Back on the Case: The Voice and Songwriters

I’ve kept quiet for a few months now about how the coaches on The Voice – and their team members – sloppily and incorrectly attribute a song’s ‘ownership’ to the artists best known for performing it.  (You can take a look at the blog posts of May 10 and June 14 to read my earlier rants on this topic.) 

Once more, I have to say that Blake Shelton is the most shocking in this regard, being a Nashville artist.  Nashville has long been known for placing songwriters and good songwriting at the center of its music business, so his crediting only Kelly Clarkson and Jason Aldean, the artists who had the hit on the song Don’t You Wanna Stay, was a bit shocking to me.  Yes, Clarkson and Aldean performed it, and really well, but it was written by Andy Gibson, Paul Jenkins, and Jason Sellers.

But what got me off my duff to compile the lists below was the reference to I Wish It Would Rain as only ‘by The Temptations’ and a later reference to contestant Preston Pohl’s tone as being so close to David Ruffin.  The song was written by Roger Penzabene, a Motown staff writer, and Motown’s songwriting team of Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield.  Lots of folks acknowledge Holland-Dozier-Holland as Motown songwriters, but there were others.

The earlier posts I referred to mention the problem that songwriters have today, given that downloaded music is the dominant sales point: there’s no consistent place for songwriters’ credits to appear.  Some talented folks aren’t getting the recognition they deserve.  My suggestion was for The Voice to add a “Written by” line to the Chiron of the song title that appears at the beginning of a contestant’s performance.  That would be a big step forward in acknowledging that these writers are where the music begins.  

So, here are the credits for the last two rounds of The Voice, the most recent first.  I’ve organized it by song title, then by the songwriters, and then indicated who performed it on The Voice.  Apologies in advance for any typos in the names.

Knockout Rounds

Song	Songwriters	Performed on The Voice by
Already Gone	Kelly Clarkson, Ryan Tedder	Grey
Cosmic Love	Florence Welch and Isabella Summers	Mathew Schuler
Don’t Know Why	Jesse Harris	Stephanie Ann Johnson
Genie in a Bottle	David Frank, Steve Kipner, Pamela Sheyne	Nic Hawke
Hard to Handle	Otis Redding, Al Bell, Allen Jones	Ray Boudreaux
I’ll Be	Edwin McCain	Austin Jenckes
Last Name	Luke Laird, Hillary Lindsey, Carrie Underwood	Shelbie Z
Let Her Go	Mike Rosenberg	Cole Vosbury
Living for the City	Stevie Wonder	Josh Logan
Mamma Knows Best	Jessica Cornish, Ashton Thomas	Amber Nicole
More Than a Feeling	Tom Scholz	James Wolpert
No One	Alicia Keys, Kerry Brothers, Jr., George M. Harry	Tamara Chaunice
No Woman, No Cry	Vincent Ford (credited to)	Preston Pohl
Stompa	Serena Ryder, Jerrod Bettis	Jacquie Lee
Stronger	Jörgen Elofsson,  David Gamson, Greg Kurstin, Ali Tamposi	Tessanne Chin
The Way I Am	Ingrid Michaelson	Caroline Pennell
We Can Work It Out	John Lennon, Paul McCartney	Jonny Gray
When I Was Your Man	Bruno Mars, Philip Lawrence, Moe Faisal, Ari Levine, Andrew Wyatt	Will Champlin
You Oughta Know	Alanis Morissette, Glen Ballard	Kat Robichaud
You’re No Good	lint Ballard, Jr.	Olivia Henken

Battle Rounds

Song	Songwriters	Performed on The Voice by
As Long as You Love Me	Sean Anderson, Justin Bieber	Caroline Pennell
Counting Stars	Ryan Tedder	James Irwin
Domino	Jessica Cornish, Lukasz Gottwalk, Claude Kelly, Max Martin, Henry Walter	Grey
Don’t You Wanna Stay	Andy Gibson, Paul Jenkins, Jason Sellers	Shelbie Z
Done	Neil Perry, Reid Perry, John Davidson, Jacob Bryant	Olivia Henken
Harder to Breathe	Adam Levine, Jesse Carmichael	Josh Logan
House of the Rising Sun	Traditional	Jacquie Lee
I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing	Diane Warren	Kat Robichaud
I Wish It Would Rain	Roger Penzabene, Barrett Strong, Norman Whitfield	Preston Pohl
Listen	Henry Krieger, Scott Cutler, Anne Preven, Beyoncé Knowles	Amber Nicole
My Song Know What You Did in the Dark	Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, Andy Hurley, Butch Walker, and John Hill	Mathew Schuler
Next to Me	Emeli Sande, Hugo Chegwin, Harry Craze, Anup Paul	Tessanne Chin
Not Ready to Make Nice	Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines, Emily Robison, Dan Wilson	Destinee Quinn
Radioactive	Ben McKee, Dan Platzman, Dan Reynolds, Wayne Sermon, Alexander Grant, Josh Mosser	James Wolpert
Refugee	Mike Campbell and Tom Petty	Jonny Gray
Some Kind of Wonderful	Gerry Goffin and Carol King	Ray Boudreaux
The Best I’ve Ever Had	Gavin DeGraw and Martin Johnson	George Horga Jr.
To Love Somebody	Barry Gibb and Robin Gibb	Austin Jenckes

Tilting at Windmills: The Voice and The Songwriters

Early this week, Josh Marshall (‏@joshtpm) Tweeted this: How does @Carole_King only have 19k followers? No respect for great songwriting? Please, people.  I replied: Sadly, in the age of iTunes nobody knows who writes the songs. No liner notes, no credits>musical illiteracy.

For those not familiar with my first blog post on this topic (http://bit.ly/10Blcib), I’m tilting at a few windmills trying to get some acknowledgement of the contribution songwriters make to the success of a show like The Voice. Yes, the talent this year is outstanding. Yes, the coaches are fascinating to observe. And yes, the production level is permanently set to full-on spectacle. But at the heart of the show is the music, and that’s where some acknowledgement is due to the songwriters.

After my initial rant a month ago, I planned on keeping my lip zipped. That was quite hard after the June 3 episode, when the show’s pervasive habit of crediting the song by the artist managed to stomp on a legend. Amber Carrington told her coach Adam Levine that her song choice was Crazy by Patsy Cline. No, actually, Amber. You can’t sing Patsy Cline’s Crazy because Patsy Cline already sang her version.  You can, however, sing Willie Nelson’s Crazy, because that’s the song he wrote. 

There were a few instances that same evening where coaches neglected to mention the fact that artists were co-writers on songs they had introduced. Usher had a particularly odd reference to Taylor Swift, a co-writer of I Knew You Were Trouble, which was about to be performed by his artist Michelle Chamuel. “It’s like the final sign of approval,” he said, “when the artist who actually sang the song gives you the go-ahead.” Actually it’s more Taylor Swift the writer who has an investment in the song being performed (and selling) well. 

But my pique reached a new peak during the June 10 show, when Sasha Allen sang I Will Always Love You, best known from its appearance in the 1992 film The Bodyguard and the best-selling single by Whitney Houston. The song was always and only identified on the show as Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You. But I Will Always Love You is a Dolly Parton original and she first hit No. 1 on the country charts with it in 1974 and then hit No. 1 again in 1982. We’re talking Dolly Parton, folks, another music legend.

While I can excuse the young contestants of thinking the world began when they were born, I am more than a little shocked at the professionals not providing more of a musical context for these young artists, nor for distinguishing between performance of a song and creation of a song. Maybe it’s a language problem. In the age of downloads, when we don’t have an actual thing to hold in our hand, maybe it’s harder for people to say ‘that Carrie Underwood record’ when there’s not a record in sight. 

But without those records or discs and the liner notes and song listings and credits that came with them, there is a kind of musical illiteracy developing, and the producers of shows like this – along with the record companies and music publishers – have an obligation to make the public aware of what goes into the creation of a musical recording. Producers. Arrangers. Songwriters. Artists. And frankly, I’m also a little shocked that ASCAP and BMI, the performing rights societies, haven’t stepped up and tried to get some more recognition for their members. 

My suggestion, just to dip a toe in the water, is that next season The Voice include in their rehearsal segments an on-screen credit to the songwriters, along with the title, just as they currently put up the Twitter name for the artists. Surely a credit is as important as a Tweet?

Years ago, when I worked for the publishing companies at RCA Records, we were in the process of negotiating a blanket license for our catalogues, for which the record company wanted a greatly reduced rate.  I wouldn’t agree. They proposed a slightly higher rate, and I still wouldn’t agree.  One of the business affairs reps on the record company side asked “What’s with you? Were you raised in the Brill Building or something?”  I always took that as a great compliment, since I was standing up for my songwriters.

 

And here I am, a few decades later, standing up for songwriters again. I may be tilting at windmills, but it feels good. 

Jeanne McCafferty is an editor, writer and book designer.  You can see samples of her work and learn how to contact her at www.jeannemccafferty.com. 
She is on Twitter @IrishCabrini.