscope

      It’s perhaps worth digressing for a moment to correct a false impression that many have as to the meaning of an average lifespan. Quite simply, it means as many people die at that age or older as die at that age or younger.

      That means that perceptions can get distorted massively by infant mortality.

      In medieval society, mortality was usually 8%, rocking up to 12% in times of hardship (famine, flood) and as high as 20% if there was a ghastly disease about, which happened once in maybe 10 years.

      This rate persisted until the age of 4 and then started to decline until it was down to around 5% at age 13 or so. In this time, accident and misadventure tended to replace disease as the #1 killer.

      The death rate continues to about 3% at age 17, and it stays there until the age of 25, when it begins an ever-so-slow creep upwards. By age 30, it’s back to 5%; then up 0.5% every year or so until we get to age 50. From this age, the rate of increase doubles until age 60, then doubles again to age 70, and then it levels off abruptly back at a steady 20% or so, until it gets to the oldest recorded age -5, when it leaps up to about 30% and stays there.

      What has to be remembered is that these percentages are not fractions of the total number of people born (i.e. the whole population), they are fractions of those who survived this long.

      So let’s do some simple math and get the average lifespan, and then see what the infant mortality (through to the age of 4) does to it.

      0-6 months: 8% leaves 92%
      6 months – 1 year: 8% x 92% = 7.36%; 92 – 7.36 = 84.64%
      Age 1-2: 8% x 84.64% = 6.77%; 84.64 – 6.77 = 77.87%
      Age 2-3: 8% x 77.87% = 6.23%; 77.87 – 6.23 = 71.64%
      Age 3-4: 8% x 71.64% = 5.73%; 71.84 – 5.73 = 65.91%

      So that’s an overall infant mortality of a fraction over 34%. Essentially, 1 in 3 children die before the age of 4 – under this best-case scenario. But we aren’t initially going to count those – let’s look only at the 2 in 3 that make it this far..

      Age 4-5: 7.667% x 100% = 7.667%; 100 – 7.667 = 92.33%
      Age 5-6: 7.333% x 92.33% = 6.77; 92.33 – 6.77 = 85.56%
      Age 6-7: 7% x 85.56% = 5.99%; 85.56 – 5.99 = 79.57%
      Age 7-8: 6.667% x 79.57% = 5.31%; 79.57 – 5.31 = 74.27%
      Age 8-9: 6.333% x 74.27% = 4.7%; 74.27 – 4.7 = 69.56%
      Age 9-10: 6% x 69.56% = 4.17; 69.56 – 4.17 = 65.39%
      Age 10-11: 5.667% x 65.39% = 3.71%; 65.39 – 3.71 = 61.68%
      Age 11-12: 5.333% x 61.68% = 3.29%; 61.68 – 3.29 = 58.40%
      Age 12-13: 5% x 58.40% = 2.92%; 58.4 -2.92 = 55.48%
      Age 13-14: 4.5% x 55.48% = 2.5%; 55.48 – 2.5 = 52.98%
      Age 14-15: 4% x 52.98% = 2.12%; 52.98-5.12 = 50.86%
      Age 15-16: 3.5% x 50.86% = 1.78%; 50.86% = 49.08%
      Age 16-17: 3% x 49.08% = 1.47%; 49.08 – 1.47 = 47.61%
      Age 17-18: 3% x 46.18% = 1.43%; 47.61 – 1.43 = 46.18%

      It’s easy to see why children were often married as soon as they were physically able to bear young. 55.48% – 46.18% is a difference of 9.3%, and an extra 9.3% children being born – potentially more – is a significant level of population growth.

      I’m using a spreadsheet for these calculations, so I’m just going to hit the high points:

      Age 20-21: 40.88% surviving
      Age 29-30: 30.74% surviving
      Age 32-33: 25.94% surviving
      Age 35-36: 20.86% surviving
      Age 42-43: 10.37% surviving
      Age 47-48: 5.53% surviving
      Age 53-54: 1.9% surviving
      Age 56-57: 1% surviving
      Age 59-60: 0.44% surviving
      Age 63-64: 0.11% surviving
      Age 65-66: 0.05% surviving
      Age 68-69: 0.010 3% surviving

      That doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s still 1 for every 10,000 citizens. A million people and it’s 103 people this age. So let’s keep going:

      Age 75-76: 0.001 02% surviving – or 10 in a million
      Age 85-86: 0.000 11% surviving – or 1 in a million (909,091 if you want to get technical).
      Age 96-97: 0.000 009 4% surviving – or 1 in about 10 million
      Age 106-107: 0.000 001 01% surviving or 1 in about 100 million
      Age 116-117: 0.000 000 11% surviving, or about 1 in 1 billion
      Age 126-117: 0.000 000 008 9% surviving, or about 1 in 10 billion

      (The earth currently has a population of about 8 billion).

      I’ve set the highest recorded age to 131-132.

      To get the life expectancy, I multiply the calculated death rate (adjusting for surviving population) by the age, add up the calculated death rates (should be close to 100 but there’s lots of room for rounding errors to accumulate) and divide the first total by the second.

      With these numbers, I get 22.24 years. And that’s without counting infant mortality. Which tells me that the death rates used are too high, possibly twice what they should be, possibly more.

      If I make that adjustment, I get 33.34, which is more what I expected to see.

      I set out to look at the impact of the infant mortality rate. If I include those youngsters, I get an average age (original death rates) of 15.33, down from 22.24 – a difference of 6.91 years. If I use the lowered death rates, it’s 27.57, down from 33.34, a difference of 5.77 years.

      And if I increase the mortality rates to the plague levels? I get an average lifespan of 9.64 years – down from 15.33 – another 5.69 years.

      Infant mortality can wipe more than 11 years off life expectancy numbers.

      3f. Military Victories

      Getting back on track, songs celebrating (your country’s) military victories are always going to be as popular as the military action was in the first place – while military protest songs will be popular in proportion to the opposition to that military action.

      Songs celebrating World War 2? Popular. Songs critical of the Vietnam conflict? Popular. The difference: public perception of the conflict.

      Pro-war celebratory songs are especially popular with those who served (and survived) a campaign and those currently serving in the military. The canny bard will always look for men of military bearing amongst a crowd of patrons, especially near any kind of military base or fortification.

      3g. Tales of Heroism

      Bards weren’t just the pop music of their day, they were the TVs and cinemas, too. The choice of which type of story to tell would depend on the audience – a dockside tavern is probably not the right place for a sappy love story. Tales of heroes are fairly safe just about everywhere, though.

      3h. Downfall Of A Tyrant

      With this item, a bard heads into dangerous ground, but told at the right time in the right place, this sort of story would hold an audience rapt. If the kingdom has an enlightened ruler, and recently overthrew a tyrant to place said ruler on the throne, this is a safe and welcome choice. If one or both of those things are not true, performing this sort of material is a risky proposition.

      You might still get away with it if your story relates to a tyrannical ruler from the distant past. Any other circumstance combination could end with your head in a noose.

    4. Dance Songs

    How many dance styles are popular, or were popular in recent times, locally? The good bard would know at least two songs suited to each. I don’t know a lot about dance styles, but do know that one defining characteristic is that until the 1950s, virtually all dance styles involved physical contact with the partner. Even in the 1950s, that’s true of some of the styles, but by the 60s, all that had changed. For this reason, it’s not a good idea to simply take a style you know from now and give it a new name – better to choose something older, even if you have to do a bit of research first.

    5. Nature Songs

    Songs that educate as to the nature of things, from a practical standpoint, that educate about the natural world. Lessons set to music in this way are actually often easier to memorize, I don’t know why. It’s not just that they are easier to recall because you have the melody in your head as well as the lyrics.

    6. Politics Songs

    These are educational songs, for example a list of the aristocracy within the current kingdom or known world. Or how the government works. Or the latest court gossip.

    There’s an important social distinction to be made in decided these songs – is dissent tolerated? For a long time, it wasn’t. But it’s perfectly acceptable now to discuss the merits and foibles of current and former heads of sate or members f a political party. That’s a change that came with democracy – in order to elect people, you have to know who they are and what they stand for.

    It’s fair to say that Bards were also the internet of their day!

    I’ve also listed a couple of sub-categories that seemed obvious to me.

      6a. Current Affairs set to Music

      News of the world, my friend. What’s been happening lately?

      6b. History set to Music

      Songs that are tied to significant past events, both within this country and abroad.

    7. Humorous Songs

    This category takes us back into the realm of deliberate entertainment.

    8. Drinking Songs

    It’s also an obvious gateway to this sort of song, which is going to be extremely popular in certain places. I’m not sure that a wedding is the right setting for this category, though.

    9. Bawdy Singalong Songs

    Once a group are sufficiently lubricated by Drinking Songs, it’s time for a good old-fashioned singalong. And the most popular such would be ever so slightly risque I think, simply for the titillation factor.

    10. Children’s Songs

    My last category is one that should be obvious but that’s often overlooked. Not just nursery rhymes, these are songs that are designed to entertain and educate children. They can also be used to evoke a sense of nostalgia in an older audience who were exposed to them as children themselves.

Song Selection

If you were to populate most of these ten categories with ‘classic’ songs (invented, of course), and then let the player use those as a style guide to inventing 1-2 more, you could fill out a bardish repertoire in short order, one unique to each bard.

Not only is this a little bit of personal color to attach to the individual, it enhances the interaction between the bard and any patrons that he seeks to entertain.

You used to hear it bandied about all the time on shows like American Idol – “Song Choice”. The right song at the right time to the right audience and you’ll be a smash hit; get one of these wrong, and you might fall flat. Always remember the lesson of the Wedding DJ, choose your songs to fit the occasion and the purpose of the moment, and integrate your character more closely with the world around them.

Application to other Genres

NB: Links are to artists and songs that are less likely to be known to American / British readers of the modern day.

So let’s step out of the D&D / Fantasy world and into more modern times. Let’s start sometime in the mid-sixties, and a bar of some sort (it might even be a milk bar).

What’s going to be on the jukebox?

I remember talking to the manager of a bowling alley a long time ago – this would have been in the early-to-mid-seventies, and my cousin and I were there because they had this new candy that you couldn’t buy anywhere else, “Moon Rocks” – these days, fairly generic orange-flavored popping candy, but back then, innovative.

He told me that there were “Chick Songs” and “Guy Songs” and a fairly limited crossover between the two. The latter was small enough to be negligible. You wanted your jukebox selection to be 2-to-1 “Chick Songs” because if you had girls present, guys would follow, but if you had too many guys hanging around, it would drive girls away. “You have to get the mix just right,” he said.

It was that last statement that stuck in my memory, because “the mix” means several different things in music.

Again, we’re talking about songs with a purpose, but with a more generic and less-discriminating classification system, and maybe after that we’re into musical styles. How many romantic ballads? How many top-40 just because they’re popular? How many rock songs? How many dance tracks? How many “classics”? and how many “throwbacks”?

(What’s a “throwback”? It’s a song that would have been popular in the clientele’s parents time, but that has managed to cross over to a more youthful market. If we’re talking mid-sixties, Elvis, and “Music To Watch Girls By” (probably the Andy Williams version) and Chubby Checker’s “The Twist”, for example. I can remember one jukebox that I encountered in Sydney that had a couple of songs by Nana Mouskouri and several by Demis Roussos on the playlist!) Some people would argue that Tom Jones and Buddy Holly belong in this bucket as well.

One factor immediately leaps up and demands recognition: once again, the playlist has to reflect the clientele. While both Mouskouri and Roussos had some crossover success, they were most popular with Greek immigrants to Australia; a significant presence on a jukebox means that the owners of the business (a fish-and-chips shop) were probably Greek, and likely, a number of their customers, too.

But let’s disregard that cultural influence and go for a more generic selection.

By far the two most popular bands of the era were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, with the Beach Boys probably in third place. Let’s devote one full column of the jukebox to those artists just because they’re popular.

Right away, there’s another question: is this before or after the “We’re bigger than god” PR gaffe? Where is this jukebox located? If it’s in the North or California in the US, or in the UK, this factor will have negligible impact, but in the south, where there were public burnings of Beatles records as a result, it could make a big difference. Again, it comes back to your clientele demographic and choosing songs that will appeal to them.

Half of the next column will be ‘oldies but classics’ (i.e. Throwbacks) that would still be popular. In Australia, songs like “Evie” by Stevie Wright, “The Real Thing” by Russell Morris, and “Eagle Rock” by Daddy Cool would fill that portion of the playlist – you could still find these on Jukeboxes in the naughtiest here (if you found a jukebox at all)! Other perennial favorites here were / are “Peppermint Twist” by The Sweet and “Venus” by Shocking Blue, sometimes swapped out for “Radar Love” by Golden Earring. I’ve already listed the artists that I think would occupy this slot in the US at the time, in defining the category.

Most jukeboxes have four columns of ten singles each, so that’s 15 out of 40 filled.

Let’s dedicate the rest of the second column to the top five non-Beatles / Stones / Beach Boys songs of the last week. That’s half the jukebox done.

2/3 of the remaining 20 have to be “Chick Songs”, i.e. songs that appeal to girls. Of these, 1/3 can be romantic ballads by male singers, 1/3 by 50s / 60s girl groups like the Chiffons, the Supremes, and so on, and the last 1/3 would be solo or lead female acts. 2/3 of 20 is 13, so that’s 4 of each and one “oddball” that doesn’t fit any classification neatly but that the owner likes.

And that leaves 7 songs that are “guy” songs – “Born To Be Wild” by Steppenwolf is an obvious choice, something by the Troggs, maybe “Hang On Sloopy” by the McCoys, a Kinks song, and 3 others.

And that’s our Jukebox

One final wrinkle

A number of singles got reissued through the years, sometimes as a ‘double-A Jukebox release” – which took one hit song and put another on the “B”-side, not necessarily by the same artist (but from the same label). These were designed to double the number of popular songs on a jukebox, because – let’s be frank – most of the “B”-side songs on the original releases were nowhere near as popular (or as good) as the “A”-sides. There were some notable exceptions, referred to in the music industry as “Double. A-sides” – perhaps the most famous of which is Strawberry Fields Forever / Eleanor Rigby.

This was not at all a common phenomenon, but it would have boosted some of the contents by a handful of popular songs.

Let’s talk Playlists

An evolution of the jukebox that I found fascinating, but that didn’t seem to catch on, was a precursor to the modern playlist.

Instead of a 45 RPM single, the jukebox held entire CDs. You selected a CD and could then pick three tracks from it, or select one and then select a second CD. So you had whole albums to select from. It was extremely popular to use “Greatest Hits” albums in such machines – instead of one, two, or three good tracks, you had 15-20 from each such CD. Also popular were compilation CDs of recent hits (“Now That’s What I Call Music” are the leading providers of such compilations these days, along with the Ministry Of Sound).

But even without such, 40 CDs with 10-12 tracks each is still a range of maybe 440 tracks. I have vague memories of a bar somewhere near the major cinema complexes here in Sydney, having some time to kill before my movie started, and playing Alice Cooper’s “No More Mister Nice Guy” from one of these jukeboxes).

These days, playlists are curated by individuals for specific purposes or moods. “Favorites”, “Workout songs”, “Driving Songs”, “Chill-out Songs” – you name it, and maybe multiple versions of each.

I know one person who curates their playlists by length – 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 60 minutes each.

Ultimately, these are an expression of individuality, and the song choices should therefore say something about the individual – or should they?

Personal musical taste is a perennial topic on Quora and the consensus is always that it’s a personal thing that doesn’t say a darn thing about the personality of the individual. People like what they like. And, furthermore, tastes evolve over time – there are songs that I didn’t think very highly of, 20 years ago, that now have musical merit to me, and some songs that I’ve grown tired of.

Me, I have just one huge playlist with over 4500 songs on it, with the tracks housed on two 8Gb USB sticks – and have run out of room to add more (I guess one of them will have to be upgraded to a 16Gb unit!) Not only does my software merge the contents of both drives, and remember what’s just been playing, it also shuffles the playlist and records that shuffle so that it can pick up exactly where it was up to, the next time I load it. Total continuous playing time is well over 4 weeks – with no repeats.

One Final Word

Let’s be honest, most people can’t sing very well. And most people can’t write songs very well, either. I can write lyrics or compose music, but I have never been good at putting the two together.

When you name a song, write a quick description – no more than a line. Don’t, for the love of heaven, write full lyrics for the song. No, no, no! Not only do you not have time to recite them in play, but the other players and GM have too much to do to try and interpret your attempted poetic leanings. It might be different if you were a successful musician in real life – but most of the time, that won’t be the case.

The other reason is that this is an attempt to steal and hold the spotlight for the length of your song – but most of the evening is going to be hand-waved. If you stick to just song titles and descriptions, you can cue the GM as to what the expected reaction is from the crowd, and together cab duet your way to a more satisfying scene for all concerned.

Let’s end with these famous lines from The Blues Brothers:

    “What kind of music do you usually get here?”
    “Oh, we got both kinds, Country and Western.”

EDIT 3 October 2024

Lots of useful information and ideas can be gleaned from this article, discovered long after the above was published: Shakespeare, Kings, and Commoners All Loved These Hit English Ballads by Indi Bains | Atlas Obscura.


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