Not knowing diddly about the music business, all I can do is offer an armchair music critic’s view of things. So please forgive me if I step on any toes; no offense or provocation is intended.
I think singer-songwriters should garner greater respect as musicians and artists than singers. Yet, I don’t see anyone making this distinction when they talk about great musicians.
Here are some examples. People seem to want to consider Michael Jackson, John Lennon, and Elvis as the holy trinity of 20th century entertainers. But Jackson and Lennon wrote a fair number of their biggest hits (“Billie Jean”, “Beat It”, “Dirty Diana” for Jackson and “Imagine” for Lennon–sorry, but I am not a Lennon fan, so I can only list one song of his). Elvis, meanwhile, only *sang *his biggest hits (“Blue Suede Shoes”, “Hound Dog”, and others) but is still regarded as “great”.
Why does whether a singer composes and sings or just sings not seem to matter in the attribution of “greatness” to an artist? For me, Jackson and Lennon are far more worthy of that attribution than Elvis. What am I missing?
If there really are people who think that, it’s not so much because of their singing or their songwriting as because of their public personas and the things they did to get noticed in the media (like dying, for instance).
Well, yeah. An actor who also directs is more talented than an actor who just acts or a director who just directs. That doesn’t make him a better actor or a better director.
What I’m saying is that singing, writing music and writing lyrics are three separate art forms. There’s no reason to denigrate an artist for mastering just one art. Why should I compare, say, Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra, when each of them was great in something completely different?
Singer-songwriters, if successful, are likely to make more money than singers. There’s big money in music publishing. So they can lick there supposed wounds with that.
I personally disagree strongly with the OP. By this logic, great opera singers should be pretty low on the totem pole, seeing as how they don’t write diddley. Singers like Ella Fitzgerald or Linda Ronstadt would be down there in the muck, too. How can this possibly make sense?
I’m also dubious about the “holy trinity.” Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Mick Jagger, and Paul McCartney don’t make the grade?
The singer-songwriter phenomenon didn’t really come to a head until the '60s, spearheaded by Dylan and the Beatles. Elvis came to prominence at a time when singers and songwriters weren’t expected to be the same people.
You’re right. I did ignore those very talented artists. Perhaps the term “holy trinity” was too strong. What I meant to convey is that whenever I hear anyone talking about great entertainers, I always hear something to the effect of “Michael Jackson is one of the greats, like Elvis and Lennon.” Of course, these other artists are talented too.
And regardless of when the “singer-songwriter” combination came to be, I must contend that those who write as well as sing songs are more talented. Yes, this includes opera singers, as technically demanding as the genre is. In fact, if a person could sing opera and compose it well, that person would be far more talented in my eyes than any of the singer-songwriters we’ve mentioned so far.
Elvis had a huge influence on pop music, regardless of how much or little retooling he did to the songs he sang. He is The King because of that influence, regardless of what any one person may think of his music or singing.
I do think singer/song-writers get more cred for their dual role. But fan base is like that, it’s fickle, and it’s aimed at what it wants to aim at. So singers get more attention than song-writers, and singer/song-writers get more attention for their singing than their song-writing.
I do find myself a little pissey on the occasion when some people are hoisted to Diva status male/female without a lick of talent playing a single note from a real instrument. I wont go into details, but you can see where that was gonna go.
On the other hand, even though I can sing OK, it just isn’t well enough to move what I have written any further than, Joes Bar n’ Grill “Garage n Drink a’ porium”.
Now, if a really talented singer were to take one of these tunes and go off on em, and then have em recorded with a producer. Then it’s a whole new ballgame.
As saying, if some not too good looking overweight chick was to sing um…I kissed a Girl and She really liked it
How far do you think that would go over with out a Katy Perry or similar doing it?
Take Madonna and Kelly Clarkson as other examples. To me there does exist room for them, since I like it. There’s just seems to be no room for anything but anymore.
They may have broader talents, I suppose, but what’s the purpose of quantifying such a thing? It’s a little apples and oranges to me, why not appreciate someone like Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald on his/her own merits, rather than say they’re automatically less talented than John Lennon or Bob Dylan (though most would probably say they are much better singers)?
And rest assured, singers with songwriting credit on their hits stand to make a WHOLE LOT more money, so they’re well rewarded in that regard, at least.
It’s a lot of apples and oranges to me. Is Yo-Yo Ma untalented because he’s playing someone else’s composition? Is Dolly Parton’s version of I Will Always Love You superior to Whitney Houston’s, just because Dolly Parton happened to write it? Was George Harrison a better guitarist when he played his own works than when he played Lennon-McCartney’s.
Writing and performing are two separate talents. If you can do both, great. But not being good at one doesn’t automatically negate your talent for the other.
I think you are missing my point. I am not taking an absolutist position that singers are inferior to songwriters, or that not being good at one negates talent for another (I don’t think I understand exactly what you mean by this phrase anyway). My argument is this, using Yo-Yo Ma as in your example:
Suppose there is another master cellist, call him Z, with the same technical ability as Yo-Yo Ma, but who is also a composer himself. Indeed, I would say that Z was more talented than Yo-Yo Ma, even though they are both excellent musicians. But, I contend that the fact that Z also writes music would be a fact largely overlooked by critics in favor of playing ability.
Or maybe not. I don’t read much in the way of classical or instrumental music criticism, so I can’t say for sure how they do things. In popular music, however, I know that I rarely have read any reviews that make a big deal of the fact that the musician writes all of his/her own music.
The thing that most strikes me from the OP is that you can name only one Lennon song. I mean … you know he wrote oh, one or two songs for the Beatles, right? Heh.
I can’t let Jamicat’s assertion that singers aren’t playing a “real” instrument stand unchallenged. Those who sing are performing a remarkable accomplishment – if you think about it, we can use our own bodies and adjust our throat and breathing muscles by feel, familiarty and expertise in order to produce a beautiful sound from tone to tone, leaping intervals or adjusting dynamics. Instrumentalists can look at a keyboard and see where the notes are. They can feel the frets and strings and memorize which holes to place their fingers upon. Singers must manipulate our own bodies purely by countless tiny adjustments of our internal musculature, entirely invisible to us, without finger holes* or painted-on keys or tactile strings to pluck. That takes extraordinary skill, physicality and artistry.
Don’t get me wrong – it doesn’t take more talent than those whose instruments are external. But it sure as hell doesn’t take less.
I mentioned in my original post that I am not a Lennon fan. Sorry. I know that he and McCartney teamed up to write some of the best Beatles songs. I should probably go ahead and admit that I am also not a Beatles fan. Heresy, I know, but at least I’m not bullshitting you.
I would agree with you that good singing requires talent that is at least on par with the talent required to play an instrument. Problem is, good (in the technical sense) singing is not a prerequisite for success in popular music. Just look at the vast number of songs that use the autotune effect not just for style, but to make the singer sound halfway decent. You can find a few videos purportedly demonstrating just how badly Britney Spears sings today by playing the mic feed from her live concerts.
Sure, there are a lot of great singers in pop music today (I’ve heard Christina Aguilera praised by some trained singers I know) but beat, lyrics, mood, and other factors seem to make up for lousy singing in many cases. I don’t think this ought to be the case, but it is.
It’s equally plausible that this could work the other way around, with a prominent songwriter having his or her musicianship overlooked. I’d suggest that this has been the case for artists such as Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro just to name two.
You’re suggesting something of an impossibility, or least a vast implausibility. Both classical singing and classical composition are incredibly complex skills that require years of dedicated training and constant upkeep to do well. These are full-time jobs. There are simply not enough hours in a lifetime to do both, or at least do both well. There are certainly exceptions (although I’m not aware of any opera-somposing opera singers), but they are exceedingly rare.
I say this, incidentally, as both a pretty good singer and a fair composer (although I do the latter VERY slowly, rarely finish anything and hve never been published). I would certainly put a great singer or great composer over somebody who does both “pretty well”.
I’d appreciate clarification of this before I respond. Are you suggesting that singing is not a “real” musical talent?
But suppose Z is a lousy composer, who only gets his stuff recorded because he has clout with his record label? Would Z be considered better or worse than Yo-Yo Ma.
Or going back to the Beatles, George Harrison was definitely a better guitarist than either John Lennon or Paul McCartney. Again, do you remember the songs he wrote, or the songs he played.
I’ll extend the OP’s premise, in a way, to the following:
Songwriting, as an art, is less lauded than singing because it’s less visible in a performance, and even less ‘audible’ in an audio recording. This would tend to apply whether the singer is the same person as the songwriter or not.
