Do singers have less credibility when they don't write their own material?

Also, sometimes bands take songs and do crap interpretations, but occasionally they do get it right.. I can think of loads of bad examples i.e Megadeth and "Anarchy in the UK", but on the other hand, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Tori Amos is okay . I think if the act have tried to do something a bit quirky with a song then that usually works. Banal indie rock versions of great songs a la the Lemonheads often don't.

Hrm. Brian Wilson didn't write the lyrics on Pet Sounds.

It's an acting thing as opposed to a writing thing, isn't it? Singers have credibility if you can believe what they're singing while they're singing it. Just because someone wrote a song doesn't make it any more genuine when they come to perform it, after all. Writing and performing are separate disciplines (with producing/arranging possibly a third, or somewhere between the two) and so there's no reason to complain about someone as a singer because they didn't write the song, much as you wouldn't complain about an actor daring to perform in a play someone else wrote...

The idea that someone has to write their own songs to mean them is a rockist one, but you can see where it comes from these days. Most voice in pop music sounds treated compared to your average tone-deaf rock singer, and so people interested in supposedly "unprocessed" emotion are more likely to listen to the latter; from here comes the idea that only those performing their own material can be credible, perhaps.

BUT if you're not a particularly great singer or frontperson-type, no- one is likely to be very interested in your idiosyncratic interpretations of someone else's songs.

Not necessarily songwriters (there were usually just 1-2 originally written songs on each of his classic Capitol albums, the rest were all cover versions of already famous material), but certainly arrangers. Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Gordon Jenkins and Count Basie all had an impact on Sinatra's music that is not to be undervalued. So did the songwriters, but most of the material was, as I said, old and the songs Sinatra and his arrangers picked for those albums were great no matter who performed them.

HMMMMMMMMMM

I think it's a silly rockist idea to begin with, it's like saying actors have less credibility if they didn't write the play they're performing.

The whole credibility issue seems to lie on some sort of Renaissance idea of a solitary genius, which ignores the fact that most music is always done as a collective effort. Also, the credibility issue seems to consider singers only - if a band's lead singer writes all their tunes, few would claim that their guitarist has less credibility because of that. I think this has to do with the myth that singing is a "natural" art, not something you put any effort into like playing a guitar, which of course isn't true at all.

The best music is made by solitary geniuses. The best music is done by today's Mozart's and Bach's. They are the ones who deserve the attention.

I don't see why a singer has to write their own material. I can understand why somebody would want a "band" to do so, but I'm a singer, have done so for 16 years, and I've never written a song that wasn't an instrumental in my life.

I suppose after hearing a crooner do the 9th different version of a standard, it gets old, but I also don't find anything wrong with somebody writing a song for a singer to sing.

I think this has to do with the myth that singing is a "natural" art, not something you put any effort into like playing a guitar, which of course isn't true at all.

OTM. There are definitely naturals out there for sure, but often they tend to get surpassed by their peers because they don't have to work as hard, so sometimes they don't develop at as fast a clip. (That is a sweeping generalization yes, but I'll say my Hail Marys later for that).

Singing well and properly in a way that doesn't damage one's voice is one of the most difficult things to do.

I don't see a guitarist as much of an artist either unless he is the writer of the group.

The art lies in the melody and the true artist is the one who composed the melody. That's what it was like in the days of Mozart and Beethoven and that's what it should be like today either.

The ideal musician is the singer/songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist who is a control freak and doesn't want anything outside of his brain to have even the slightest impact on how his music sounds.

Merry Christmas, Geir.

if it were all about the melody, why is it that there are many songs that I love that I've heard other people perform and suddenly I didn't love it because their interpretation didn't work.

ie, I really like Earth Wind and Fire's September, and really didn't like it when that doofus on American Idol did it. same melody!

That's what it was like in the days of Mozart and Beethoven and that's what it should be like today either.

just your occasional reminder that this isn't even remotely true, and is an outside-looking-in attempt to describe a process that was always considerably more complex and, yes, collaborative. Always. When it was Bach, when it was Beethoven, when it was whoever. All decent artists will tell you they didn't actually do it by themselves. All boring artists will insist that only their genius deserves the credit.

plato and geir would be very good friends

if it were all about the melody, why is it that there are many songs that I love that I've heard other people perform and suddenly I didn't love it because their interpretation didn't work.

And interpretation sometimes does so big changes to the melody (or the belonging harmonies) that it doesn't sound like the same song anymore. That way, a good song may become a bad one.

You also have instance of acts changing a song that didn't work too well on the original into a great song by doing a few changes in the chords, but that is rare. The Byrds managed to do with several Dylan songs though.

I can't believe you guys are talking about artistic credibility when there's a "Sexy Christmas Songs" thread going on!

(In a way, Dylan would have come to a better fruitation as a songwriter had he joined The Byrds and become their permanent songwriter - providing nothing else as he is a great lyricist, an almost as great composer, but a bad singer and a really, really bad guitarist and harmonica player)

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/6610/robotfp5.jpg

All decent artists will tell you they didn't actually do it by themselves. All boring artists will insist that only their genius deserves the credit.

Makes sense. Still, it isn't necessarily diminishing the accomplishment of a great performer to say that the great performer who writes their own music (or much of it) deserves even more respect as an artist.

Besides, when people claim that such-and-such singer is less credible because they don't write their own material, I don't think they often mean the great performers -- e.g., Sinatra, Elvis or even Madonna -- I think they mean far more dubious acts -- e.g., 98 Degrees, the Backstreet Boys, Hillary Duff, Ashlee Simpson -- who are, arguably at least, creations of their look and a relentless, well-honed marketing push (obv., whether the foregoing examples are good examples or not is open to debate).

hey geirtard in case you didn't notice mozart hasnt been performing his own music for hundreds of years

Like I have said a thousand times bfore, he has notated it. Thus securing himself one hundred per cent control.

The exception here being opera, where timbre does play a part, although less than in popular music, as opera singers sing in a very particular way that they have been taught to sung and they also have to follow the notes without any kind of improvisation or interpretation.

Geir you're just mistaken here. If you were right, there wouldn't be any question of De La Rocha vs. Arrau vs. whichever player of Mozart you care to name; there'd be one way to do it right - by the book - and that would be all. Unfortunately for your theory, there's such a thing as voice in how one approaches an instrument, and it's make-or-break for the material; hardly anybody knew what to make of Mahler until Leonard Bernstein made it part of his life's mission to champion Mahler's works, and to show how they might be played in such a way that their content would reveal itself.

And so on. This is just one of the things that puts your narrow auteur-obsessed view of music to lie, and I don't expect you to pay any attention to it, because with you it always seems to be "the truth at which I have arrived, first; all other considerations, second." I just feel compelled to remind you: your position is extremely radical. Hardly any composers or musicians would agree with it, because its errors are clear: and the first of them is, if the thing of first & final import were The Notes On The Pages/The Chords On The Chart, then we'd all be producing versions of the classics that were as great as the definitive renditions. What you have said a thousand times has been wrong each time. Abandon this false thinking and learn more about music! You have nothing to lose and the world to gain

http://colemanzone.com/images/Cardle/Time%20Machine.jpg

John, FWIW (not much, I realize), I agree with a lot of what you're saying. My only problem with it, I think, is that people who use that argument often do so to defend (what I think are) some fairly marginal talents. So -- while it's true that vocal performance alone can be a form of high art -- that doesn't, ipso facto, make Ashlee Simpson or Hillary Duff equal to, for instance, The Hold Steady as artists. And too often, someone who argues that A. Simpson isn't a particularly talented artist is simply accused of being a "rockist" while their argument is unfairly dismissed.

I'm sure someone might say "The Hold Steady suck" or "Hillary Duff's voice is awesome." The point, though, isn't in the examples themselves.

John, FWIW (not much, I realize), I agree with a lot of what you're saying. My only problem with it, I think, is that people who use that argument often do so to defend (what I think are) some fairly marginal talents. So -- while it's true that vocal performance alone can be a form of high art -- that doesn't, ipso facto, make Ashlee Simpson or Hillary Duff equal to, for instance, The Hold Steady as artists. And too often, someone who argues that A. Simpson isn't a particularly talented artist is simply accused of being a "rockist" while their argument is unfairly dismissed.

Well, maybe, but that's kind of a side point. And I side with people who think that being unable to enjoy (and praise!) Hillary Duff, say, because she doesn't write/produce her own stuff - or even select her own songs, maybe; I don't know - betrays a real poverty of understand the real breadth of music. It's an art: there are lots of ways to do it. I don't side with those who hold the overtly literary, etc., as inherently more valid/better/etc. This doesn't mean I don't have any aesthetic standards; just that I think a coherent aesthetics can be pretty wide-reaching.

apropos of nothing I recommend to all the Wisconsin grind metal act Putrid Pile, who write and sing their own songs.

understand = understanding above thx

That is the most thorough sonning of Geir that I have ever seen on this board, congrats. Too bad it won't do any good.

Fair enough.

(x-post, btw).

it's true that vocal performance alone can be a form of high art -- that doesn't, ipso facto, make Ashlee Simpson or Hillary Duff equal to, for instance, The Hold Steady as artists.

Who the heck has ever said it "ipso facto" does? (And I say that as somebody who loves albums by both Ashlee and the Hold Steady, though I think thousands of albums of both artists who write their own songs and artists who don't are worse than both of them.)

I mean, I've never once in my life heard anybody who defends some artists who don't write their own songs pretend that you should love all artists who don't write their own songs, so stop pretending such a strawman exists, okay?

Yeah, okay, "ipso facto" was too strong a phrase. I'm not trying to knock down a strawman, so I'd happily use a milder term.

And, if an example would help, I think I've read The Lex on these boards make arguments to that effect (though, in fairness, I'm basing that on memory and a handful of posts by him).

xp (You also might want to seriously consider doublechecking the songwriting credits on the last Ashlee Simpson album -- most of which list Ashlee Simpson as a songwriter, and Kara DioGuardi and/or John Shanks as co-songwriters -- before using her as an example, but otherwise I do understand your point that the examples themselves don't really matter.)

Again, fair enough. And, to be clear, The Lex didn't say "you should love all artists who don't write their own songs." It was more along the lines of attacking as "rockist" anyone who suggested that, say, Hillary Duff wasn't an especially talented artist, even if the basis for that claim is (a) she doesn't write her own music and (b) her performance/quality of voice is, at best, average. If the criticism of Duff stopped at (a), I think it would be pretty shallow. But (a) and (b) seem like a potentially valid point to me.

BTW, you are correct: Ashlee Simpson co-wrote all the songs from her 2005 disc, I Am Me.

your biggest problem here is trying to evaluate the validity of something lex said.

or rather accepting an argument made by the lex as valid.

xp (And Hilary Duff gets co-songwriting credit for every song but one on Dignity, for whatever it's worth. And it's a also a pretty good album, though damned if understand how it would be better or worse if she co-wrote none of the songs or if [as I'm sure some will suggest] the credits are lying. It would sound exactly the fucking same, either way.)

Anyway, FWIW, I'm not trying to be dogmatic about it. J0hn D. and Xhucx made some points above I hadn't thought of, and I said so.

So you're saying that if you can't write, sing, or perform, you're not very good?

who is today's Mozart/Bach?

More that lots of acts that seem pretty mediocre to me on all three fronts (writing, singing and performing) are popular far out of proportion to their talent. Upthread I mentioned a lot of teen pop acts, mostly because they're what came to mind at the time. But acts like 98 Degrees, O-Town (I think that's what they were called), and so forth fall into this category.

Well, not writing your own material doesn't, standing alone, justify seeing a performer as "less credible," but it seems to me that not writing your own material -- when paired with other factors (e.g., a subpar voice or poor performance skills) -- could understandably result in a performer being seen as "less credible," which is what I said above.

and which is what i am completely disagreeing with. if you don't hold failure-to-be-a-songwriter against frand and elvis, then it makes no sense to hold the exact same failure-to-be-a-songwriter against ashlee or hilary. you are certainly free to loathe the latter two. but logic would dictate that the reason you loathe them is unrelated to the songwriting thing. you in fact seem to be saying that if you thought they were good singers or performers, you'd consider them credible. which would mean the songwriting thing and the credibility thing are unrelated. that's all i'm saying.

frand = frank, d'oh.

Okay, I get that. Yes, if I thought that, say, Hillary Duff had an amazing, expressive voice, it would certainly make her credible to me, even if she doesn't writer her songs (more later, if I can (for now, must go do puzzles with my 6-year old daughter)).

I find it funny that Geir seems to think that personal interpretations always involve changing of pitches/composition of the original piece and have nothing to do with dynamic choices, intonation, and/or even the skill of the instrument....

good-looking people have an advantage in EVERY SINGLE FACET OF LIFE. they are more likely to get a job. they have a better shot at advancing up a company ladder. they are more likely to be elected mayor or governor or president. they are more likely to be hired as bartenders, for crissakes. in entertainment fields, including music, you can probably quadruple or quintuple that effect. and it's not only on the "hitlist," mr. hongro. good-looking people are more likely to succeed as classical conductors, as jazz pianists and as prog-rock guitarists. this doesn't mean classical conductors or prog-rockers have to be good looking. but it does mean that, on average, they are probably better-looking than you or me.

There was one time when looks didn't matter, and that was from the late 60s until disco arrived. During the first half of the 70s, most of the bestselling bands in the world consisted of beardy men in their late 20s or early 30s. And they were loved by people not because of their image or their looks or personality, but because they were talented and experienced musicians who had mostly been in rock bands since the mid-60s. They were way more talented than the man on the street, that that's why he loved them. Because they were so incredibly he couldn't even dream of ever becoming as good as them.

That's where I want to go back. Exactly that era.

True!

Glam-rock bands, especially, did not rely on their looks or image or personality to sell records whatsoever!

And neither did Jim Morrison, Robert Plant, Peter Frampton, Linda Ronstadt, Cher, or Abba (for starters).

Glamrock was something else. In the 70s, people mostly bought albums, and album oriented supergroups (OK, with the exception of Robert Plant - Jim Morrison was dead!) were not at all good-looking.

Glamrock was only for kids back then, even if David Bowie, Roxy Music and Steve Harley managed to get something more artistic out of the genre (and Slade knew a thing or two about writing catchy songs too, exactly like Duran Duran three years later. Even though the kids probably cared more about image than music)

ten years later, that is

Jim Morrison was dead!

How is 1971 not between "the late '60s" and disco?

Really, this genre existed alongside disco too, at least for a few years before punk. Disco probably did more commercial damage to glamrock than it did to prog or stadium rock, because it was glamrock's audience that it managed to steal.

And prior to his death, Jim Morrison looked like the rest of those beardy men. He may have been a "pinup" in 1967-68 though. Although the kids were more likely to go for The Monkees then.

(And I didn't even mention Olivia Newton-John, Rod Stewart, and "You Light Up My Life" yet.)

Or The Monkees, Donny and Marie Osmond, The Bay City Rollers, or Andy Gibb, among others.

But those weren't dominant. They were just part of the teen scene and had no appeal beyond that.
Today, you hardly find acts that don't look good, and whenever you find them they have usually been around since the 60s or 70s.
Where are the equivalents of Mike Oldfield, Yes, Pink Floyd or ELP on today's scene? And I don't mean obscure acts like Flower Kings, Spock's Beard or even Dream Theater, Joe Satriani or Steve Vai. But acts that sell just as much as those "dinosaurs" did back then.

Surely, I'll give you U2 (although even they are more good-looking than those were), but that's it, really.

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/1481587.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF1939057D9939C83F1064A497705B9ABD7FE5A5397277B4DC33E

And Mr. Chad Kroeger effectively puts this conversation to rest.

y'all forgot about the incredibly ugly joni mitchell. and the humongously disfigured carly simon. and the hideously deformed paul mccartney. and the nearly impossible-to-look-at mick jagger.

(and, damn!, chad kroeger shoulda been a yacht rocker.)

some good-looking superstars from 2007:

http://www.hiphoproll.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/lil-wayne.jpg
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/jay-z.jpg
http://www.catchunexttuesday.com/shows/show0010/fergie_wet_herself.jpg

http://i.realone.com/assets/rn/img/0/6/0/7/13247060-13247063-slarge.jpg
http://media.canada.com/canwest/111/vs_getty_chad_kroeger_210.jpg
http://www.t-pain.net/news/tp_bio.jpg

But those weren't dominant. They were just part of the teen scene

Wait...So Olivia-Newton John, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, and Debby Boone were less "dominant" than Mike Fucking Oldfield? On what planet? And they had more teen-oriented audiences then than Ashlee and Hilary do now, or than the Backstreet Boys and 98 Degrees had a few years ago? That doesn't even make sense.

Chad Kroeger effectively puts this conversation to rest.

As do plenty of jam bands (who can go up against most old prog bands in the ugliness sweepstakes anyday, from what I've seen.) Not to mention plenty of overweight rappers (who can go up against Bachman-Turner Overdrive.) I also doubt Sean Kingston is exactly a heartthrob, but what do I know?

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I for one hate listening to those lone geniuses of the classic rock era when they were bogged down in projects where they had tolerate input from other musicians, like "Revolver" and "Beggars Banquet" and "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway". I much prefer "Walls and Bridges" and "She's the Boss" and "No Jacket Required"

Oh, come on. Everyone knows that the Tarzan soundtrack is Phil Collins' masterwork.

Hahahaha, this thread is most amusing. I must apologise, however, as I'm going to interrupt with some quite boring points.

Well, not writing your own material doesn't, standing alone, justify seeing a performer as "less credible," but it seems to me that not writing your own material -- when paired with other factors (e.g., a subpar voice or poor performance skills) -- could understandably result in a performer being seen as "less credible," which is what I said above.

-- fact checking cuz

There are several errors being made here. First, fact checking cuz, you have fallen into the philosopher's fallacy of assuming that people's opinions on credibility are dictated by logic. People aren't like that. If instead of trying to formulate a Px -> x(3x&¬y) type thingy, why not look at how people actually behave? If, for instance, you were in a restaurant, and the food was wonderful, then you probably won't notice the terrible decor. If, on the other hand, the food was awful, then you would go home complaining 'oh, the food stank, AND the decor was horrible, AND yada yada yada'. That's just what people do. If you hate one aspect of something, you pick on others. But in fact, if Simpson and the rest wrote their songs, your opinion may be turned back around - 'oh, well, she's got a terrible voice, but at least she's using her music to express her deep inner mystical turmoil' or whatever. I'm not saying that this is the right way to judge music or credibility, I'm just saying that this is a very common way of doing so, and shouldn't be so easily dismissed.

Tarzan soundtrack...

I prefer to think of this as a commissioned masterwork, like Emperor Joseph II with his patronage of Mozart.

of COURSE people think the way you say they do, emily. logic does not equal taste, and logic does not rule our lives, thank god. but logic is still logic. and when your theoretical food eaters conclude that restaurants with shitty decor are worthless/sucky/not-credible, i will be the unpopular philosopher logician in the corner pointing out that their reasoning is flawed. i will politely point out that if shitty decor/shitty food = shitty restaurant, and shitty decor/great food = great restaurant, then perhaps the shitty decor has nothing to do with it. if they still don't want to go to ashlee simpson's house of wings, with its framed photos of chad kroeger and jay-z on the wall, i really won't care. that damn restaurant's overpriced, if you ask me.

Hehe. But, of course, what I was trying to say at the end is that writing your own stuff must have some role to play, if ultimately someone's weak voice can be salvaged by the fact that they are at least expressing themselves. Or perhaps this is it - it is expression that is the deciding factor in credibility. That expression may come from a good soulful rendering of a song someone else wrote, or may come from penning a song that says something about the author whether or not they have great technical ability. Hmmmm. I'm not entirely sure about this, but it seems a more fruitful avenue.

or, perhaps, the word "credibility" is itself a red herring when discussing artists and art.

credibility = "how much I'd like to be living the life of that person"

perhaps?

Credibility: Can you believe the artist when he/she states that this is the kind of music he/she really wants to make, based on his/her own musical taste and musical vision rather than the vision of some producer or songwriter, based on assumptions on what the kids (or housewives, for that matter) want to hear.

Yes.

Well. Depends. I'm not certain if they bothered asking Samantha Fox or Sabrina too much about what kind of music they wanted to "sing" back in the 80s. Just to mention a couple of obvious examples of a phenomenon that has become more and more usual.

The song and the singer matter. If they are well matched, that's great. If the singer wrote the song then there may be a better chance that they fit well. Or not. But if they do match, and that recurs, that's great.

Some of the most earth-shattering songs have been best done (and are emotionally believable aka credible) by singers who didn't write them.

I think I'm saying the answer to the above question is "not intrinsically, but there can be a link".

not certain if they bothered asking Samantha Fox or Sabrina too much about what kind of music they wanted to "sing" back in the 80s.

Um, she hired them! "They" do whatever she tells them.

Not as a singer, perhaps as an artist.

Emotion should lie in the melody and its belonging and unchangable harmonies, not in interpretation.

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/9897/robotwi0.jpg

Credibility: Can you believe the artist when he/she states that this is the kind of music he/she really wants to make, based on his/her own musical taste and musical vision rather than the vision of some producer or songwriter, based on assumptions on what the kids (or housewives, for that matter) want to hear.

"As Gordon Stoker, a member of the Jordanaires, the vocal group that backed Presley on that song and many others, recalls, Elvis at first refused to do Blue Christmas.

"When the producers said he had to cut it, he told folks at the session to come up with something so bad that it would never see the light of day as a single, Stoker told The Associated Press recently from his Nashville home."

Essay question-- In light of this anecdote, was Elvis credible?

Emotion should lie in the melody and its belonging and unchangable harmonies, not in interpretation.

Why? Emotion is conveyed and signified by many elements, some of which may or may not be partially or wholly appopriable by the interpreter of the work. Part of the melody etc is potentially down to the interpretation, no?

The music lies in the melody, which should be sung exactly the way the genius who composed it wanted it to.

No and yes
Aretha Franklin
Michael Bublé

Not as a singer, perhaps as an artist.

What's the difference -- an artist doesn't pay salaries? I don't understand the distinction.

dudes you are arguing w fucking GEIR

Emil y you said:

"I'm not saying that this is the right way to judge music"

But your eating out analogy reveals why this IS the right way to judge music, at least the experience of listening to it. And credibility - the perception of credibility - is a property of the listener.

In the case of a restaurant, people use "eating out" as a kind of synecdoche shorthand for the whole experience, the service, the decor, the ambience... And that's a good thing surely, when I want to eat out they are all important, as well as the competence of the cooking.

In the case of music, the perception of credibility can be very important and one way to enhance that is to sing (and mean) your own material.