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Why are pop stars given so much credit for songs they didn't write?


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Old 06-09-2015, 17:48
SummerShudder
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100 page thread praising Black Magic and how great Little Mix are. They are simply singing a song someone else wrote. They didn't create it.

Taylor Swift is huge now. Wonder why? Oh...it's because Max Martin is now writing her songs...

Katy Perry...massive...who writes her songs? See above.

Rihanna...biggest star in the world...can't write a song to save her life though...shame.

Rita Ora...she's everywhere! Apart from being at home writing songs which is what most musicians do with their time.

Beyoncé...an icon of a generation...how to buy songwriting credits and influence people.

Adele...great voice...good job Ryan Tedder's around to give her a song to sing.

Co-writing...yeah I'm sure they enlisted those professional songwriters to "collaborate". Yeah right. They are professional songwriters for a reason. They have come up with most of the song believe me. Would you hire Gordon Ramsey to add salt to your meal or cook the full course?

All you see on Pop star's album covers is their face. It's all about them. They win all the awards. Yet have minimal input to the songs that people enjoy.

Long live artists who write and play their own songs. And who funnily enough don't feel the need to plast their face on the cover.

My beef is with how famous they get and all the attention they get due to music they didn't create. Not with the music itself.
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Old 06-09-2015, 18:36
RikScot
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Elvis Presley.
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Old 06-09-2015, 18:37
sarahcs
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Frank Sinatra?
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Old 06-09-2015, 18:41
Hollie_Louise
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I don't know, why are actors given so much credit for movies or TV show they didn't write?
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Old 06-09-2015, 18:43
sarahcs
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I don't know, why are actors given so much credit for movies or TV show they didn't write?
Ooh good point. I agree with a lot of the OP but that has made me think.
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Old 06-09-2015, 18:50
mystery23
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double post
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Old 06-09-2015, 18:51
mystery23
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I don't know, why are actors given so much credit for movies or TV show they didn't write?
Completely agree with this. Unless the singer is incorrectly billed as a 'singer songwriter' then I don't see a problem

They are called 'singers' and that is exactly what they do
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Old 06-09-2015, 18:57
Hollie_Louise
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There are also plenty of singer-songwriters who don't get the credit they deserve. Mariah Carey has 18 US #1singles, she wrote or co-wrote 17 of them. I think every song except for covers that appear on a Mariah album are written by her. She rarely gets acknowledged as a successful songwriter.
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Old 06-09-2015, 22:13
mgvsmith
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100 page thread praising Black Magic and how great Little Mix are. They are simply singing a song someone else wrote. They didn't create it.
...

Long live artists who write and play their own songs. And who funnily

My beef is with how famous they get and all the attention they get due to music they didn't create. Not with the music itself.
I just wonder why you consider artists who write their own songs superior?
Solo singer/songwriters are comparatively rare, songwriting is actually often a collaborative exercise anyway. For example, U2 have written some great music but it is a collaborative effort between Bono and The Edge. When Joy Divison produced their great works it was a collaboration between the band and their producer, Martin Rushent.
Coldplay are the same.

Some of the artists you mention have worked in a collaborative manner (Adele, Little Mix, Taylor Swift). It just happens to be with songwriters.

What's wrong with simply being a songwriter and not a performer for example?
Pop music has always had this division of labour to differing degrees.
It has never stopped great pop music having been created by a collaboration of singers and songwriters which is the way I look at it.
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Old 06-09-2015, 22:27
Hollie_Louise
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I'm not a fan but are we also going to forget that Taylor Swift has always been successful in America, even before she began working with Max Martin?

She had sold around 19/20 million albums worldwide before she worked with Max Martin. Most of the songs that made up those three albums were written entirely by Swift herself.
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Old 06-09-2015, 22:37
mgvsmith
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I don't know, why are actors given so much credit for movies or TV show they didn't write?
In cinema, the tension is between the Director and the Screen Writer and who can really claim authorship of a movie.

I think making movies and making music are most often collaborative efforts.
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Old 06-09-2015, 22:47
FMKK
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There is an element of bizarre hero worship of pop stars who are just ciphers for record company bean counters who are trying to shift records though pumping out bland, lowest common denominator tripe.

But there is also something to be said for the personality of the singer coming through when singing material written by others, giving it a unique flavour and making it recognisable beyond what it would be without their contribution. A perfect example of this would be Elvis - his voice is strong and distinctive and his inflections and ad libs are unmistakeable. Just because he didn't write a song doesn't mean that he didn't make it his own with his personality and performance. Obviously not every singer can be Elvis but I think someone like Rihanna has some of that quality too, even if it's just her Barbadian accent that makes her stand out.

And there's also a danger of fetishising 'credible' artists who write there own songs when the music isn't necessarily any good. For example, Ed Sheeran is lauded as a credible artist because he writes his music but it's all bland and boring as hell as far as I'm concerned and I would much rather listen to something 'manufactured' like Motown records instead.
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Old 06-09-2015, 22:53
pmw_hewitt
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I'm with you to a degree, especially with artists who demand songwriting credits for tracks they had no hand in. But the way I see it is there about five or six major attributes to making it as a legendary artist. One of those attributes is the ability to compose genuinely good songs, but ultimately if you're not writing your own songs, yet have everything else in spades then it really doesn't matter.

Therefore it doesn't really matter that Elvis Presley wasn't a songwriter - he had absolutely everything else necessary.
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Old 06-09-2015, 23:11
Hollie_Louise
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There is an element of bizarre hero worship of pop stars who are just ciphers for record company bean counters who are trying to shift records though pumping out bland, lowest common denominator tripe.

But there is also something to be said for the personality of the singer coming through when singing material written by others, giving it a unique flavour and making it recognisable beyond what it would be without their contribution. A perfect example of this would be Elvis - his voice is strong and distinctive and his inflections and ad libs are unmistakeable. Just because he didn't write a song doesn't mean that he didn't make it his own with his personality and performance. Obviously not every singer can be Elvis but I think someone like Rihanna has some of that quality too, even if it's just her Barbadian accent that makes her stand out.

And there's also a danger of fetishising 'credible' artists who write there own songs when the music isn't necessarily any good. For example, Ed Sheeran is lauded as a credible artist because he writes his music but it's all bland and boring as hell as far as I'm concerned and I would much rather listen to something 'manufactured' like Motown records instead.
Not sure if this is what you mean but I think it is. An example of it (or at least what I think you mean) is Mary J Blige's No More Drama.

It's a song that Mary didn't write herself but is written with her story in mind and she delivers it with passion and heart every time. I thought until very recently she had written it. But then you can hear songs like Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran for example. It's written by him but he never performs it with any kind of passion. I know which I would prefer.
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Old 06-09-2015, 23:21
FMKK
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Not sure if this is what you mean but I think it is. An example of it (or at least what I think you mean) is Mary J Blige's No More Drama.

It's a song that Mary didn't write herself but is written with her story in mind and she delivers it with passion and heart every time. I thought until very recently she had written it. But then you can hear songs like Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran for example. It's written by him but he never performs it with any kind of passion. I know which I would prefer.
I don't know the song but yeah, that's an example. It doesn't even need to be a song written with the singer in mind though. I think Elvis Presley for example elevates a lot of the material he was given through his vocal performances. He's as much a part of the song (and it's success) as any writer.
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Old 06-09-2015, 23:25
Hollie_Louise
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I don't know the song but yeah, that's an example. It doesn't even need to be a song written with the singer in mind though. I think Elvis Presley for example elevates a lot of the material he was given through his vocal performances. He's as much a part of the song (and it's success) as any writer.
Definitely agree with you.

(And get to know the bloody song, unless you don't like R&B then don't bother )
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Old 06-09-2015, 23:31
FMKK
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Added to my 'up next' pile on Spotify after some ABBA!
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Old 06-09-2015, 23:39
Hollie_Louise
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To be honest, I think the live performances are better. She's not pitch perfect in live performances of NMD but the emotion is there so much.

And ABBA, really? God, and I thought my taste was bad
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Old 06-09-2015, 23:43
FMKK
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To be honest, I think the live performances are better. She's not pitch perfect in live performances of NMD but the emotion is there so much.

And ABBA, really? God, and I thought my taste was bad
I ditched Raw for Simon and Garfunkel on Monday night and took dog's abuse on the WWE thread for it!

I agree generally on live performances too. I would rather see character, personality and emotion coming through than insisting on it being note perfect every time. That's what makes it special.
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Old 06-09-2015, 23:46
Hollie_Louise
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I ditched Raw for Simon and Garfunkel on Monday night and took dog's abuse on the WWE thread for it!

I agree generally on live performances too. I would rather see character, personality and emotion coming through than insisting on it being note perfect every time. That's what makes it special.
Whose dog? Dog The Bounty Hunter was on our thread on Monday :O.
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Old 07-09-2015, 00:00
StandByMe89
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I think it's fine for singers to just be singers, I loathe when they buy writing credits and claim to be the writers... that's wrong. One of the modern singers who admitted she didn't write a word was the late Aaliyah, she openly said she likes to tell her writers what she wanted to say, but she didn't write it, she liked to be the singer.

Beyonce does use writers, which is fine, but like someone said she is known for buying writing credits, or adding a couple of lines, changing words. I remember NE-YO was pissed about it during Irreplaceable's take off.
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Old 07-09-2015, 05:26
mgvsmith
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There are a lot of references to Elvis on this thread. Elvis originally did get credit for songwriting on his recordings in much the way current artists claim credit to get the royalties, probably the idea of Colonel Parker but I'm not sure.

Elvis was unusual for a pop singer of his time, he knew gospel, r&b, jazz and country, that's what probably helped change the course of popular music. His main songwriters included the legendary Leiber and Stoller (Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock'), Otis Blackwell (All Shook Up, Don't Be Cruel), Davis and Strange (A little less conversation, In the Ghetto)..many of these guys wrote many other great hits for other artists. I think they are deserving of a bit of credit too.

There has been a tendency to elevate the singer/songwriter since Dylan and the Beatles turned up and I appreciate their brilliance. But music is both a creative and an expressive art and it's not always the creative that should be elevated over the expressive or interpretative. Here's Aretha Franklin's version of Bacharch and David's 'I Say a Little Prayer' who makes the song what it is, the writers or the singers?
http://youtu.be/KtBbyglq37E
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Old 07-09-2015, 06:29
Brummy Girl
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I just wonder why you consider artists who write their own songs superior?
Solo singer/songwriters are comparatively rare, songwriting is actually often a collaborative exercise anyway. For example, U2 have written some great music but it is a collaborative effort between Bono and The Edge. When Joy Divison produced their great works it was a collaboration between the band and their producer, Martin Rushent.
Coldplay are the same.


Some of the artists you mention have worked in a collaborative manner (Adele, Little Mix, Taylor Swift). It just happens to be with songwriters.

What's wrong with simply being a songwriter and not a performer for example?
Pop music has always had this division of labour to differing degrees.
It has never stopped great pop music having been created by a collaboration of singers and songwriters which is the way I look at it.
The BIB is similar to Queen. All 4 members of Queen wrote songs for the group and not necessarily all together. Freddie would often sing songs which were written by one of the other 3 which he had no hand in. Some of their biggest hits were ones written by either one of Brian, Roger or John.
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Old 07-09-2015, 08:22
Johnny_Cash
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I am with the OP up to a point, I think they miss the mark a little on Taylor Swift, she has been building success with each album, 1989 just made it more accessible and more popular with critics that didnt want to be seen liking country music. Max Martin has certainly helped but its wrong to suggest that Swift is the same kind of puppet as Little Mix.
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Old 07-09-2015, 14:36
The_Bonobo
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Some good points here on both sides of the argument. One issue I would add regarding much of the current crop is the influence of management or the record company and so on. For instance, someone singing a cover or even just a song written by someone else can be fine and the singer still may deserve credit for how it turns out. There are many examples (e.g. Beatles Twist and Shout, Michael Jackson Man in the Mirror, David Bowie Sorrow) from artists who are also known for writing much/most of their material.

Where it gets dodgy is when the song selection is made by a committee of suits and the writing is done by a team of "professional songwriters" who are constructing music based on formulas and prescribed expectations with little thought of artistry. This leads to product that has more in common with a new design for the Coca-Cola can than anything else. Artists (e.g. singer/songwriters or songwriters with freedom) will take risks and try to create something that feels new or challenging. Business minded executives will have the opposite instinct and it seems that they have dominated the process for many years in mainstream pop.

One aspect of all this that intrigues me is that the current climate is quite similar to what it was like in the pre-Beatles era. The change that then happened was obviously caused by many factors so it may not happen again but maybe at some point we will see another shift where the artists (i.e. writers and performers with genuine desire for creativity) take control.
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