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Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

bbc.co.uk

261–270 of 363 posts

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#261
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since time immoral I like this typo.

Me too - but what would it mean? A long time or a short time?

"You can leave your hat on"

"You don't have to put out the red light"

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#262
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This parallels my entire experience with comp-sci and "group" projects.

One of the most fair way to handle group projects grading was in my capstone business management course. At the end, the 6 of us each had to (privately) rank everyone else according to their contribution, and the assessment by your peers was 20% of the grade for the project. Because someone had to come in last place, it eased a lot of the tension and created a much more pleasant group dynamic: - The free-rider(s) wer…

I wonder how a group of pure go-getters would fare on a grade structure like this.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#263
post #54

It seems as though this is not a well understood issue from reading the comments here. This isn’t artists doing interviews and saying “I wrote this”. The problem is that the artists are bullying their way into getting points for the song writing credits (publishing royalties) when they had little(change a word in the lyrics) or no input into the song. I fully support artists getting as much of the live performance/me…

I always thought the artists make token edits to the songs so they can keep up the charade of writing their own songs for marketing reasons. Someone told me "Taylor Swift writes her own songs." Sure, but when you look at the songwriters on 1989, over half of them were at least co-written by the song writer with the most #1 hits after McCartney and Lennon.

Swift writes her own music. She works with collaborators and producers but she writes her own music. Dessner sent her instrumental tracks that she turned into folklore (writing to track), it was similar with Antonof. This isn’t a marketing charade, she’s literally a songwriter first.

She has included song-writing voice memos that show the progression of how she wrote certain songs on 1989 and the documentary “Miss Americana” clearly shows her songwriting process (as does this collection of clips from an AT&T promo she did for Reputation https://youtu.be/I4WlSnWtkt8).

Liz Rose, who co-wrote some of Swift's earlier songs (including the much-loved, “All Too Well”), described the process of working with her as editing [1], something all of her other collaborators have said too.

There are a lot of pop stars who get a writing credit for doing very little on a track but Taylor Swift isn’t one of them. If anything, she’s been quite clear that her success is directly tied to her songwriting. Her voice alone (especially as a teenager) wouldn’t have made her a star. It was her songs, paired with her voice and her personality that made everything work.

[1]: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bp/swift-collaboration--...

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#264
post #59

Maybe I'm just pissy from being subjected to 60 hours a week of top 40 radio for the last month at work, but I don't think any of them deserves a dime. In fact, I think they owe me something for pain and suffering. I swear I'm not a music snob. 6 months ago when I heard this batch of songs the first time, I thought some of them were pretty catchy. Although I don't know that anyone will argue this was a great year for…

- This is an issue due to large corporations owning many radio stations across the US. - This is an issue due to music labels being unable or unwilling to take risks. - Regardless if you like the music or not, people need to be fairly paid for their work. Musicians/Labels should not be strong-arming/bullying songwriters into taking credit for their work (and thus receiving royalties for work they did not do). 2020 wa…

The artists listed in the article are the same ones I have to listen to all day, which is why I thought my whining was relevant. I know there's good music out there and I've got it on my phone. I just didn't have my headphones charged yesterday and hit a wall listening to the same songs.

I don't listen to the radio on my own time. I've just been working with guys who cycle through 3 stations that all play the exact same songs.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#265
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emigrate from the US and you'll still be expected to pay US taxes on foreign income. That's because you still have U.S. citizenship. You can give that up and not be taxed, as I understand it. Also, it looks like there are provisions to give you exclusions on your foreign income,if you have any.[1] That seems sane to me, if you live their the whole year and that location is your tax base, then you can exclude all th…

> it looks like there are provisions to give you exclusions on your foreign income,if you have any The foreign income exclusion is not that high, especially if you are a mid career tech worker ($107,600 for 2020), and you will be double taxed on amounts above the exclusion. But at least you can skip California state taxes if you count as a nonresident.

I guess that's the decision to make. Do you pay extra to keep your U.S. citizenship active, or do you renounce citizenship to pay less?

I'm sure different people will have different ideas of what that's worth, but it's available as a choice. People that opt not to renounce citizenship have obviously decided it's worth it to not do so, whether that be keeping future options open, or because they know they plan to return. $100k is a lot of money, even if in many locations its less than a mid-career tech worker salary, so I'm not sure I have any objections to this.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#266
post #59

Maybe I'm just pissy from being subjected to 60 hours a week of top 40 radio for the last month at work, but I don't think any of them deserves a dime. In fact, I think they owe me something for pain and suffering. I swear I'm not a music snob. 6 months ago when I heard this batch of songs the first time, I thought some of them were pretty catchy. Although I don't know that anyone will argue this was a great year for…

Sorry to hear this is inflicted on you. What industry sector? (I used to work in an office doing web development with music on all day. Didn't mind it then. Now I work at home in silence.) https://pipedown.org.uk/ this is a worthy campaign.

It's manufacturing I guess you'd call it. It normally doesn't bother me. Most everyone here has a good variety they listen to. It's just the two I'm working with right now who are apparently ok with listening to top 40 stations all day long. It's largely my fault. I could have said something, but I was in a pissy mood to start and I tend to come off nastier than I mean to when I'm in a mood.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michael Jackson wasn't talented. He had a choreographer.

The 2009 MJ documentary shows he was supremely talented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson%27s_This_Is_It

Of course he was. I was just reusing OPs same argument that britney's use of a choreographer is evidence that she is talentless

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way are they "crazy talented" if they dont author the lyrics or the music? Is it meant cynically to describe the situation where the performer is just packaging for someone else's talant?

They kind of say: "look good, sound good." Having worked in this industry myself, is it definitely a talent to have good stage presence, good presence in front of a videocamera, photogenic and modeling skills. Not to mention charisma when dealing with radio and TV interviews, fanbase, etc. It's also a talent to sing well, to sing consistently, to be able to channel inflection and emotion on command in a studio or on…

But that was always the case. I have the (perhaps incorrect) impression that over time, pop performers perform someone else's materials more and more.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- This is an issue due to large corporations owning many radio stations across the US. - This is an issue due to music labels being unable or unwilling to take risks. - Regardless if you like the music or not, people need to be fairly paid for their work. Musicians/Labels should not be strong-arming/bullying songwriters into taking credit for their work (and thus receiving royalties for work they did not do). 2020 wa…

The artists listed in the article are the same ones I have to listen to all day, which is why I thought my whining was relevant. I know there's good music out there and I've got it on my phone. I just didn't have my headphones charged yesterday and hit a wall listening to the same songs. I don't listen to the radio on my own time. I've just been working with guys who cycle through 3 stations that all play the exact s…

Have you tried getting better coworkers? /s

One possible solution is to see if there are independently-run stations in your area. I live near a university, so there is a student-run station that explicitly is not allowed to play top-charting songs. So I get some good music discovery, and awkward banter from new djs. If you have access to a computer, then you have access to basically any station. soma.fm is pretty good.

It definitely is frustrating to see the same songs on the radio over and over, but that's really an issue from iHeartRadio (formerly Clear Channel) owning stations across the country. Boycott iHeartRadio if you can.

Re: Hit songwriters ask pop stars to stop taking credit for songs they didn't write

#270

I mean, I have sympathy for the writers, but I also don't believe that it's necessarily equitable that a songwriter receives all the money when a song is played on the radio but the performer receives nothing (that is my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong). Consider the case of "I Will Always Love You", written and originally performed by Dolly Parton but made globally famous by Whitney Houston. I mean, Pa…

The Bodyguard soundtrack could have been recorded without Houston.

It could not have been recorded without Parton.

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