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End of the singer-songwriter fetish by Steve Sailer UPI, January 10, 2001 |
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The constant pitter-patter of the music industry congratulating itself on TV -- the American Music Awards, the VH1 Awards, the Grammy nominations, and on and on -- tends to blur long-term trends. But one fundamental shift in popular music is now clear. The long stranglehold of the singer-songwriter fetish on the public's taste is finally eroding. Pop music is returning to a pre-rock style division of labor. Before Bob Dylan made it mandatory for songwriters to prove the authenticity of their tunes by croaking them out in their own voices, pop music was made by teams of specialists. In the 1950s, no one had looked down on Frank Sinatra for singing a Cole Porter tune arranged by Nelson Riddle and played by outstanding session men. It would have seemed as silly for Sinatra to pen his own jingles as for Marilyn Monroe to write her own scripts. Of course, the recent revival of specialization has yet to produce much to compete with Sinatra's Capitol Records Sessions. Instead, we've gotten mostly Britney Spears lip-syncing to Max Martin ditties. Still, contemporary stars have far more demands put on them. Spears doesn't have time to write songs, for example, because she is too busy changing her clothes. While hosting the American Music Awards, she appeared to have undertaken a costume change for almost every award. The crush of media demands can be so overwhelming today that few singers older than Spears or Christina Aguilera have the stamina to meet them, unless you're Tina Turner. Further, the top pop acts today emphasize complex choreography far more than the rock stars of the 1960s and '70s. The black groups of the past that took choreography seriously, like the Temptations, tended not to write that many of their own songs, either. Cartoonist Garry Trudeau of "Doonesbury" fame and others used to ridicule Gladys Knight's Pips because they didn't conform to their romantic prejudice that a performer should be an all-around creative artist rather than a highly professional expert in his field. Today, however, stylistic descendents of the Pips, such as the Backstreet Boys and N' Sync, rule the charts. Further, the decline in prejudice against singing other composers' songs has gone hand in hand with the '90s' obsession with "divas." The new tolerance for greater specialization has allowed women with athletic voices, such as Celine Dion and Whitney Houston, to retake the spotlight after a long period ruled by men. Even today, there are few comparable male vocal talents. The country singer Randy Travis is one of the few examples of a male singer who is a star simply because he has great pipes. The roots of the singer-songwriter fetish stretch back to the early days of rock and roll. This new kind of song was simple enough for a young performer to compose and arrange. Chuck Berry, for example, sang, played guitar, and wrote his own lyrics. Berry's piano player, however, recently sued him for royalties on the music to "Johnny B. Goode" and the other classics, which he claims -- with some evidence -- to have written for Berry. Buddy Holly wrote some of his own hits in the late '50s, but far fewer than the "The Buddy Holly Story" indicated. This 1978 movie felt compelled to portray Holly as a '70s-style singer-songwriter. In reality, Holly's producer, Norman Petty, contributed at least as much as he. Still, even up to 1964, the notion that there was something fake about a performer who didn't write his own material was almost unknown. Elvis Presley did enjoy co-writing credits on many of his hits. That, however, was simply because Col. Tom Parker shook down any songwriter who wished to have Elvis perform his new composition. The composer had to give up half his royalties in return for Elvis making it a sure hit. Berry Gordy ran Motown like a '30s movie studio. Smokey Robinson could have sung his "My Girl" himself, for example. Yet, it made better sense for the label for the more vocally gifted Temptations to record it. The incredibly prolific trio of Dozier-Holland-Dozier wrote endless hits for the Supremes, the Four Tops and others. Yet, they are little known today because they stayed behind the scenes. Seeing themselves as a tribute band, the early Rolling Stones had no interest in writing new songs. They believed the Mississippi Delta bluesmen had written all the songs worth singing. There would be something sacrilegious in English kids trying to write new rhythm and blues tunes. In fact, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards didn't start writing until their manager locked them in his kitchen and told them they couldn't come out until they had written a song. After eating all his food, they finally decided they didn't have anything better to do than write. In the mid-'60s, the tide turned. Ably preceded by the Beach Boys, the Beatles vividly showed that it was possible for rock musicians to sing, play, and compose well. Yet, Dylan was the true revolutionary. When his imposing "Like a Rolling Stone" broke through to the mass audience in 1965, he showed that it was possible for a songwriter to sing wretchedly -- and get away with it. In fact, audiences admired his incompetence. They felt it made his songs sound more "real." While this became a tremendous era for stylistic innovation, the cost of Dylanism came in a decline in singing quality, especially among men. Lyric-writing deteriorated as well, with lyrics becoming increasingly incoherent. Of course, the drugs didn't help, either. The change in taste can be quantified by comparing the top-10 selling albums of the '60s to the '70s. Until the late '60s, youths bought 45 rpm singles, while only affluent grown-ups could afford 33 rpm LP disks to play on their cabinet-sized stereos. That's why in the '60s, only two of the top 10 albums (the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's" and "A Hard Day's Night") consisted of songs written by the performers. By the '70s, however, the singer-songwriter obsession had triumphed. Of the top 10 albums of that decade, only the soundtrack to "Grease" was written by specialist composers. Subscribe
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