Belinda Carlisle very rarely wrote music or lyrics for the Go-Gos.
Ric Ocasek wrote 99% of the Cars’ music and 100% of their lyrics… but Benjamin Orr was lead singer on a little over half their songs.
Paul Jones was the lead singer for Manfred Mann- as far as I know, Jones never wrote any songs.
Of course, we’re pretty much confining ourselves to rock bands from the mid-Sixties on. I mean, in other genres, singers weren’t (and sometimes still aren’t) expected to write their own material. Obviously, Diana Ross never wrote any of the Supremes’ material and Frank Sinatra never wrote any material for the Tommy Dorsey band, and nobody cared!
Upon checking my Cheap Trick CD’s, it appears that in the early years guitarist Rick Nielsen was the band’s principal songwriter (sometimes with the help of bassist Tom Peterssen), but on more recent albums Robin Zander is listed as cowriter on a considerable number of tracks.
Actually, it’s because Jim Morrison thought that Robbie Krieger’s songs were fluff pieces and didn’t want to be credited with them because, as you said, most people thought that Jim wrote all the songs. In his defense, in a lot of cases he was right, “Light My Fire” being a notable exception (although Jim did contribute a verse to that song).
I’m confused about this statement: the songs were credited to the Doors up until Morrison’s death, then changed retroactively afterwards. Unless he made his wishes known by Ouija Board, Morrision had nothing to do with crediting the actual songwriter.
Further, the credits for all songs written by the group was simply “The Doors.” That clearly seems to be a royalty issue: by listing the entire group as the songwriters, they get the songwriting royalties. This was a decision when the group first recorded, so if Morrison didn’t want to be associated with Kreiger’s songs, why not just credit them to him and no one else? Why not credit them to “Morrison-Doors” at the beginning?
I can understand Morrison might have not liked the situation, but it wasn’t changed until after he died.
Not true. Starting with The Soft Parade and lasting until L.A. Woman they had separate songwriting credits. The songs on The Soft Parade written by Krieger (“Tell All The People”, “Wishful Sinful”, “Runnin’ Blue”) were seen by Morrison as particularly egregious examples of nonsense and refused to be associated with the writing of them, almost going so far as to refuse to sing them.
That’s the story. Unless, of course, you have something to disprove the claims made in the myriad of books that I have about The Doors, written by people who were there, that discuss this particular conflict in the bands history.
Nitpick: on L.A. Woman they went back to the collective “Doors” credit for all the original songs. For that matter, this was also the case with the new songs on Absolutely Live. Of the Morrison-era albums, only Soft Parade and Morrison Hotel had individual songwriting credits.
Interesting reversal: Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze. Tilbrook is the honey-throated lead singer (Difford is froggy-sounding and sings lead on a lot of songs, including “Cool For Cats,” and their most famous song “Tempted” was sung by journeyman member Paul Carrack) - but he is the songwriter for most Squeeze songs, while Difford is the lyricist.
I believe Vince Clarke, then Martin Gore, were the primary lyricists for Depeche Mode. Dave Gahan started to write lyrics later in the band’s history, I think.
Since 1979’s Hemispheres, every Rush song is credited as “Lyrics by Peart, Music by Lee and Lifeson” (with the exceptions of instrumental pieces, which are credited as “Music by Lee, Lifeson, and Peart”, and a couple of songs with lyrics by poet Pye Dubois). Rush’s music is a complete collaborative effort: Peart writes the lyrics and sends them to Lee and Lifeson. Lee and Lifeson, independently of Peart, interpret those lyrics musically, and also suggest rewording to better suit the music they’ve come up with. The result is sent back to Peart, who may adapt the lyrics based on Lee and Lifeson’s suggestions. Peart will come up with a drum part to go with the music. Sometimes he will do something on the drums that prompts Lee and Lifeson to try something new with the music. The song gets tossed back and forth between the three of them until everybody is happy with it.
This is who I was going to mention as well. When I saw them in concert in 1990 I remember being a bit put off by how egotistical he came across onstage, and thinking “all he does is sing… and any time, Martin Gore could take over that as well and do it better…”
Chuck, I still have my copies of Soft Parade and Morrison Hotel that I got in 1969 and 1970, respectively. Got 'em in my lap right now. They have the individual credits. However, it’s interesting in light of the claim that Morrison was trying to divorce himself from Krieger’s supposedly more lightweight material that he is credited on all of the songs on Morrison Hotel–they’re all either “Morrison,” “Morrison-Krieger,” or “Morrison-Doors.”
Does the IM songwriting credit include the vocal melody? Did IM’s vocal style (as written on paper, not tonal quality) change when Bruce was gone? I had suspected that DL Roth was writing the vocal melodies for VH, because the whole style changed when Sammy came in.
I was thinking the same thing. I remember, when Roth left VH and put out his first solo record, somebody told him it sounded just like a Van Halen record. He responded with words to the effect of “Well that should tell you just how much I contributed to Van Halen’s sound.”
While there is a distinct musical difference between songs credited to Harris and songs credited to Smith & Dickinson (who cowrote many IM songs), the melodic difference isn’t all that great, so I suspect Dickinson came up with most of his own vocal melodies. There’s quite a difference Dickinson’s melodies and Paul Di’Anno’s or Blaze Bayley’s tunes.
I also read once that, due to contractual obligations with his previous band/record label, Dickinson was not allowed to receive songwriting credit for any of the songs on The Number of the Beast, his first album with Maiden. Yet the article writer pointed out that it’s painfully obvious that several songs on that album were written/composed by Dickinson. It’s not so obvious to me, unfortunately.
Depeche Mode definitely “rock”, as anyone who has seen them live can attest.
On the latest album, Playing the Angel, Dave wrote three of the songs. But apart from that Martin’s written every song but one or two since Vince Clarke left the band 25 years ago.