What YouTube tells me about my music (Part 2)

In this series, we are looking at what YouTube’s Hot Spot tool can tell us about our music.  You can read the first part here.

Sometimes, what the tool tells you is not really flattering.  I want to show you one of those examples today.  You can watch it here: I Am Bound for the Promised Land.

Here is the chart:

As you can easily see, this song never really gets off the ground. Strangely it does recover a bit at the end.

So what goes wrong here?  I have always sort of known the truth.  Essentially, it is a cute, bouncy little song but it goes nowhere.  There is no compelling story. 

Stylistically, the song was out of my comfort zone when I recorded the track and I really did not know how to shape it with the instruments I used (bass, drums, and fiddle).  I tried to make it work with some improvisational trading between me and the fiddle, but in the end of the day, this song falls into a category that I always try to avoid–light and pretty shallow.  It is not anyone’s fault besides mine.

Of course, this is all not as clear cut as it may seem.  For example, I know that this kind of a song works better in a live concert than on a recording.  In fact, I have not put it on a recording.  In a concert, I need some lighter stuff for variety so this song fits that need.

But over all, this is not one of my better efforts and this chart tells the story.