Should Songwriters Sing Their Own Songs?

Like Céline Dion?

I guess it depends on whether the singer is a good "actor" or not, whether s/he can put her/himself in character. Often I guess, the distance allows a different perspective to the emotions/story that the songs are trying to convey, which can be good or bad, as long as the original intent is still somewhat captured by the singer. That's why Johnny Cash rules. I didn't think it was possible to improve on "I See A Darkness" or "Mercy Seat", but he did. I know they are covers and I'm moving away from the topic slightly, but the idea remains the same.

I have titled "The Barry Manilow Effects" when someone writes a good song but wrecks it by singing it themselves. Elvis COstello sometimes falls victim to said affliction.

I've always wondered why singers get as much respect as they do. If somebody has a 'good voice', isn't that just an accident of nature they were born with, thus why should we care?

I find it's not actually just the tone of voice that people respond to, it's the emotive quality of that voice. Hence why people with awful but very unique and expressive voices can still be thought of as good singers. Good singing is almost like acting, well, it would be, if I respected acting as a craft.

Which people? Not the ones who buy most records, that's for sure.

I've never heard a recorded singer so awful I thought somebody else should sing their songs - until I was exposed to Lambchop. Kris Kristofferson, Brett Anderson, Steven Hawking, whoever - everyone in the world should be given a chance to do those songs before Wagner gets mic placed in front of him.

I wish there were still interpretive singers who mostly put their personality on other people's songs, kinda like what Johnny Cash has been doing lately. They're still around, I guess, but not in guitar- rock, and they mostly use songs by schlockmasters like Diane Warren and Desmond Child, which kind of defeats the purpose of, you know, making decent music.

>If somebody has a 'good voice', isn't that just an accident of nature they were born with, thus why should we care?

If someone is talented at writing songs, isn't that just an accident of nature they were born with, why should we care?

Songwriting = series of choices made from conception to completion, with every choice allowing acceptance,rejection, or ambivalence on part of listener as well as composer. Voice = fixed attribute, no more or less important than shoe size.

'Talent' = dubious concept anyway

But you're making a strange point. So what if a good singing voice, like good looks, is a purely arbitrary act of nature? Does the fact that singers do not have to spend months of their lives sweating over their craft detract from your pleasure when you listen to someone with an astounding voice?

The end product is what counts in art, not the sweat and blood shed to create it.

Voice = fixed attribute, no more or less important than shoe size.

You've clearly never been in a recording studio with a diva songstress sweating over 8,000 different takes of "Did I sound *sarcastic* enough that time?"

There are a thousand different ways that you can sing any one piece, it takes as much talent and skill to choose which will be the most effective as it does to write the song in the first place.

Singing well and effectively is as much training and technique (on top of raw talent) as the use of any other instrument. I wish Dan Perry would come in on this thread to back me up.

'You've clearly never been in a recording studio with a diva songstress sweating over 8,000 different takes of "Did I sound *sarcastic* enough that time?"'

Why bother going through all that hassle, when there's 10,000 different studio effects you could put on somebody's voice? The amount of ways they can polish a turd nowadays, there's no excuse for sounding like, say, Kurt Wagner.

'Does the fact that singers do not have to spend months of their lives sweating over their craft detract from your pleasure when you listen to someone with an astounding voice?'

Well, it doesn't detract from the pleasure, but I wouldn't place said pleasure on a higher order than that derived from, say, taking drugs, or watching an auto accident.

Also, the 'amount of blood and sweat shed to create' a piece of 'art' or whatever is going to affect said art, or the 'end product', which is why, contrary to stereotypical philistinism, a three-year-old COULDN'T paint a Picasso, or even a Rothko.

Why does everyone hate Kurt Wagner's voice? I love it!

seeing jimmy webb last year singing maccaarthur park was gorgeous until he thanked jesus

The whole debate right now is so mind-boggling that I just can't comprehend it - voice is a fixed attribute? Isn't writing talent? I mean, if you're a bad writer, you just aren't going to magically learn to be better, just like if you're an awful singer, there's only so good you can get. I mean, aren't they both "fixed attributes" depending on your natural ability and what you do with it?

Anyhow, it all depends on the song, the singer, the songwriter, and every other variable, to go back to the original question. There is no set answer for this.

Should songwriters sing their own songs?

Only if they're good singers

No, of course there is no one answer. I was just trying to open up the question of songwriters not always singing their own stuff - which they didn't used to in that mythical time before the Beatles. Since the 60s (but I'm hazy here - not sure of the specifics) there has been a kind of imperative for artists of 'talent' or 'integrity' or whatever to have written their own material. This - I mean, the fact that singer and songwriter are supposed to be one and the same - has given us loads of great things I wouldn't want to be without. But it's not, of course, the only way; labour can be divided differently.

I know that Stevie T knows what I'm on about, cos he gave me this theme in the first place.

Costello is an interesting case, by the way - he HAS written loads of songs and given them away / written them specifically for certain artists - which is an interesting art. He often sings them himself as well, though; the All This Useless Beauty LP has a few tracks in that category. (Compare and contrast: EC's take on 'You Bowed Down', and McGuinn's.)

Randy Newman is often a great songwriter, but I'd rather hear other people sing his songs (and if the charts are to be believed, so would most people).

Laura Nyro was both a talented songwriter and a unique vocalist, and an uncited influence, I believe, on Kate Bush, and by extension, Tori Amos, but only had hits with cover versions of her songs.

So I think Tarden's retreated from his ill-considered position that singing is just something that people do and they're either good or bad at it, enday story. It is a craft like any other - woodworking, chemistry, prostitution, etc. But there are some folks who, no matter how they phrase things, stretch things, breathe things, are going to make my skin crawl. Like... Billy Joel. Technically a "good singer". He may in fact have written some good songs but the world may never know, because no one would be caught dead covering one - desire for fame and Christy Brinkley undercutting bid for pop immortality.

Just to reiterate or clarify what I had in mind:

McCartney = embodiment of (great) songwriter who writes songs, then sings them.

Bacharach [+ writing collaborator] = embodiment of (great) songwriter who writes songs, then gives them to other person to sing.

Point of this thread is really something like: Taking Sides: the McCartney Model vs the Bacharach Model.

Can't ultimately take sides: both are great (at least, these particular cases). But I'm suggesting that they offer different aesthetic possibilities, in terms, perhaps, of how we hear the work, or think about authorship / meaning / whatever.

Exceptions to rule: Beatles giving songs to Stones / Cilla Black; Bacharach / Cole Porter singing own material.

Distrust measurement of quality re dimensions all set abt with vagary: voice, can get can get worse, songwriting ability, can get better can get worse. SHOE SIZE!! Always the same!! We have achieved science...

Well, this is the whole theme of Grace Of My Heart, isn't it? And whether the truest thing is when you get to sing your own words. And my problem with the movie - which I liked a lot - can be summed up by the fact that I like the Shirelles and I don't like Tapestry; ie I love Carole King songs but not Carole King records. Or something

Would Frank Sinatra be another model altogether? He covers songs that other people have already recorded, whereas Bacharach writes songs *for* people, n'est-ce pas?

I think that sort of thing can lead to awful results because people over-ornament in an effort to sound more like themselves, or they adopt ridiculous new styles to differentiate the new version from the original.

I prefer the McCartney model because I don't think Nick Drake songs would sound as affecting done by someone who hadn't written them. As much as I love interpreters like Ella Fitzgerald, it never feels quite the same as when someone has actually written the words themselves.

Not sure that Grace Of My Heart ARGUES that the truest thing is when you sing your own words: agree it ends there (problem of history), but the girls-in-song dialectic is crosscut by the women-as-director dialectic (Allison Anders = the "songwriter" BUT doesn't "sing her own song"...)

It's about control and loss, and it ends sorta sadly.

Dave M.: does yr stricture apply to jazzers generally? Who as often as not "interpret" a la Ella, and write not the songs their improv winds through?

Writing yr own is what distinguishes rock from jazz (kinda: I know, I too can find a million exceptions...)

Exceptions on both sides - post-whenever (ca. 1960?) jazz album tracks seem to have shifted in favor of self-written numbers instead of performances of other-written ones.

ignoring relative quality or otherwise, what abt groups like The Who, Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, where the lead singer/voice of group doesn't write the songs that they sing - where do they fit into this? Someone like Towsend obv. gets pleasure/inspiration from writing for a singer he can tease, satirise and 'speak through' - do such writers sometimes need an alter ego/front man before they can express themselves?

for a band like trembling blue stars(everyone's least favourite) when bob wratten sings his own songs the ache seems immediate and real, but when anne-marie sings his songs it is a bit flat and unaffecting. kurt wagner sings his songs exactly as he believes they should be sung, that's good enough for me.

Andrew L: yes, those are relevant - I think I put them on the 'Bacharach' side.

I like Grace Of My Heart a lot. I'm not sure (with Mark S) that it was really 'arguing' something. (Straw hats off to Costello for not one but two fine tunes, for other people to sing.)

Am willing to consider that the point of Grace Of My Heart is more ambigious than I remembered... Glad somebody mentioned Miserable Bob of Field Mice/Trembling Blue Stars infamy: I have no doubt that really means what he's singing & has experienced those emotions (or that emotion - moan, self-pity, moan), but frankly I couldn't care less. Whereas I believe Glen Campbell singing Where's The Playground Susie?

'Self-expression' = terribly overrated concept, most people aren't that interesting, except when they're showing themselves up inadvertently.

Jules Shears songs are excellent. His singing is *not*. Ugh.

Johnny Mercer can write and sing his own songs but the intepretations are invariably better.

I would like to hear some people cover matt keating and elliott smith songs.

I agree somewhat with Tarden (though he overstates it a little) - and I think this is an argument for division of labour / the Bacharach model.

pinefox, just out of interest, who else fits into the bacharach category? mancini? tony hatch? matt stock? i'm sure there *are* plenty of songwriters who have remained songwriters, but who else since the pre-beatles era you refer to has become as well known and well respected purely on the back of their songwriting?

most recent examples that i can think of have also had a foot firmly planted in the macca camp, or have remained largely unknown.

also, your macca/bacca model assumes that the primary role is that of the songwriter, with the songwriter having the choice of whether or not to try their hand at singing.

just for the sake of argument, what if the songwriter were to be considered as secondary, and the focus placed on the singer's choice of whether or not to try their hand at songwriting? after all, once established as a performer there would be a significant incentive (whether financial or creative) to start songwriting.

is there a case for breaking your macca category down into songwriters who sing (leonard cohen) and singers who write songs (scott walker)?

See, that's where the 'division of labour' things break down in practice - every pro songwriter in the rock-ier end of the pop field churns out total slop. Except for Greg Alexander's "Inner Smile" but that's only because Texas are so brilliant they'd make anything sound great!

I mean, the canon of 'rock' songwriting-for-hire hasn't produced another Bacharach (if that's who you're into) - unless names like Kimberley Rew, John David Souther, Jack Tempchin, and Steve Kipner light you up, the presence of outside songwriters is enough to make one drop a CD like a burning object.

Also, has anyone heard any "The Truth Came Out" by Desmond Child & Rouge? Great voice, as if Daryl Hall had a really bad case of hiccoughs, as well as epilepsy.

Not quite sure what Tarden's on about now - but Splish Splosh is *very* acute, I think, in pulling my model to pieces.

Songwriters not as primary - singers who choose to start writing... hm, this really would be a new way of looking at the world. (Small counter-argument: singers need songs to sing, before they start writing their own?)

Spl-Spl says, don't most songwriters somewhat follow the Macca route? Yes - and the alternative is: I suppose that there are loads of anonymous songwriters who write chart hits, and of whom I've never heard. (Tom E probably knows their names; but he's not here.) These people - whose songs I, naturally, don't like, and in fact don't usually hear - are a major problem for my attempt to theorize the non- singing songwriter as vital figure.