The Amount of Solo-Written Hits Has Slipped from 51% to 2% in the Last 40 Years
That’s the somewhat anecdotal, but still troubling conclusion of a recent analysis by ‘Billboard.’
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If you really want to pinpoint the problems with American popular music, you have to look beyond the bad songs and silly pop stars to the systematical ways modern music is being constructed in the industry. Just like much of life in the modern world, the business of making music is becoming streamlined, automated, and governed by cost controls instead of quality controls in an environment that no longer allows for risk or experimentation.
The germination of any song is when an artist or songwriter puts pen to paper. The romantic notion of songwriting is one of an artist finding themselves in the throes of inspiration—whether it’s love, heartbreak, anger, or joy—and wanting to share those feelings with the world. For many years, this was how the greatest songs were written: etched on cocktail napkins at bars, scribbled on hotel stationary at 2 a.m., or written on a legal pad on a back poach accompanied with a guitar and a cup of black coffee on a brisk morning.
Today, the more likely scenario for how a song is written is scheduled meetings in cubicle farms, or collaborations on Skype with individuals who are credited as songwriters, but are better described as producers or programmers. Ideas are thrown out in collaborative form, and then workshopped in a group setting. Before you know it, who had the original idea for the song, or what the inspiration behind it was is lost in the process.
In a recent article in Billboard, just how pervasive songwriting collaborations have become was spelled out in stark statistical form. On October 24th, there were only two songs on the Billboard Hot 100 that were written by one person. This is compared to 1975 when 51 of the top 100 songs were written by one individual. 41 songs in 1985 were solo writes, 32 songs in 1995, and just 14 in 2005. Clearly the era of the solo written hit is coming to a close, if it hasn’t already.
Some of the reasons for the shift are more obvious than others. The use of samples has caused the need to cite multiple songwriters for a given project to skyrocket. The advent of “360 deals” with record labels, where an artists signs into an agreement to share revenue with a label not just for the music, but for songwriting, merchandise, touring, etc., has resulted in an explosion of performers receiving songwriting credits for the songs they record, whether they were seminal to the composition or not. Under the long-practiced ‘third for a word‘ rule, anyone participating in a song receives equal songwriting credits as the other participants.
Sometimes the inclusion of a hot songwriter will be the basis for a label to invest more time and effort into promoting a song. If a songwriter has a proven track record and works with a performer, it may entice a label to sign the performer. To this end, trying to get a well-known songwriter onto your original composition can’t hurt.
The other big player is producers who insist they’re owed songwriting credits, sometimes for doing very little on a song beyond tweaking a chorus, or changing the chord progression. Others will take an idea from an artist, and virtually rewrite it to ensure it will become a hit.

As Billboard states, a handful of Swedish producers have moved into American popular music, including country music, and among other things, gobbled up songwriting credits from some of today’s biggest stars. Producers Denniz Pop, Shellback, and principally Max Martin are all over the place these days in popular music. Saving Country Music has been hounding the presence of Max Martin in popular music ever since he first showed up in the country realm on Taylor Swift’s 2012 record Red. Martin turned out to be the executive producer of Swift’s pop breakout 1989, and received ample songwriting credits in the process. Martin is also said to have worked with Adele on her new record.
Recently, high-profile articles on Max Martin’s presence in music has proliferated the knowledge of how the power and influence over popular music is slowly being placed in the hands of a chosen few. The New Yorker and Consequences of Sound have published stories on Max Martin and his dominance in the music marketplace.
On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with soliciting a little bit of help with your song. Even the great Hank Williams would sometimes get an assist from Fred Rose on a song or two. But the serious concern is that with so many hands in the creative cookie jar, the nugget of human emotion that is supposed to be the start of a song, or any creative expression, is getting lost.
In truth, the greatest songs of our generation are still being written by only one person. The problem is, barely anyone is hearing them.
October 29, 2015 @ 6:45 pm
And that one person is Jason Isbell.
October 29, 2015 @ 8:48 pm
I think I’ve been on Reddit for to long; I read “And that one person?” and thought you were going to put “John Cena.”
October 30, 2015 @ 4:08 am
the other one is Bruce Springsteen (though he hasn’t had a real radio hit in 20+ years)
October 30, 2015 @ 7:23 am
Eric Taylor
October 29, 2015 @ 6:46 pm
Of course, there have been a near infinite number of great cowrites, but most songs on the radio are being written by multiple people with nothing worth saying, hence the low quality trash you hear. The fact that it takes more than one person to write these bro frat boy tailgate list “songs” is an embarassment to mankind.
October 29, 2015 @ 7:54 pm
If a song needs a helping hand, then hey, there’s nothing wrong with someone coming in to help here and there, or even to work more in a mentor-style situation. But like you point out, it’s almost like the more songwriters there are, the more poorly-written the song is.
October 29, 2015 @ 7:29 pm
Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, Jason Boland , Turnpike Troubadours are the ones I can think of that have a majority of solo writes.
October 30, 2015 @ 12:36 pm
There are plenty out there in the smaller rungs of the country music world, you just won’t hear about all of them. Those guys you listed are a good start. Of the mainstream types, Alan Jackson seems to be the main hold out, and possibly Toby Keith if you want to venture there.
October 29, 2015 @ 7:32 pm
Sadly, there’s nothing new under the sun. B.B. King tells the story of how The Thrill Is Gone was given a co-write by its producer and how on some of his earlier songs, even the DJ who first played the record would get a co-write! Of course, there’s many, many cases of similar situations throughout music going back to Alan and John Lomax getting co-credit on Leadbelly records.
And songwriting cubicle farms are nothing new either. In fact, it wasn’t until the Beatles, the Stones, and of course Bob Dylan did we see the artist actually write their own material on a regular basis. Before that, the Brill Building writers, Boudleaux-Bryant, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Leiber & Stoller ruled the charts.
I do agree however, that Max Martin is the Antichrist of music.
October 29, 2015 @ 7:51 pm
No doubt co-writes, professional songwriters, and formulaic songwriting has always been a part of popular music, but never in this type of whitewashed manner. I think the numbers from Billboard show just how far music has come.
October 30, 2015 @ 6:15 am
Corb Lund would be another one to add to that list. He does a few co-writes (he had one with Evan Felker on his latest album), but for the most part writes solo.
October 29, 2015 @ 7:54 pm
Really, can we all stop complaining about how many people it took to get the job done and just ask ourselves if it was done well?
It shouldn’t matter if Bill Monroe took credit for Kenny Baker’s thoughts, or if Buck Owens got writing credit on Don Rich’s “Think of Me” or if it took two dozen people to write “Flagship of the Fleet” or “Wake Me Up When September Ends” or “Send Me the Pillow You Dream On.”
It’s quality, not quantity, that is relevant.
As long as the songs are good, who cares how many people it took?
October 29, 2015 @ 8:04 pm
1. The songs these days are shit.
2. Some of us like to think of music as a form of art and self-expression. Putting 5 guys in a room and having them write 10 songs that all sound the same isn’t art. It isn’t expression. It’s empty and meaningless.
October 29, 2015 @ 9:01 pm
With all due respect, Fuzzy, your stances are becoming more and more disjointed. I used to agree with pretty much everything you said. Now, not so much.
1st, you said country music shouldn’t evolve at all. Even though you’re, like, 20, you sound like one of those Old Farts who wants music to sound like Hank Williams forever, which Trigger and others are trying to prove is not the case. If everything stayed exactly the same, it would get tired real after a while. It’s the direction of it, the fact that country isn’t “evolving” at all, that makes it a problem. You said you wanted train songs? There aren’t that many trains left, and regardless of the awesome “Folsom Prison Blues” song, I never understood why trains were considered a country music staple…
2nd, you called Maddie and Tae a kiddie act. That’s not too bad by itself, but then you said country music should only be sung by adults with life experience. So let me get this straight; you have to be old to sing country? We’re not country because we’re both 20? You’re young, you doofus! Are you saying you’re not country?! Am I not country?! If I suddenly started getting played on the radio (I’m not going for that, but let’s pretend) with my self-written, serious, emotional songs, would you call me a kiddie act just because of my age? Or is it the content of the songs? Because Maddie and Tae sing funny novelty songs, they shouldn’t be on the radio? Even though they profess love for country music, they should be pop singers because they’re cute young girls with funny songs? Come on man! Country is country! If you’re young, but you have something to say, you can have good country songs. Teenagers listen to country too, so why can’t they hear country songs they can relate to?
3rd, you declare your support for songwriting by committee. This would be perfectly fine by itself, but paired with your previous statements, it doesn’t make sense. You want country to sound old-school forever, you don’t think “kiddie acts” should be on country radio, yet you support a bunch of people coming in, throwing a bunch of “beer,” “girl,” “truck,” rapping, EDM, drum loops, “Whoahs,” and whatever else they think makes the perfect formulaic song? Because that’s what they do. They figure out what sounds and lyrics the least common denominator prefer, then they put it all together to make a megahit that they will all eat up. Heaven forbid there’s any meaning or depth, because dummies don’t want that. Not only am I convinced they have an algorithm for “perfect” song, but I’m convinced they have a mandate that these songs have to be dumbed down as much as possible. Anyway, I figured, being the staunch traditionalist you are, that you would prefer a self-penned, heartfelt song over something made by 10 people throwing ideas around, whether they’re good ideas or not. I must say, Fuzzy, your logic astounds me.
October 30, 2015 @ 6:39 am
In defense of “train songs”-they’re one of the backbone topics of traditional country music (see Jimmy Rodgers, the Father of Country Music, and his train songs, and Hank Sr, one of the fathers of honky-tonk, and his train songs), and you have to understand this-it wasn’t so much about the trains themselves, but the wanderlust, the restlessness, the lonesome sound of a train whistle that meant life was happening somewhere except where you were, or the rhythm of a train in motion which made a great backbeat for up-tempo country songs. I don’t know if modern travel via plane would have the same resonance (the sound of a jet engine blasting off? Well, Steve Miller Band managed it in a quite different way in rock music, lol, but with a different resonance), but it would be cool if some modern country music writer came up with an updated train song (h/t to Roseanne Cash and “My Baby Thinks He’s A Train”, lol)
October 30, 2015 @ 6:48 am
And in reference to relating to songs, and it seemingly being necessary to have your age-peers in order to relate (this one is a pet peeve of mine)-I was a teen when Jeanne Pruitt’s “Satin Sheets” came out, she was already considered an “older woman” in country music in that day, but, I totally related to that song. Relating to your age-peers is what rock and pop were for, country was supposed to be for adults, and adult themes (making ends meet, marriage, family, drinkin songs, cheatin songs, etc) but universal enough for anyone to enjoy, unlike much of rock. So, to take the other side of your argument-what’s wrong with having a genre that primarily addresses adult concerns? That doesn’t mean there can’t be some room for the younger people too, but don’t adults deserve “relevant” music?
October 30, 2015 @ 7:20 am
That reminds me of Little Feat’s “Old Folks Boogie”, they were rock, of a sort, and that song hit the nail on the head as far as certain aspects of aging (and Little Feat weren’t a bunch of senior citizens by any means at the time). Or their song “Time Loves A Hero”, addresses aging in a different way, the mid-life crisis.
October 30, 2015 @ 8:37 am
Melanie, I am putting your comments on Permanent Auto-Like. The Little Feat references sealed the deal.
October 30, 2015 @ 8:05 am
That’s not what I said. The majority of country songs should still be adult songs, and they are totally relatable. I just meant it couldn’t hurt anything if there were Maddie and Tae style “kiddie” acts singing teen themed songs. As long as it actually sounds country and has a good story, any kind of song can work, even “kiddie” songs, which don’t have to be “kiddie” songs at all.
October 30, 2015 @ 8:33 am
Well then, as for me, I’m going to go listen to the Statler Bros singing about counting flowers on the wall, lol. That’s pretty relevant to my life right now 🙂
October 30, 2015 @ 10:05 am
That isn’t what I said at all!
On the adult thing: I don’t think Country Music is a place for “Jonas Brothers” type acts. If the young people have something to say a la Tanya Tucker, then that’s great, so long as the ratio of young people to old people doesn’t swing so drastically in favor of one or the other. Country Music has always been a place where young and old can coexist, and right now the old people are being pushed out.
On the songwriting thing: I’m okay with anything that provides quality music. If it takes fifteen people to write “I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry” then that’s great, if it only took one person to write “Truck Yeah” it would still suck.
I think that quality is more important that the number of songwriters.
And what I prefer is quality music, and it doesn’t matter to me if it takes a village or just one person to create quality music.
October 30, 2015 @ 1:03 pm
IMO, Tanya Tucker was a special singer and a special case. She never traded on her youth in her performances and recordings-she sang songs which came straight from the tradition of country music (that doesn’t mean that she was strictly traditional in style). If you had never seen her or known anything about her except hearing her sing, she was already a full-fledged country artist.
October 30, 2015 @ 1:42 pm
And on the trains thing, which I completely missed the first time I read your comment:
Train songs have been a part of rural American culture, starting no later than during the War Between the States, and almost assuredly starting well before it. I think it’s no secret that songs like “Golden Rocket” by Hank Snow or “Ease my Worried Mind” by Roy Acuff were about trains, at least first and foremost. I think they have historically been a staple of Country Music, even in the modern era we’ve had “Long Black Train” by Josh Turner and “Train Travelin” by Dierks Bentley.
And Merle Haggard and John Denver both thought trains were of enough cultural significance to record whole albums about nothing but trains. The Hag was even born in a Boxcar for crying out loud! Johnny Cash narrated a documentary about the evolution of railroads. We can even buy records from a guy named BOXCAR Willie!
Is it the worst thing to disappear from Country Music? no, I would say the fiddle is, and/or Cramer style piano. Regardless, this is something that has pervaded Country Music for decades, and shouldn’t just be thrown away.
I get it, trains have a considerably smaller share of the market now compared to when Jimmie Rodgers waited for one, but the whole point of this website is about the preservation of traditions.
October 30, 2015 @ 3:28 am
I don’t even care if they write all their own songs-professional songwriters-GOOD writers, craftsmen at their profession-were the backbone of country music for a long time. But they were good, they had good and unique idea, every song wasn’t from a paint-by-numbers with the “wide range” of about three different topics, and even with the tried-and-true tropes of country music, they understood how to make them fresh and new with their words. If an artist can sing but for the most part just doesn’t have the gift for writing, then by all means bring on the writers-but for pity’s sake, Nashville, get some good ones with some vision, a way with words, and a way to make the old tried-and-true tropes (like they did back in the day with all the cheatin’, drinkin’ and “life on the road” songs, just to name three notorious country music tropes) sound like nobody had ever had just that slant on it. Hank Sr wrote about “Jambalaya, crawfish pie, and a filet gumbo, cause tonight I’m gonna see my Michelle-a-mio”, a great party song, and nary a cornfield or tailgate in sight, lol).
October 29, 2015 @ 8:02 pm
And on the “Barely anybody is hearing them” thing: 45,800 people heard Mr Isbell’s solo writes, and that’s not counting the streaming, the You Tube and all the other yoohaws that the hip people use to find new music.
The only people who haven’t heard this stuff aren’t worth saving, they’re trapped on the radio BY CHOICE. We’ve come so far, with so many options available, that there is no longer any excuse for not being exposed to quality music. The tired old argument about how so many people ONLY use the radio to find music needs to be retired, because the radio method is so outdated that it belongs with the floppy disk, the dodo bird and Bill Cosby’s career in the waste bin of human history.
October 29, 2015 @ 8:27 pm
“The only people who haven”™t heard this stuff aren”™t worth saving, they”™re trapped on the radio BY CHOICE.”
I respectfully disagree with that. You may have a Spotify account and spend a lot of time on YouTube, but if you don’t know who to search for, how are you going to find it? If you search for “Outlaw Country” you’ll find Eric Church and Justin Moore.
Every music consumer is worth saving. Some may be too lazy to want to look for other alternatives, and others may just be too bone-headed to know how. But you can’t assume that of everyone.
Everyone has a right to good music.
October 29, 2015 @ 9:13 pm
Hey Trig, I had a posting issue with the editing system. I want to change Maddie and Tas to Maddie and Tae and instead of changing it when I pressed save, it just spun around forever and ever and ever until the time ran out. I like the editing option, but it’s got it’s not perfect.
October 29, 2015 @ 9:48 pm
I made the edit. The edit option is working for me just fine. Anyone else experienced this problem?
October 30, 2015 @ 3:39 am
I don’t know Trigger, when I read reports here of the teenies loving a new artist because “he’s such a hunk”, I do despair a bit. There’s not a thing in the world wrong with a country artist being good-looking, but IMO they should be judged first and foremost on their music, if they look good too, that should just be lagniappe.
October 30, 2015 @ 5:16 am
I’m pretty sure teenies have always loved artists because of the hunk-factor. I don’t think teens are the problem. I know WAYYYYY too many grown up, interesting people who love all of the radio crap and that’s fine too, but I’m sick of them calling it Country music and them considering themselves Country fans.
October 30, 2015 @ 5:30 am
Yeah, well, you know the saying “30 is the new 20” or is it now “50 is the new 30”, I can’t keep up. I shouldn’t have used “teenies” as shorthand, for people who like “country music” who don’t like country music. We went through another era like that with “soccer mom” “country”.
I said “teenies” because someone here at SCM (sorry, don’t remember who) included in a comment, all the young girls who were gushing over some new male “country” sensation on the basis of what a hunk he is-nary a mention of his singing or country music sound (again, don’t remember who, they’re all alike to me) at a country music “review” site. I thought to myself, “Oh Lord, self, not another one off the assembly line who is all…hat…and no cattle” 🙂 )
October 30, 2015 @ 1:46 pm
People judging music on the looks of the artist, and saying that anyone who would listen to radio should be completely abandoned are two separate things. I think we have to hope for the best from everyone, and do our best to educate and inform people about what is good. That may not be a task for every independent listener, but it’s a task I choose to engage in.
November 3, 2015 @ 8:21 am
I hate to say it but I agree here. My slant tough is that people on the whole are generally lazy, and I am afraid in this music climate it takes work and effort to find new artists that aren’t cookie cutter or formulaic and off the dead beaten horse that is the music row path. I only found this website because myself I was doing research for Women’s History month on the great female pickers in country music’s history (Georgette Jones, Roni Stoneman, Cindy Cashdollar etc.) that by SHEER accident I came across a page on here about great new female acts that could save country music (The Trishas, Lindi Ortega, Brennen Leigh, Rachel Brooke…). And thus I got hooked on this site, which aside from bringing me great new music has given me some great history lessons because a lot of elders come on here in the comments and mention music I have missed and I go look it up.
And that brings me to my second thought which is in schools we do not teach curiosity, in fact we stifle it near as I can tell. And so younger people on the whole don’t have the musical curiosity to go beyond what CMT or MTV or YouTube shoves in their faces. And since ads and link are more and more targeted it makes it less likely that even in the sidebars you’ll see or accidentally click something out of your zone. It sadness me really because for some reason I lucked out and was always curious about what came before in music and even more recently who the sidemen and studio players were and the “musicians, musicians”. Back in HS when I heard “Looking Out My Back Door” by CCR I thought to myself at some point I have to find out who this Buck Owens cat is because I like CCR and clearly Fogerty likes Owens. Or when I discovered that Linda Rondstadt or Emmylou didn’t write their hits I wanted to know who did and find more work by them be it their own records or their songs recorded by other artists.
As a side note Trigger. May I suggest you do an article on the great song-writing teams in country music. Because co-wiring isn’t bad at all if King & Goeffen are any example in the pop world.
November 3, 2015 @ 9:19 am
Yeah, there’s been some good songwriting teams over the years, and some of those teams had arrangements that even if one person was the primary songwriter, they shared all credits. It isn’t necessarily the amount of songwriters as much as the approach of those songwriters.
October 29, 2015 @ 8:16 pm
I did an interview with a writer who has had a number of songs reach the top of the charts. On a deal with a renewable contract or a draw. You missed his main reason. It was if there’s a number of cowrites its that many peoples teams pushing the song to artist/labels. He cited it was much easier to throw ideas off each other. Obviously not every song gets cut. Stated that he hopes to write songs for all time frames- whether it be tomorrow or ten years from now, and creating a catalogue. Each part of a song is a miracle-wrote, someone willing to spend $20,000 to demo it, album cut, single, awards. Only hope for the best.
October 29, 2015 @ 8:40 pm
I am nobody in the grand scheme of thing, but I have been writing songs for 25 years. I have co written songs a handful times in that span. It isn’t because I was opposed to the idea but because my lyrics and music are personal. I just don’t like people changing my thoughts or melody or instrumentation. When I get stuck I go though incomplete songs that I have categorized by subject etc.. I have things that have bits an pieces from 20 years ago. I dont throw any idea out no matter how bad I think it sucks at the time. It may help me later. I cant imagine having multitudes of people basically change my music into something no longer resembling what I wrote.
October 29, 2015 @ 9:28 pm
Nothing ruins country music like frat bro parties of 3-5 monopolizing and “writing” the same lyrics about the same damn thing. When’s the next frat party, bro? The next song on country radio. Oh.
October 29, 2015 @ 9:58 pm
A writer friend and I shot a video many years back about painters creating paintings by committee . One painter would approach the canvas and paint a field , for instance , with , perhaps , some wildflowers in the foreground . But he couldn’t paint trees so the next painter would paint up a couple of willow trees by a stream flowing into a lake . But neither could paint water- streams / lakes / oceans etc…, so a third painter would come along and add those elements while yet another painter would paint skies …perhaps a glowing sunset or a dark ominous foreboding sky …whatever he felt the painting needed . They would set up 40-50 canvases and each ‘ artist’ would move along the line adding his part . Of course the paintings would all be shit . It was a funny premise , we thought . Unfortunately we didn’t see the day when up to 14 writers would be included on a song and the song would still be shit . Not so funny at all really . More like sad and disconcerting when that’s the way this crap is cranked out .
October 29, 2015 @ 10:02 pm
Hey Trigger, while I think the reasons you presented for producers having songwriting credits happen all the time, I think another big reason is that many times the song starts with tracks before the artists or other writers come into play. “Teenage Dream”, “Moves like Jagger”, and a wealth of others are examples of this. In pop music (and it is bleeding into country), the term producer has morphed because, as where a producer in the past might come in after a track was already written, today many people are writing to the tracks the producers, for the most part, have already produced. It is interesting to see how few solo writes there are these days. One artist who has had big hits writing alone is DJ Calvin Harris, who has solo writing and production credits on huge pop hits like “We Found Love” and others. Country seemingly has zero solo writes these days. Although, I think how many people writing the songs has less to do with the quality than what audiences want to buy (or stream) and what radio programmers want to plug too. In my opinion, a great song can come from one writer or 8. Today, I think the prominence of dance music has to do with the multitude of credited writers. For these songs, I believe the perception is that they need a dance track to write to and that it easier/more fun to write a party song as a group. Good read Trigger, thanks for the hard work you do.
October 29, 2015 @ 11:53 pm
Good points Aaron.
October 30, 2015 @ 8:02 am
For more people than ever , with the proliferation of iPhones , MP3 players, laptops , satellite , wi-fi etc , music is white noise. Its wallpaper ….just PART of whatever ‘space’ you happen to occupy throughout your day. It is not the focus of your day to any significant extent .Not so long ago , GREAT sounding audio systems could be found in every home….sometimes before a couch or a decent fridge ( …you laugh , I know ) . People MADE TIME to listen and appreciate music as great entertainment and invested $$$ in amazing state of the art ( then ) equipment to do so . Music meant so much more …lyrically and melodically and sonically . Far, far fewer people invest in great -sounding home audio now because they have audio everywhere courtesy the above-mentioned devices .They WATCH music on You -Tube if they’re in one place long enough to do so . WATCH MUSIC . While texting , playing a video game , e-mailing, making toast , talking on the phone or countless other distracting past times we are besieged by and because the music is , for the mos tpart , FREE , it holds far less value to listeners. The image ( video ) of an artist and the importance of being part of a ” club” of followers that all likes the same thing because radio and the media has made the decision that it is the ‘ hip ‘ thing to like , is THE factor in an act’s popularity .And the age demographic is lower and lower all the time , it seems , with younger and younger kids being exposed to Minaj’s ass and Weeknds ” wonderfully crafted ” sorrows or TS’s latest hairstyle or fashion . We inherently KNOW this stuff is bad for us ( like McDonald’s food ) but we still consume it and allow our kids to . Its the great 3 and a half minute escape / distraction we THINK we need .
October 29, 2015 @ 10:24 pm
I think Miranda’s next single is a solo write- Bathroom Sink.
October 29, 2015 @ 11:51 pm
“Smokin’ & Drinkin'” couldn’t even crack the Top 30, and this is from Miranda who gets all kinds of love from radio. Whomever chose that as a single deserves to be fired. They released it just because Little Big Town’s on it. Sorry for the soapbox rant.
October 30, 2015 @ 8:18 am
“Bathroom Sink” is pretty average and not radio friendly. I don’t hate “Platinum” but it doesn’t have a lot of radio songs outside of “Automatic.” Lambert needs to get back in the studio.
October 29, 2015 @ 11:06 pm
This is where rock music kicks country’s ass (in my opinion). Metallica, Van Halen, whoever…aside from the occasional cover, write their own music.
October 29, 2015 @ 11:47 pm
You do know that those rock artists like the one’s you mentioned get just as much “help” from other people as the country people do. They just don’t write it on the CD jacket because their fans demand “real” more than country fans.
October 30, 2015 @ 3:58 am
You might be correct about rock music, but you certainly picked some bad examples. Van Halen included tons of covers on their albums, especially the early ones. Most of the songs that Van Halen did write are vapid party anthems, or uber-pop hooks with nonsensical lyrics. I like Van Halen, but they shouldn’t be given credit for writing good songs.
October 30, 2015 @ 11:04 pm
With all due respect, this is not a fair comparison. The entities that you mentioned are all bands, not solo singers. As such, when bands write songs by “themselves”, it generally means that there is more than one songwriter.
Another advantage that bands have is that they simply add a professional songwriter to their organization as an instrumentalist, and then claim that they “write their own songs”. In many bands, for example, the main songwriter is not the lead vocalist but rather the drummer or one of the guitarists.
October 30, 2015 @ 11:09 pm
One more difference: the sonic appeal of rock lies primarily in the instruments, whereas vocals are absolutely central to traditional country music. On the other hand, the task of writing country songs was traditionally much more complex than writing rock songs, since country songs required an extra attention to poetry and concrete storytelling. As such, it was traditionally essential that country singers and songwriters each be the best at their respective trades, which limited the number of singer-songwriters.
November 3, 2015 @ 9:36 am
Very good point.
October 29, 2015 @ 11:43 pm
To be fair. The songwriting credits that people see don’t really mean who wrote the song. The really means who gets a percentage of the songwriting royalties.
October 30, 2015 @ 3:42 am
That’s my understanding of the present situation. Everybody and their dog wants/ gets a piece.
October 30, 2015 @ 12:47 am
Dale Watson… the savior of country music.
October 30, 2015 @ 4:16 am
A cover here and there can be interesting, but artists who primarily write their own songs, like James McMurtry, Jason Boland, Chris Knight. Corb Lund, Dale Watson, John Prine, etc. will always be superior to the guys who are mostly performers, and songwriters, second…
October 30, 2015 @ 4:49 am
I don’t know about that, George Jones and Tammy Wynette wrote little of their own material, but they were consummate country artists as interpreters of the songs of professional writers (though it seems that Tammy co-wrote her signature song “Stand By Your Man” with Billy Sherill). The difference was, there was a cadre of professional writers who could actually write then.
October 30, 2015 @ 5:06 am
There is something to be said for a good interpretation of another person’s work, but it is still another person’s work. George Jones, or Elvis for that matter, brought something to a song that others could not, but at the end of the day, they were expressing the thoughts, emotions or ideas of other people. John Gielgud was regarded as a fine Shakespearean actor, for how he expressed the material, but he wasn’t Shakespeare. The New York Philharmonic can do Beethoven, with each musician expertly playing their part, but not one of them is Beethoven. The genius, and the heavy lifting, lies in the art itself.
October 30, 2015 @ 5:37 am
But IMO, a good interpretation is an important part of that. Shakespeare’s material couldn’t have gotten noticed without good actors interpreting it (though I doubt many play Beethoven’s music better than he did). A good artist MAKES the written words, music, of others, their own. Jones’ signature song-“He Stopped Loving Her Today”-he didn’t even want to record it, didn’t like it, but now he owns that song.
October 30, 2015 @ 7:08 am
I should’ve said, I have an impression that few could’ve played Beethoven’s music better than he did, I’m not THAT damn old, lol.
November 2, 2015 @ 12:14 am
Good points. I agree that being able to interpret someone else’s songs and making them your own is a talent that not everyone has. Patty Loveless is another singer who very rarely wrote, but she was a master at interpreting the songs she sang. I know when I first started listening to her in the 90s, she certainly made me believe that she had personally gone through the emotions and the experiences in the songs (and I still feel that way when I listen to her songs now).
October 31, 2015 @ 11:28 am
Interpreting music well is great but to consistently put out good full length albums your gonna need to be able to fill the voids that writers leave OR do it mostly yourself. Also, though not without exception, it does help to be more closely tied to the story/song. For instance William Elliott Whitmore does an amazing job covering Hank Williams “Mother Is Gone”. I would imagine that having lost his mom as a teenager helped in conveying that song’s emotion.
October 30, 2015 @ 6:25 am
Alan Jackson is someone who writes quite a few of his songs by himself, which is very rare of someone with his stature.
October 30, 2015 @ 7:05 am
Alan Jackson has a lot of solo writes and he wrote the majority of his hits. The wrote the entire “Good Time” album by himself. Man, I have been listening to a lot of Alan Jackson lately. He is probably the most successful singer songwriter in country music history. Hank, Merle, and Alan. I have been listening to his “What I am” album from 1994. That is a fine country album with “Hole in the Wall” “Job Description” and “What I am.” You can feel his frustration of his personal life on that album, and that is what country radio is missing. Country radio songs are lifeless. No emotion.
October 30, 2015 @ 8:08 am
By “successful”, do you meant Top Ten hits? Because as of circa 2003, I’ve read that Dolly Parton held that title (performer/songwriter) with app 3000 published songs, performed by herself and/or others.
October 30, 2015 @ 6:02 pm
I read a book a bunch of years ago that had a chapter on Alan Jackson and his manager (believe Keith steigall) or someone in his inner circle but anyways at times in his career he had to force him to write. He came to a point where he was successful enough. He just wanted to work on boats and old cars- and drive them around all day.
October 30, 2015 @ 8:00 am
I think that this speaks to an extent as to how ‘impersonal’ music in general has become. The great things about good songs are finding those lyrics that resonate you on a personal level. I find it hard to think that five, ten, fifteen people can really write a ‘personal experience’ by committee… unless, they’re running down a checklist.
October 30, 2015 @ 8:16 am
(and by running down a checklist, you’re not getting a personal experience either, to clarify that)
October 30, 2015 @ 8:40 am
Is it still inbreeding when Everybody is in bed with Everybody Else?
October 30, 2015 @ 8:59 am
Does Max Martin look like the 5th member of ABBA or what?
October 30, 2015 @ 9:15 am
He looks like Gregg Allman circa 1974, but with 100% less talent….
October 30, 2015 @ 9:53 am
Just to keep it country-Dickie Betts sounds more country on his own songs than most of the current crop, if nothing else because the sound isn’t polished to a fare-thee-well.
October 30, 2015 @ 9:28 am
Charlie, as your comment has no “reply” link, I hope you see this “Why thank you, I feel honored good sir”, and as a rightly-raised southern girl, I would like to return the favor 🙂
October 30, 2015 @ 3:07 pm
I appreciate your information on this site. As an artist trying to get heard that also writes all of his songs I’m going to chime in. It’s entirely all about money. People who settle for mainstream radio nowadays are still buying the mainstream hits and funding the writers cubes. As more people leave the processed stuff I’m hoping it will help folks like me eventually make a living and not compromise their art to do so. The song cubicles will go away when there’s no money in it. I play all over but I also go to shows, buy albums and Merch from artist I feel like are authentic and connect via their music. I believe there’s more good music being made now than ever. The everyday person just won’t look for it or see it as important unless there is TV or radio pushing it. If people would just share and support artists they believe or like it will continue to progress like it has in the last few years. I made a record this year called “Tables and Chairs” this year. If you like songwriting, traditional sounding country or honky tonk/Ameripolitan etc. I challenge you to listen and review. Even some people on a site like this are waiting for someone to tell them what to listen to.
Matt Prater
October 30, 2015 @ 4:46 pm
Kacey Musgraves made SCM’s list of Greatest Country Songwriters of All Time and I can’t find one solo write credit to her name, so you know the times have changed.
October 30, 2015 @ 4:50 pm
We’re still hung up on that, huh? It was the 85 greatest songwriters, and she was 85. If I had put her at 83 and not put a picture beside her, nobody would have even noticed.
October 30, 2015 @ 6:42 pm
Completely unrelated, any chance you do a review on Josh Ward’s new album? Man I dig his sound and soul, that being said I’m always curious of your opinion Trigger.
October 30, 2015 @ 7:18 pm
It’s on the list. It just came out today so I haven’t had time to do much more than buzz by it.
October 31, 2015 @ 7:00 am
It is interesting. My closest ties to anyone “musical” are first cousins who are old-time and bluegrass pickers. One of them knows a lady who was married to John Hartford. I recently heard her sing backup for original singer/songwriter Ginger Boatwright (part of a Grammy nominated group in the 1970s called “Red, White,and Bluegrass). There are original singer/songwriters like that who aren’t doing the big,commercially-aimed stuff who are worth seeking out. She is still writing new songs of her own, age 71.