What Makes A Good Song Good?

Yesterday Stevie Wonder won the Library Of Congress Gershwin Prize For Popular Song.

According to one report, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said, "The Gershwin Prize was created to honor an artist whose creative output transcends distinctions between musical styles and idioms, bringing diverse listeners together, and fostering mutual understanding and appreciation." He also said that "Stevie Wonder's music epitomizes this ideal."

So in this case a good song is at least in part about fostering cultural understanding -- fairly specific, really. (And funnily enough not something the Gershwins were so big on -- unless you think espousing having rhythm is one way of fostering cultural understanding.)

But the awarding of this prize made me -- and perhaps will make you -- start thinking anew about what makes a good popular song. Particularly in light of the new programming on CBC R2 -- with a show like Radio 2 Drive, which is really about songs and songwriters. What makes a good song? How do you decide? Why is it that what is "dreck" to one person is gold to another?

For example, someone commented recently on the blog that one song they heard, Woody Guthrie/Billy Bragg's Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key, was terrible. Others think the exact opposite. Still others (like me) think it's a very sweet song -- if not one of Guthrie's most significant. But is there really something to hold up as a template of Good Song by which to judge?

We could always invoke the WWGT? clause. (What, you don't ask, "what would Gershwin think?" on a daily basis?) But who can even know what George or his lovely wife Ira would even make of songs written in such different times than their own. The principles of good songwriting are not permanently and universally enshrined. And formulaic is only formulaic for a period of time, right?

No answers suggested in this post, just questions -- and I'm genuinely curious as to what others think. What do you think makes a good song good?