peter posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
Rick Beato did a video about an open secret in the music industry, that pro songwriters — sometimes producers — write songs for a great deal of today’s young pop stars. The stars might want a lyric changed here and there to fit their style, but often have almost no involvement in the songwriting. In fact, several years ago a group of songwriters who wrote hit songs for major pop stars did a big lawsuit to try to at least ensure they had some publishing credit, as some of the pop stars will want full publishing credits, as that’s where most of the money in recorded music is at. Rick calls out a notable exception to the rule, Billy Elish and her brother, Fineas, who actually write their own music (and are very talented).
My take is that it’s not going to change anytime soon, but I would prefer that the pop stars didn’t get publishing royalties when they weren’t involved in writing the song. Evlis was neither a songwriter nor a musician. Early on, he was doing covers of songs originally written and performed by other artists. After he achieved success, he had pro songwriters write songs just for him. I think that’s reasonable. Not every singer is a songwriter, and not every musician — or every band — is a talented songwriter. The real songwriters and credit for their work and shouldn’t be pushed into a situation — which is now the norm — where they have to put the pop star’s / singer’s name on the credits so they can get royalties and take credit for the songwriter’s work.
What do you think?
https://musictech.com/news/industry/rick-beato-modern-popstars-songwriting/
5 Comments
Quincy Jones shared, shortly before his death, that other people would write with Michael Jackson and he would refuse to give them credit purely out of greed. I can’t recall the exat tune he cited bfore, but I think it was the bridge in “Human Nature” that Jones aid keyboardist Greg Phillinganes wrote. Jones said he tried to persuade Jackson to do the right thing, but he refused and did it to other musicians too. But I think with company or contracted writers — they’re beholden to what the record company or star works out if they want the work. It’s a take it or leave it machine, from my understanding. Not that I know anyone who is currently writing for a major lable, I don’t. At most, I know people with indie and minor record deals, and used to know the Chicago indie record label heads of Touch & Go Records, Alligator Records, and Pravda Records — that I worked with during my college days — one hundred years ago.
Paul McCartney did the same to a lot of musicians, I think they learned a lot off of each other, met the guy who wrote most of the guitar and instrumental parts for live and let die, can’t remember the fella’s name now but yeah, totally did this back then.
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I’m a huge McCartney fan, and I’ve never heard that, and I’ve had a number of chats with one of Paul’s former drummers, Chris Whitten. Chris spoke very well of Paul. I asked Chris if Paul was really bossy with the musicians, and Chris told me that Paul was always really easy going and was never like that. Plus, Paul wrote “Live and Let Die” and George Martin did the string arrangement. What’s the person’s name that you know who told you that? I would think the guy is full of sh*t.
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Here’s an early version of the song with McCartney playing the piano. McCartney plays the key parts of the song.
I watched this video a couple days ago. It’s unfortunate that songwriters may not be getting a fair deal, but if there is a “free market”, are they not able to choose a different artist / agreement? I really don’t know if most musical acts are under a single “megacorp” that could be considered a monopoly, which would be an anti-trust issue. If not, them’s the breaks I guess.