I’ve been listening to Mike Lombardo’s live album lately (you can listen to it for free at that link, or be really awesome and buy the album); he’s such a good live performer. One song really stuck out to me, possibly because he’s singing it to a room full of girls: “Piano don’t get chicks.”
The first time I heard this song, I thought, “No freaking way. Musicians always get chicks. That’s part of why the non-musician guys don’t like them.” And this is true, to an extent. There are women who are just drawn to musical guys; this is because of a few, slightly flawed reasons.
- Musicians are creative and passionate, which leads women to think that they’ll be sensitive.
- Musicians often have a group of girls following them, and this leads the woman who is actually attached to said musician to feel more special, like she’s been picked out of a diverse, attractive crowd of women.
- Having a talent and devoting yourself to it requires confidence, and confidence is always attractive.
- They always seem to be at some crazy-awesome-lovely gathering. They have all these experiences that seem to make life more lively and enjoyable. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?
- This is going to be slightly off color, kids, but musicians (and artists) are good with their hands. That’s all I’m going to say.
There are other reasons, I’m sure. I am not going to sit here and tell you that any of that is untrue about musicians, or that girls should stay away from all musician boys. It makes more sense to treat them all as individulals.
The point of the song, “Piano Don’t Get Chicks,” is that guitarists seem to get more girls. I think this is mostly because the guitar is more portable. It’s sort of hard to take your piano down by the Art Institute and go busking. That just doesn’t seem plausible. The line in the song about Billy Joel and Ben Folds is really telling, I think; it’s not that piano doesn’t get the guy chicks, it’s that it doesn’t help them keep chicks. Neither does the guitar.
In the end, the thing that needs to be remembered about any artist (writer, painter, sculptor, musician, graphic artist, filmmaker, photographer, you name it) is that in order to create art, you’ve got to focus a lot on the world around you and your place in it. And often, the process of creating this art is solitary, while the process of getting this art into the world is time consuming, travel heavy, and very public. That’s probably more why piano/guitar/computer/camera won’t keep you chicks.
For the record, I think piano playing is really attractive. There’s something so moving and simple about a song with just a person singing and playing the piano. It takes talent to write songs on any instrument, and that’s just awe-inspiring.
I really meant for this post to be a funny I’ve-got-a-ridiculously-stupid-crush-on-Mike-Lombardo-right-now piece, but I guess that wasn’t in the cards. But, yeah, the point of the post is this: Piano may not get you “chicks,” but it would sure get this chick.
p.s. this video is actually a piano composition written by Tom Milsom, another great piano playing Youtube guy.
