"They don't even write their own songs"

Curt1s (and "Elvis"): yes I agree but isn't it interesting to ask WHY!! What were the reasons then? Why did they change? Why did they shift back?

Isn't that a bit of an oversimplification? Modern production, marketing and distribution had to have some effect, didn't they?

Anyway, I'm sure that SoundScan had something to do with it, combined with the mid-80's rise of producer-as-artiste, the long-standing trend amongst rap and r&b artists to guest on each-other's tracks. There's probably way more to it than that. One interesting thing to note is that there don't seem to be as many combos on the charts as there were in the 70s and 80s. Somebody ought to do an analysis of the solo performer-to-band ratio of chart artists and graph it out for the last fifty years. I have a hunch that we'd see a bell curve.

I'm not sure that I believe this is true. I just think the modern marketplace supports more diversity of genre than in the past, and there are a set of rockist satorial codes that have been embedded in the modern market. (Note: I suspect this is a very-U.S. centered viewpoint)

Culture Club did Bread's "Everything I Own" (or was that just Boy George?), Suggs has done loads of crap (ska-tinged) covers, the Pet Shop Boys did "Go West" and Duran Duran did a whole LP full of covers - all in their twilight years... Christ, only George Michael's keeping it real "man"!

perhaps there is an analogy about comedy scriptwriters here too, where brit ones tend to be smaller teams or duos, and american teams seem to be much larger, a more specialized division of labour

The funniest example though has to be Sixpence None The Richer. The first single after their big hit "Kiss Me" was a cover of the La's "There She Goes." Their new single is a cover of Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over." So basically, a one hit wonder on the U.S. charts has tried to make a career of covering other U.S. chart one hit wonders. They should make a concept album of it, with "Walk On The Wildside," "Heart Of Gold" and "Werewolves Of London"

I wouldn't think that was anomalous in terms of current pop acts, though. 'Nsync's first album featured only outside-written songs, their second had two album tracks co-written by a band member, their third two singles co-written a band members and two album tracks co-written by another one. Both Pink and Christina Aguilera started co-writing with, um, was it Linda Perry? on their second albums, which produced at least one single, Pink's "family portrait".

And each time it's heralded in the language of breaking from record company control, of Finding Their Own Voice: Pink's "La Reid made me sing r'n'b pop when really I have always loved (soft)rock honest", Xtina's "this is ME, not the teenpop mould I was forced into" - and it carries with it the idea of honesty, of writing about their own experience (Pink and Xtina both have songs about their families breaking up on the relevant albums; the Timberlake-and-then-choreographer-penned "Gone" is apparently about him weally weally missing Britney when she went off to get a manicure, or something). So there's almost a set of different standards: the ones your record company makes you record are the POP! ones, the ones you write yourselves are about YOU.

(not a hard and fast rule: the JC Chasez-penned 'nsync songs make no claim to personal authenticity, which considering that one of them is about phone-and-cybersex and another about, um, space? is probably a wise move.)

Good point, cis, though the Beatles and Rolling Stones actually ran their shows, where the new people are simply "collaborating," and may not actually be playing a large part in the songwriting process (supposed Linda Perry specializes in finding an artist's voice for them).

Oh dear, I think I ended up way off topic--and even if any of that is true, why they stopped writing songs for specific youth tribes (punks, mods, hippies, teddy boys, etc.,) and started to try to write for [i]everybody[/i] is still beyond me. (although I suppose it could simply be exposure via punk to the business side of how to make a record?)

Also, PERHAPS the creation and persistence of a bohemian rock underground has something to do with this as well. Musicians who might demand artistic autonomy or even just interesting forms of compromise just get funneled out to the underground, leaving "hungrier" and more compromisible acts to fill the mainstream, making the mainstream less appealing to the autonomists, drawing them to the underground...and so on. Of course, this scenario explains nothing about audience expectations, so I dunno.

Theory made up on the spot:

I think now is the natural state of affairs. Pop has just had the odd period when 'deep' lyrics were seen as important (and it was expected that mass market pop performers write their own songs). The late 60s and the early 80s are the two times I am thinking of. The former was prompted by the Beatles and the latter was the fall out from punk. At other times, professional songwriters have been where it's at.

The only thing is, perhaps it wasn't just punk. The trendy 70s art-school scene of Bowie and Roxy Music (yes I know they had hits but they were still alternative) also filtered into the self-written New Romantic hokem of Spandau and Duran.

Only if you're talking about the singles charts. Look at this week's top 10 albums:

1. PERMISSION TO LAND - THE DARKNESS
2. AMERICAN TUNE - EVA CASSIDY
3. TAKE THEM ON ON YOUR OWN - BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB
4. BUSTED - BUSTED
5. DUTTY ROCK - SEAN PAUL
6. GOTTA GET THRU THIS - DANIEL BEDINGFIELD
7. ESCAPOLOGY - ROBBIE WILLIAMS
8. LOVE & LIFE - MARY J BLIGE
9. YOUTH AND YOUNG MANHOOD - KINGS OF LEON
10. INNOCENT EYES - DELTA GOODREM

(ie when rock was the dominant form of pop)

I don't think this thread is so useful if we treat 'pop' here as meaning just the best selling music of the day. I think it's better to assume we are talking about chart music with an aesthetic dimension differentiating it from rock. I know that creates all sort of problems of its own, but otherwise it just becomes a thread charting the relative popularity of rock music(which as you say, is usually self-written).

Personally, I would say the end of the pop singer/songwriter in the UK was during the late 80s, with Stock/Aitken/Waterman turning out hit after hit by artists whose looks and image were a lot more important than their musical skills.

Anyway, the 80s were kind of special, because it is (apart from The Beatles, who were a one-off anyway) the only time when typical teenybopper acts have been taking themself seriously and trying to create "art" within their music. The early 80s had bands that would make ambitious concept album and expect to have teenybopper hit singles from them.

I still think this was a good thing though.

Some of them do. Oasis obviously want to (and have succeeded to some extent), the power-poppers want to write hit songs all the time, but don't succeed at all because the current young audiences don't share their musical taste (they will sometimes have radio hits though, as radio listeners are older than singles buyers and tend to have a more "old fashioned" taste)

You mean 'chart music' almost as a genre in itself? In which case that genre in its modern form was pretty much established by SAW (who also developed the working methods and style of infrastructure). You can of course trace back to stuff like Bucks Fizz and Dollar, and earlier to the Bay City Rollers, Jonathan King, Chinn-Chapman and god knows who else, but although those people were very successful they were culturally peripheral to the mainstream which was 'rock' (includes punk and new romantic) bands writing and playing their own songs.

Actually I don't think it's true that current pop artists don't want to write their own songs. They're just not allowed to in most cases (although there's the opposite force of management pressing for songwriting credits simply because it increases income). It's interesting that the BBC are pushing the hybrid Fame Academy that tries to re-assert the idea of the artist as songwriter (one of the crafts honed in the 'academy' - but with the songs filtered through professional quality control).

Regarding rock album sales: this is complex. I don't understand enough about the economics of the UK charts. Singles sales are very low compared to even ten years ago (I think) and the whole release schedule system is designed to massage singles into short-lived high chart placings with the aim of stimulating album sales but I'm not sure how many pop artists are really shifting large numbers of albums. I suppose some must be or it wouldn't be economically viable to continue with the whole Pop Idol/Fame Academy style artist stream (unless it's more about the revenue from the TV series than the records).

The odd cover was considered acceptable, but to be a proper band meant writing your own songs- Stones, The Who, Hendrix, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, T-Rex, Bowie, Roxy Music, Pistols, Clash, and even through to pop bands like Wham and Bros...

I think the change back probably came with Stock Aitken and Waterman "hit factory" and the increasing use of manufactured bands by the recording industry. It became obvious in the late 80s and early 90s that not only were the "front people" not playing on the record they also were not involved in the writing of it. The success of New Kids On The Block spawned a hundred million copycat boy bands who were hired for their looks and marketing potential- the target audience- young girls and gay men- were not terribly fussed whether they wrote the songs or not... and in a way they're right, after all Elvis and Sinatra never wrote a note, and there's room for Pleasant Valley Sunday as well as Tomorrow Never Knows.

On a purely economic level (in the UK at least) could it not be simply because "big" hit songs simply aren't as big (i.e. don't sell as many copies = don't generate as much income for either writer or performer) as they were say 20 years ago?

Also (partly because the demographic of the singles-buying market has become so heavily focused on teenage school-girls and also partly, I suspect, because of the attituide and approach of our music industry and press) the life-expectancy of the average new "pop" act seems to be getting progressively shorter (yes, of course there are exceptions!) so songwriters are likely to be able to maintain a longer and more lucrative career by either opting for the "rock" option or by concealing their own identity behind a succession of different "pop" acts.

i blame the beatles, really. a division of labor b/w singer and songwriter used to be the normal state of affairs (as much music followed the xample of classical music, where the division is unquestioned) in many realms--in other realms (blues, country, low vaudeville) authorship simply wasn't much of a question.

i get the comment in tom's title all the time. my only response is "who cares who wrote the song if you like it? (followed in my mind by: or are you looking for a role model of autonomous production?)

I agree entirely Tom - this is what I was hinting at when I referred to ".... the attitude and approach of our music industry and press", i.e. those "rock" bands who expect / are expected by their record labels (the increasing dominance of a handful of huge corporations is just another element here) to achieve a high profile and sell records in huge quantities, frequently seem to be dumped incredibly rapidly by those labels when they fail to deliver as expected.

The days when record labels seemed to have enough faith in the acts they'd signed to keep pushing them or to give them another chance when the second album wasn't as good as / didn't sell as well as the first one, sadly seem to be behind us.

Maybe it's just me but it seems as if the public are also far less patient and forgiving too.

The consequences of this are inevitably that only a relatively small (and falling) number of bands seem to get the opportunity to experiment, learn and develop.

Catch 22 I'm afraid.

That's all very well, but who's going to break the news to the record labels?!

The harder a band/act/singer has to work to be experimental or popular or both the better, same as any other industry.

Otherwise it's simply the case that the Holland/Dozier/Holland method has taken precedence over the Lennon/McCartney method. This doesn't ever seem to have been a problem with black pop - through Motown, Stax, Philly, Chic, house and through to R&B, artists have been perfectly content with singing the music and words of backroom pros. Why the difference when it comes to white pop?

Still, I caught "Miss You" on the radio while out the other morning and I kind of know what you mean. Or "Last Train To London," come to think of it.

I would have quite admired Oasis had they come up with "House Of Jealous Lovers," actually...

(OK maybe not Blur)

Thinking about this last night I suspect N is right - the late 60s and early 80s are two odd blips.

And seeing as you mention Blur! "Baggy? yes we can do that! Glam? yup! US Lo fi? our forte!"

**Pop acts still do this though, Dr C (Cher with her vocoders, Posh with her Truesteppers). **

Yeah, but Posh and Cher are pretty much empty vessels - they're not exactly rooted *somewhere* to start with.

I suppose Kid A might count.

...hello. It's two different things. TWO DIFFERENT THINGS

Anyone who's been a performer knows. Anyone who's been a songwriter knows. thanks