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Pursuits: The singer-songwriter fascism has finally been overthrown

Personally, I blame John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Until the duo came along, there was a clear division between the people who wrote the songs and the people who sang them.

Frank Sinatra never wrote any of his hits. Nor, for that matter, did Elvis Presley. Singers were content to take material written by professional song writers and to interpret it.

 

   In the early days, the Beatles recorded songs by other song writers. For instance, both Twist and Shout and Please Mr Postman, which were popular early Beatles songs, were written by other people.

 

   But then, Lennon and McCartney discovered that they were better songwriters than most of the professionals they depended on. Suddenly, the vast majority of Beatles material was self-penned. Eventually, the Beatles stopped recording other people’s songs and even George Harrison, who had previously shown no talent for song writing turned into a great writer, penning such classics as Here Comes The Sun, Something and While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

 

   It was Lennon and McCartney who taught Mick Jagger and Keith Richards that song writing could be easy and profitable. The two Beatles wrote I Want To Be Your Man for the Rolling Stones and when Mick and Keith saw how easy it was, they started writing such songs as The Last Time.

 

   By the mid 60s, there was a clear division between artists who wrote their own material and were, therefore, taken seriously and those who recorded songs by other people and were treated as mere pop stars. Eventually, many of the song writers decided to become singers themselves. Some like Jim Webb (who wrote McArthur Park, Wichita Lineman, etc.) fared poorly as performers. But some stalwarts of the Brill Building, a New York landmark from which song writers operated, became stars in their own right. Carole King had the biggest selling solo album of the early 70s (Tapestry) and Neil Diamond became a popular singer though I doubt if his solo material ever approached the quality of I Am A Believer, which he wrote for The Monkees.

 

   As time went on, the singer-songwriter fascism reached intolerable levels. When Simon and Garfunkel broke up, nobody took Art Garfunkel seriously (even though he is a magnificent singer) because it was Paul Simon who wrote all the songs. And good bands were often destroyed by their inability to write good songs because the prevailing ethos prevented them from recording other people’s material.

 

   Of course, the pop sector continued to flourish on the basis of professional song writers. But pop stars never had the credibility of rock stars and interpretive singers were never taken seriously.

 

   I am not into the popular music of the last few years but what pleases me is that the singer-songwriter fascism has finally been overthrown. The great hits of today are nearly all written by professional song writers. Few of today’s big stars write their own music. Nor does it seem to matter. When you hear a song by Rihanna or Beyonce, you don’t worry about its authorship. You just enjoy the music.

 

   In that sense, the music industry has gone back in time. Before the influence of the Beatles became all pervasive, such powerful producers as Phil Spector called the shots. They would rely on such Brill Building song writers as Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and Jeff Barry, to write songs to their specifications.

 

"In this age of tiny attention spans, research has shown that people listen to a new song for between seven to ten seconds before deciding whether to switch to the next track."

   In this decade, the producer is king once again. Such producers as Stargate, David Guetta, The Neptunes, The Matrix and Dr Luke are the most important people in pop music these days. The way it works is that these producers programme the beats, work out the chord sequences and arrange the computerised ‘synths’, the musical notes on the track.

 

   Once a basic track is ready, the producers call in a writer or, as they are known these days, a top-liner. A top-liner goes into the studio, hears the track and then suggests a melody for the song. Lyrics are not a particularly important part of the equation except for hooks.

 

   In the old days, the hook was the term used to describe what outsiders would call the chorus, the bit of the song that stayed with you after you had heard it. Traditionally, the hook came after a couple of verses of lyrics. (Think of Jumping Jack Flash. You have to hear quite a few words before you get to ‘But it’s all right now...’.) In this age of tiny attention spans, research has shown that people listen to a new song for between seven to ten seconds before deciding whether to switch to the next track. If Jumping Jack Flash came out today, the majority of listeners would have given up on the song long before they got to the hook. So, today’s producers like to load their songs with multiple hooks. There will be a hook in the intro, a hook before the chorus, the traditional hook which is the chorus, and then, yet another hook in the bridge. These hooks are not necessarily all lyrical. In Rihanna’s S&M, the hook is ‘Na na na na, come on’. In Nicki Minaj’s Superbass, the hook is ‘Boom, badoom, boom, boom, badoom, boom, bass/yeah, that’s that super bass’.

 

   Even when lyrics are used, it is catchphrases that are important. ‘Make me come alive’, ‘Are you big enough?’, or ‘I want it all night’, pass for lyrical genius in the context of today’s hit music. The job of the songwriter is to provide both melodic and lyrical hooks which can be overlaid once the producer’s basic track is ready.

 

   Usually, a singer like Kelly Clarkson will be sent hundreds of demo recordings by producers which will contain complete songs. The singer and her management will sift through the demos and choose one for the next single. This is not that new. In the old days, songwriters also sent out demos to artists. But if an artist liked a demo then he or she re-recorded the entire song. Now, the singer merely adds a vocal track to the music that is already been programmed by the producer.

 

   It is easy to be snobbish about today’s singers and the way in which the music industry now operates. And yes, it is true that we are not going to get another A Day In The Life from music recorded this way. Nor, for that matter, are we going to get great Brill Building classics like Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.

 

   But, on the other hand, at least we are not all going to have to worship at the shrine of singers who write their own material or have to pretend that we are interested in Ozzy Osbourne’s mastery of lyrics and his creative expression.

 

   Any fascism is bad. And all liberation is always welcome.

 


 

CommentsComments

  • somanth karaunakaran 19 May 2012

    Vir, You really bring back memories of the past when u mention these yesteryear artistes, for me we were brought up in the Beatle,Elvis era and will always be their die hard fan, thanks for bringing back fond memories................

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