I watched the Hugh Grant / DRew Barrymore romantic comedy Music and Lyrics a few weeks ago. Recognizing that this probably isn’t a solid documentary on the music business, it did nevertheless raise some questions for me about realism.
In the movie, “Cora Corman,” is a young pop star - desbribed as “bigger than Britney and Christina put together.” She wants washed-up 80s pop star Alex Fletcher to write a new song for her (because one of his band’s old hits got her through her parents’ divorce when she was 7). She tells him that in two weeks, when she kicks off her new tour at Madison Square Garden, they’ll perform it together on stage. And it also will be included on her new album, which is nearly finsihed recording, so she needs the song finished in just a few days.
My questions: that set-up works great in the movie to drive the story along. But in real life, is it remotely realistic for a perfomer like that to have that kind of control over her album content? I had always imagined that, unless you were an extremely well-established star (think the Stones, Aerosmith, that calibre) that you had to deal with a record label with at least SOME control over your album content. And at the end of the movie, Cora introduces the song as “her new single,” which strikes me as an even further leap into impossibility – that even if she had a label that would let her pick a filler tune to add to her album, and even if they’d let her do what she wanted as far as adding a song to her stage show, she surely couldn’t unilaterally decide what single to release – could she??
Again, I don’t fault the movie; I’m just wondering how things work in real life. Does Shakira decide what her next single will be? Does Miley Cyrus dictate who sings duets with her on her stage show? Or is that kind of power available only to the Mick Jaggers and Steven Tylers of the world?
Slightly off-topic, but if this interests you, you may want to check out Entourage. It’s a drama/comedy that follows a young movie star behind the scenes. Lots of the same stuff you’re talking about- what movie to do next, actor vs studio/agent.
It’s all over the map - as Prince says “If you don’t own the masters, you are a slave.” Owning the masters is kinda the musical equivalent of having final cut as a director in a movie. Witness Prince’s maneuvers to free himself of his contract and set up a fully-controlled approach for his music. His actions seemed full-on crazy at the time, but it turns out he was crazy like a fox, in terms of controlling his own revenue stream.
Also look at the war Kelly Clarkson waged with Clive Davis regarding her latest CD, My December. He didn’t think it was a hit and wanted to shelve it and/or change its direction and involve other creatives. She said no, got the CD released her way, but Davis wasn’t showing his support and the big story became about their disagreement. The CD did okay at best.
It’s a changing world. If an artist doesn’t like the terms, they can do their own thing - but that doesn’t mean they necessarily have better judgment than music execs - or the ability to get the word out, since the web is noisy place. Look at Radiohead and In Rainbows - for every PR success story like that, you have countless other musicians going the “no label” route with varying degrees of success…
Aerosmith would be a different category from say Shakira. They write their own songs, and do the occassional cover. Since the record company is the one taking responsibility for getting the rights to a song by another artist, I would imagine they would have some sort of explicit or implicit veto power. If an artist pitched a fit over it, they might figure it’s easier to get them what they want. The record company usually picks a single, but if there was one song that the artist really thought should be, it would probably have to be negotiated. Assuming, that the artist was as big as Britney and Christina put together.
Not so true, AFAIK, since their comeback in the 80’s with Permanent Vacation. They’ve done a lot of work with songwriters Desmond Child (Dude Looks Like a Lady) and Diane Warren (Don’t Want to Miss a Thing - ugh.). They still write - but I don’t know what percent of any given album is theirs…