The Story Behind “Closing Time” Is the Perfect Marketing Lesson
By nature, consumers are primed to hate your first product — but they will love the second one
Semisonic’s lead singer Dan Wilson — yes, the same guy who co-wrote Adele’s signature song “Someone Like You”— almost didn’t write his first hit to begin with.
It’s been widely documented that “Closing Time” by Semisonic is a metaphor for a child being born. Of being bounced from the womb and knowing “who I want to take me home.” Mr. Wilson was expecting his first child. But there is so much more to the story aside from the symbolism.
The song almost didn’t get made.
He was fed up. After a decade of playing in small bars, he felt his career had stalled. His plan was to treat the next album “like an art project.”
Luckily, his colleague gave him the secret to commercial success.
The Best Advice Ever
In the songwriting podcast Sodajerker, Dan Wilson discussed the state of his career before the commercial success of “Closing Time.” He said:
I had written a song on the first Semisonic album, the song was called “If I Run.” And my cronies in music all thought that was like a huge hit. And it was a single, but it wasn’t a hit… I really loved that song and a couple of friends of mine were super into that song “If I run.” I was talking to a guy Jim Barber, an A&R guy at the time for Geffen records… I was telling him “The first album I thought was like one smash hit after another, and then we got reviewed really well, and there were no hits.”
He put his all into making the first album which he thought was full of hits. After no hits materialized, he was ready to give up trying to find success in music.
Luckily, his friend Jim had advice for him that would change his life. Here’s how Dan Wilson described the encounter:
Jim said to me “Well here’s the thing: if an artist makes a record and they really really believe in it and it doesn’t succeed, the solution is to do it again. Like the same thing, as close as you can.” Which I thought was really interesting. So I decided I was gonna rewrite the song “If I run” and I would use a similar guitar riff, and I would use the same drum groove in my mind and I would proceed from there.”
Jim Barber knew the commercial world operates in the same way the laws of physics operate in the natural world, nothing occurs in a vacuum. An audience, by nature, doesn’t know what to make of something too new. It confuses them. It’s often worse to be too early than it is to be too late.
“The mind, as a defense against the volume of today’s communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered it. In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience.” — Al Ries & Jack Trout in Positioning book
This is why genres and categories exist, to capitalize off of a well-defined palate. The most successful artists in literature, music, and movies innately understand that the only way to thrill an audience is to work off of its own expectations. Genres come with built-in parameters that you then bend and break to delight consumers.
Success Requires Contextualization
Questlove tells the story of why his group, The Roots, was unknown for so long. Once they figured out the problem, they were able to fix it and immediately found the commercial success they deserved. This is how they changed their fate:
“We had a scientific conversation with our label… No matter how good the records are, unless you build us a movement, it’s never gonna work. No one has ever had success in music without being contextualized in an artistic community. The only people that had success without being part of a movement were the one-hit wonders.” — Questlove on Here’s The Thing podcast
The Roots used their budget to hire vans and chefs. They would host weekly jam sessions in Philadelphia with free transportation and food as an enticement. Soon enough a neo-soul scene formed through these jam sessions, which included Erykah Badu, Mos Def, D’Angelo, and more. The Roots became the front-runners of this movement.
Success only happens by being contextualized within an environment.
This could be an environment that includes other artists, or it can be a self-contained environment that you manufacture through repetition of your work. The key is to whet the appetite first, then capitalize by striking the same spot again.
The author, Dan Brown, knew he had a great character with Robert Langdon. But his first book in the series Angels and Demons didn’t sell. However, his second Robert Langdon book The DaVinci Code — a book with all the same basic elements of the first one — became an instant hit.
Immediately fans circled back and bought the first book too. Both books have now sold millions of copies. And so have all the Langdon books that followed.
As a creator in it for the long-haul, you want to give yourself the best chance to get a hit. So you must operate within a movement or genre.
The problem with existing genres is that as more players enter the fold they become, well… generic.
But fret not. As a creator, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, which we’ll discuss next.
The Law of Category
In the marketing world — whether you’re selling products, services, or entertainment — the goal is to be #1 in your category or genre. The leader gets the most attention, and by way of this, the most revenue.
But when you operate within a pre-existing niche, you’re already facing an uphill battle to become #1. This is where we resort to another popular axiom by the marketing legends Al Ries and Jack Trout. In their book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, they provide essential tools for winning in commerce. The most important law is Law #2, The Law of Category. It goes like this:
“If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.”
With a series, you’re creating your own category or “style” of work. You’re planting your flag in the new territory you claim as your own. That’s how you hit paydirt.
Except, this won’t happen overnight. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed that your first attempt at it will fail. And it’s not because you’re not good. It’s simply because of what we mentioned earlier, consumers are not wired to like something completely fresh.
You Never Strike Gold on the First Swing
How many times have you liked a song the first time you’ve heard it?
How many times have you liked an off-the-wall article of clothing without seeing it first on a peer or icon you admire?
I’m willing to bet the answer is awfully close to zero.
Even the times when you thought you liked it on the first sighting, odds are that you heard or saw it somewhere else prior. It subconsciously seeped into your mind. Maybe you heard the song blasting out of a car passing by you on the street, or scoped some clothing while scrolling on your Instagram feed, etc.
The first interaction is simply priming you for the second time. The second impression is really the first good one.
Have you ever noticed how when you get a specific car — or think of getting a specific car — suddenly you see the same model everywhere?
Did everyone decide to buy the same car at the same time as you? Nope. People aren’t conspiring to steal your tastes, your mind is simply conscious about it now.
This is due to a part of our brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). Tobias van Schneider explains it this way:
“The RAS is the reason you learn a new word and then start hearing it everywhere. It’s why you can tune out a crowd full of talking people, yet immediately snap to attention when someone says your name or something that at least sounds like it.”
This explains why Jim Barber’s advice to Dan Wilson was spot-on: a taste for something can’t be formed from one single dose.
For artists, a brilliant failure doesn’t mean there’s a fault in the system. The system is actually working correctly. Your job is to do it again, in a very similar fashion. This second time you’ll find an audience with an appetite for what you make.
And don’t worry about sounding repetitive or derivative. Remember, no one was really paying attention the first time around. Check out how Dan Wilson described the reaction of his team after he re-worked If I Run into Closing Time. He said:
“I sent it to Jim Barber, my friend, I sent it to my A&R guy Hanz. I played it for John and Jake… And no one said ‘Oh, that sounds just like your other song If I Run,’ no one ever said that. Everybody basically said, you need to write more songs like this, cause this is really great.”
So I implore you. Don’t give up on your quality work. Instead, create a sister piece.
Semisonic ended up having a smash hit with Closing Time. The video is an iconic symbol of 90s pop culture. And the song still gets millions of streams every year, without fail.
Closing Time is so ubiquitous that it even became a sort of running gag in the movie Friends with Benefits starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. In the movie, the main characters confuse the band for another band of that era. This is a sign that Semisonic’s opus successfully represents the category as a whole.
When the hosts of Sodajerker asked Dan if he took offense to his band being the butt of a joke, his answer was very illuminating:
“To me, when the culture bothers to make a mockery of you, it’s totally a good thing. It’s not a problem. It’s good. “— Dan Wilson, lead singer of Semisonic
So don’t give up on the first try. Do it again. Your hit will come.
