Where Does the Music Come From? Songwriters.

I thought I would have some more time before I had to resume my quest for getting some credit for songwriters on The Voice – but I see news tidbits that they are back in production, so here we go.  

For those new to the quest: back in May, I posted about the surprising tendency of some of the music professionals on The Voice to elide the creation of a song with the performance of a song.  (That first post is here: http://bit.ly/1cV7ugE.) I was obliged to revisit the topic in June, when music legends Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton were ignored in extensive conversations about their songs Crazy and I Will Always Love You, with credit (and seeming ownership) given over entirely to artists who had recorded their songs. (That second post is here: http://bit.ly/11ObUyr.)

In the intervening weeks, I’ve connected with a few people in the music business, and acquainted myself with some of the other issues affecting the music field.  A June speech from songwriter Paul Williams (president of ASCAP) made me aware of the copyright challenges that affect all artists/creators, from independents on YouTube to behemoths like Disney.  And there have been more than a few news stories on the apparently woefully low payment rate to songwriters by the online streaming music service Spotify.  

But while both of those aspects are important, they are the music equivalent of inside-baseball stories.  What I’m talking about is music literacy, not dumbing down the music-buying public – and at the very least, not misleading them about who the creators are behind the music they love. In our digital age, somehow the names of songwriters have become detached from their creations, and if you don’t have a CD in hand, it takes a little digging to find out the songwriters responsible for that new song you can’t get out of your head. 

I’ve singled out The Voice because of the way they approach the latter half of their season, when the coaches start working with the artists, speaking to them (and to the camera, thus directly to the audience) about song selection. It’s in these segments where I noticed the disconcerting tendency to incorrectly attribute songs – sometimes hilariously so in Blake Shelton’s case. But the show does edit together interesting and engaging behind-the-scenes footage and at some point they give the Twitter name for the artist via a Chyron in the lower right corner of the screen.  What I’m suggesting to the producers is that in these rehearsal sequences, they also put up a Chyron with the title of the song and the names of the songwriters.  Wouldn’t that be something?  

The other reason I’ve singled out The Voice, frankly, is that it’s a ratings juggernaut for NBC; the show is consistently at the top throughout their season, and at Number One in the later weeks.  The opportunity to have the names of the songwriters appear on the screens of some 20 million + viewers all at the same time fills me with a ridiculous kind of joy. 

A bit of personal testimony: I’ve been working for some time on an historical novel, much of which is set in the 1920s.  As part of my early research, I contacted the lovely folks at the Billboard Charts Department who sent me the Top 10 (or 12 or 14) lists for that decade (the hit counts varied back then). I was surprised when scanning the pages how many songs I knew; I think anyone who has an appreciation for the Great American Songbook would have a similar experience. But I recognized only a handful of singers, and those were the titans whose work crossed the decades: Fanny Brice, Al Jolson, Bessie Smith, and Eddie Cantor. But the songs endure: St. Louis Blues (W. C. Handy) from 1920, My Man (music by Maurice Yvain, English lyrics by Channing Pollock) from 1922, California, Here I Come (Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Meyer) from 1924, Tea for Two (Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar) from 1925, Always (Irving Berlin) from 1926, Ol’ Man River (Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II) from 1928, Am I Blue? (Harry Akst and Grant Clarke) from 1929, and many, many others.

The last part of my personal testimony: the illustration that appears above is a WordCloud made from a mostly off-the-top of my head list of songwriters whose work I’ve loved–some of my personal favorites, I guess you could say, although I'm sure I'll realize I've left out a name or two. Chances are, if you were born after 1985 or so, many if not most of these names will be unfamiliar to you, which proves my point in a way.  I may have to do a WordCloud of some of their song titles next.

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.

Even I can't get an agent

This wonderful post from Ken Levine is tough to read, but important for writers to know.  Bravo, sir.

Even I can't get an agent

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.

Twitter: A ToC for the Internet – Both Highbrow and Lowbrow

Some people of my acquaintance have expressed surprise for my acceptance of/ fondness for/ almost daily references to Twitter. 

 

My headline gives it away a bit: I think of Twitter as a daily, ever-updating Table of Contents for my own personal Internet.  The feeds that I follow reflect my professional interests and some personal passions: books and publishing, writers and writing, arts education, films, music, NPR, news, and politics – and notice how one topic nicely blends into the next.  (Demonstrating the blend is my favorite tweet of recent days, from Kelly McBride (@kellymcb) “NPR has totally owned this 100-year-anniversary of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring”; I love a centennial of classical music being celebrated in such contemporary language.) Through Twitter I’ve been to websites I might never have come across, read the work of writers I might never have discovered, and learned of breaking news well before the broadcast and cable outlets have it on screen. 

I have to give credit to Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, for convincing me to sign up for Twitter. I was firmly entrenched in the camp then pooh-poohing the 140 character limit and the reports of people tweeting their sandwich selection for lunch.  I was a bit dismayed when Mr. Simon first announced one Saturday morning ‘you can follow us on Twitter @nprscottsimon.’ Convinced he’d gone over to the dark side, it was some months – maybe a year or more - before I finally decided to explore it for myself.  Now it’s an indispensable part of my online day.  

Now let’s get to the Highbrow / Lowbrow part. Joyce Carol Oates joined Twitter last fall, and it wasn’t too long before someone mused that in the twittification of her deep thoughts, she might be writing the first Twitter novel. (Jason Boog of MediaBistro’s invaluable Galley Cat blog posted a Storyboard of her early tweets that you can see here http://bit.ly/14cNYSY.)

I haven’t seen a novel developing, but when I saw the succession of tweets she posted last week about an Op-Ed by James Atlas, the aggregate of these posts struck as a new form of essay. I’ve story-fied her tweets (via Storify) to make it easier to read, and you can see that aggregation here http://sfy.co/cJsw.  

The original piece by James Atlas, which had appeared in The New York Times the previous Sunday (May 19), was an unexpected paean to cable television series and the joys of binge viewing.  And since I’m guessing you’ll be as intrigued to read it as I was, you can find it here: http://nyti.ms/10L329u .

Somehow I never expected these titans of literature (that’s the highbrow component) to be so fluent in television series – from the described glories of Breaking Bad to high-water marks of The Sopranos and Oz to the apparently lesser Elementary.  Despite the fact that I have long argued that television as a medium does far more to engage the adult market than the vast majority of films do, I have still carried that prejudice from childhood that television viewing is lowbrow, the ‘vast wasteland’ with only occasionally redeeming oases. Perhaps the titans have given me the equivalent of a hall pass.

I’m sure that Mr. Atlas has convinced me to watch Breaking Bad - finally.  And Ms. Oates has captured for me one of the joys of reading in a way I hadn’t identified it before: “the silence of print”. What a wonderful phrase.

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.

Is This the First Twitter Short Story?

A week ago tonight, on Wednesday May 8^th, it was already late evening here on the West Coast when I saw a tweet alerting me to a story unfolding online out of Washington, DC. It was the Twitter feed of John R. Stanton (@dcbigjohn) whose profile describes him as the DC Bureau Chief of BuzzFeed, plus “reporter, former bouncer and all around dc bama.” (This last term will be explained shortly.)

I started following the series and tweets and as I did, found myself sitting up straighter, waiting for the next.  It was a riveting story – complete with questions and comments from interlocutors in the Twittersphere – and when it ended after 44 tweets (by my count) I felt like I had read something. 
 

The next morning I was trying to figure out how to share it with a friend, one who is not on Twitter, and I had the idea just to do a few screen grabs and then give the always odd-sounding ‘read from the bottom up’ direction.  But when I checked @dcbigjohn’s feed again, he had tweeted that Clinton Yates (@clintonyates) had ‘storified’ his ‘tweeter rantings’ of the previous evening.  When I clicked through, this is what I found: http://bit.ly/10x7aIZ

I’ll give you a moment to click on that link to read through the Storification. But before you do, here is where the explanation of ‘bama’ comes in: ‘bama’ is apparently an idiom specific to the DC area, originally describing a countrified Southerner (as in Alabama) whose dress, manner, etc. made them conspicuous in the big city.  Now it’s apparently taken on the additional connotation of street person – a ‘whack-ass’ according to one of the definitions I read.  Just FYI…

Here’s your reading break.  Click on that link above, read through the tweets, and join me back here.

-------------

And we’re back. Isn’t that something? The story John Stanton has written is remarkable.  In somewhere around a thousand words, he introduces a distinct setting, then with deft strokes of detail gives the reader fully fleshed-out characters. Next is the main dramatic incident, the injury of the main character, and in the telling of that, Stanton widens the story with more characters, giving us a sense of the community in which these events are unfolding. Then to another crisis, and a resolution aided by the storyteller himself (letting the reader know he is apparently aptly named as dcbigjohn). Last is a denouement that updates us on the main character and the community in which this took place – and the writer’s concerns about both.

That’s a lot of story for a thousand words.  And when I found myself thinking about it repeatedly, I realized it would be an excellent exercise for writers, because telling your story in a succession of 140 characters bursts forces you to distill the elements to their essence.  

Not that you have to go ahead and post the tweets, but just give it a try.  How much story can you tell in less than a thousand words, 140 characters at a time?  And let me know how it goes. 

In the meantime, I'm going to be checking out the wonders of Storify.com.

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

The Voice and The Songwriters

The Voice has been truly enjoyable this season. I’ve always loved the premise of the show – singers being judged on the quality of their voice alone – and the change in chemistry that came with the addition of Shakira and Usher as judges has been welcome. This new mix, along with veterans Adam Levine and Blake Shelton, offers a definite charm, much less tension (real or imagined) and a refreshing sense of camaraderie.

Maybe I love this show because it reminds me of the music business I worked in back in the ‘70s and ‘80s – first at ABC Records (yes, there was once a label at ABC) and then at RCA Records (back when RCA Records was one of the majors, not just an RCA label under the Sony umbrella); in both cases I worked in the music publishing divisions of those companies. Tapes came in, sometimes discs; some with hand-written notes, most with cover letters, but rarely with photos. (This was, of course, in the days before MTV, when “Video Killed the Radio Star.”) Many received only a brief listen, but the thrill that came when you heard the first minute or so of a song demo or an artist’s audition tape that you knew was good was unlike anything else.

But while I’ve really been enjoying The Voice, something began to chafe a bit watching the show on May 6^th, the first night of their live rounds. Maybe it was due to the fact that I was paying a bit more attention, and really watching and listening. It started in the segment on Amber Carrington’s rehearsal with coach Adam Levine, who announced to the camera that the song he’d selected for her was “Stay” by Rihanna.

Hmm, I thought to myself, I didn’t know Rihanna wrote her own material. A few numbers later, Usher referred to assigning an artist “I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston. Well yes, Whitney Houston had the hit on it – one of several hits from The Bodyguard soundtrack – but she didn’t write it. David Foster and Linda Thompson did. A few of the singer/songwriters whose material was represented were properly credited, although Phil Collins’ acknowledgement for “Against All Odds” came with the ouch! that the young contestant Vedo had never heard of him before. 

But it was on the last number of Monday night’s show when I knew I had to say something. In selecting the song “Feeling Good” for his contestant Judith Hill, Adam Levine referred to it as being ‘by’ Nina Simone. Yes, Ms. Simone recorded one of the many, many cover versions – probably upwards of fifty or more – but the song “Feeling Good” was written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for their 1964 musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd. (My personal favorite was the version recorded by Sammy Davis, Jr.)

So I watched and listened to the May 7^th show with a honed ear. Again, singer/songwriters got credit: John Lennon for “Imagine”, Bruno Mars for “When I Was Your Man”, and Al Green was at least a co-writer on “Let’s Stay Together”. But when Blake Shelton gave Holly Tucker the song “How Do I Live’ for her performance – and referred to it as by LeAnn Rimes, my jaw dropped. (Again, LeAnn Rimes had the big hit with the song; however Trisha Yearwood’s version was no slouch on the charts, either.) But the song was written by Diane Warren. Diane Warren, writer of “Because You Loved Me,” “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” and dozens of other Top 10 records; she’s probably the most successful songwriter in American popular music in the last thirty years.

C’mon, guys. I expect this confusion from amateurs, but not professionals. Admittedly, I’m sensitive about this subject, and have been since back in my RCA days. I was handling the publishing on “I Write the Songs” when Barry Manilow covered it and rode it to the top of the charts. People still think Manilow was the songwriter, but some confusion is forgivable, since the lyric does say, in fact,I write the songs. But it was written by Bruce Johnston (that’s Johnston with a ‘T’, please note) known to most people these days as a member of the Beach Boys. Equating the performance of a song with the creation of a song is in the same territory as thinking actors come up with all that zippy dialogue by themselves.

 

So who is going to stand up for the songwriters and give them a little credit? Back when folks were buying discs instead of downloads, there was a least a reference to songwriters in the song listings or lyric reprints; but just try to find a songwriting credit on iTunes. And with what The Voice is doing, songwriters are not only not getting credit where it’s due, their work is being attributed to others in a confusing sort of way. 

So hello there, ASCAP! Hey, BMI! How about standing up for your writer members? I’m guessing that the behemoth publishers are more interested in blanket deals that insisting on some credits for their writers, and the independent publishers are David vs. this Goliath. 

I’m not saying the producers at The Voice have to make a big deal of it. But how about a little Chiron down in the corner, where they occasionally put a song title, I believe, during the earlier rounds. Put the title there, and underneath, in smaller type, put the names of the songwriters; the seasoned songwriters are accustomed to the small type already. The Voice producers have already created a supportive, encouraging environment for singers; I’m just asking that they widen their embrace a bit and recognize the contribution of people who are the creators of the music they are making on The Voice.

I think Mikky Ekko and Justin Parker are among the people who would appreciate the change. It turns out they are the writers on the song “Stay” that was recorded by Rihanna. 

Jeanne McCafferty is a writer, editor and book designer.  You can find samples of her work and find a link to contact her at www.jeannemccafferty.com.