Another Song I Wish I’d Written: The Endangered Songwriters
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 3rd, 2008 1 Comment »
The “songwriter”, is an endangered species in our time.
Today, few young people in the music industry seem to know what a “songwriter” really is. Often, when I tell someone I’m a songwriter, they ask me “what do you write on?” (Meaning what software.) I answer “paper”.
I hope I won’t bore you if I talk a little about the history of “popular” songwriting, a subject I’m passionate about.
Around the turn of the century, there was a spot on West 28th street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, on the island of Manhattan, nicknamed Tin Pan Alley. Here, songwriters wrote the hits (and flops) of the day. Their songs were plugged to music publishers by a “song-plugger”, often a hopeful vauldeville kid-singer. Their songs were sold as sheet music, a folded piece of paper with an attractive cover, and people would buy the latest hit, take it home, and play it on their living room piano. (A much larger percentage of the population could read music and play a little piano then). Many of the songs from this era ended up in Broadway Shows, or musical revues like “the Zeigfield Follies”.
When the phonograph record, and then radio, became commonplace, the business of songwriting changed. Suddenly, one singer or band’s rendition of a hit could reach an enormous audience, and the songwriter and the performers now had to share the spotlight. But still, the big bands and the great crooners would be helpless without the hits they performed, written by such master song-crafters as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, or George Gershwin. The songwriters were sometimes still bigger stars than the singers.
With the invention of sound-movies music became integral to motion pictures. From the moment Al Jolson delivered that appropriate line in “the Jazz Singer” (1927) “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet…”, the public wanted movies to talk, and moreover, to sing. Many songwriters moved from the East Coast to the West, and Hollywood became the hit-making home of popular song.
Fast forward to the early sixties. Artists like Buddy Holly and the Beatles started a trend, in which singers and bands wrote their own material. It was sort of a novelty at the time, but all the rock and roll bands felt entitled to write THEIR own material also… after all, it’s only rock and roll, how hard can that be to write? And of course, Bob Dylan arrived, and the new wave of “singer-songwriters” ensued. By the early 1970’s, it was normal for popular musicians to write their own songs. Is it a coincidence that this is when the decline of the art form of songwriting became undeniable?
Today, there are still many artists who don’t write their own songs. But the secret of most of these artists is, they don’t have any songs. Music intended to dance to at clubs has been deconstructed to it’s fundamental components: rhythm and tone. Melody and harmony are expendable. Today’s pop charts are dominated by acts who’s music is “written” by Producers, not Songwriters. The composers are studio engineers, who manipulate short clips of sound, and tie them together with digital software that quantizes each sound to an exact, mathematical pattern.
There are some exceptions. Mainstream “Pop-Rock” acts like Avril Lavigne, “Daughtry” and Kelly Clarkson, have their songs written for them by professionals, although they often are given songwriting credit, as a contractual perk, that helps them earn royalties on the song’s publishing rights. And, in Nashville, popular country music is still written by on-staff songwriters. Ironically, songwriters from New York and LA flock to Nashville, hoping for a chance to do their job. All they have to do is write about pickup trucks and rodeos. Ever noticed how today’s country music chord changes often sound suspiciously more sophisticated than that of rock music? That’s because it’s written by city slicker songwriters, desperate not to go extinct.
Broadway was once the greatest outlet for the greatest popular songwriters. Now, shows pop up every day rehashing the hits of various pop and rock acts of the past, capitolizing on the fanbase of those no-longer-touring acts.
Okay, thanks for reading that. It’s something I love to talk about, with anyone patient enough to listen.
This all brings me to the latest installment of “Another Song I Wish I’d Written”. Today’s song was from 1954 musical movie called “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”, starring, in my opinion, the sexiest singer-dancer-actress ever, Jane Powell. Here’s Miss Powell, in an animated GIF from “Royal Wedding”:
The movie’s music was written by three collaborating songwriters (a rare setup): Great Tin Pan Alley graduate Saul Chaplin and composer Gene De Paul wrote melodies, while the legendary American-Songbook lyricist Johnny Mercer supplied the words.
The song I chose to gush about is called “Lament (Lonesome Polecat)”. It is just the most exquisitely beautiful piece of music….
“Lament” is sung by seven lumberjacks, up on a snowy hill, chopping up lumber. As staged by the delightfully out-of-his-mind choreographer Michael Kidd, the young lumberjack’s axes land on the wood to punctuate certain beats, like an old prisonwork-song, except with stunning four part harmonies and an almost eastern sounding melody. The lyrics are about loneliness and isolation, but the song is far from depressing.
Rent the movie, or buy it from the soundtrack album on itunes… although that version eschews the percussive sound effects of the axes falling, which is important.
