Because apparently the Beatles took music in the wrong direction, Clive Davis says that singers should not write their own songs.
Davis, chairman and chief executive officer of the BMG Label Group, said he has seen many entertainers lose their careers by not concentrating on finding hit songs — no matter who they are written by…”I don’t care how many No. 1’s you have written in the past, have you written a new No. 1?” When [Whitney] Houston came to him after her second or third album and asked if she should start writing songs, he said: “Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra didn’t write, and they are among Time magazine’s greatest artists of the century.”
Let’s break down the numerous ways Davis is wrong, shall we?
First, if you need any more proof that Clive has as little concern for music as he does for his morning cup of coffee, it does not even cross his mind that a singer might be more interested in pursuing a particular artistic vision than in getting a hit, or that ideally you should be able to do the two things simultaneously. Now, look, I understand that Clive’s a businessman. He’s the chairman, after all, and when he’s hearing from the stockholders, they’re not going to ask about compression quality. But if he’s going to represent himself as someone who matters for music, as the boy with the golden ear, then he has to acknowledge that his job is to get between the artist and the moneymen to let the artist do what they want to do. The article invokes the Kelly Clarkson affair, and apparently Davis still thinks that an agressively underpromoted album that he publicly bad-mouthed sold a mere 700k units because the artist co-wrote some of the songs.
More importantly, though, it highlights just how behind the times Clive is. Besides the fact that singers co-writing with hit producers account for some of the biggest hits of the day, singers have been writing their own songs for some time now. For almost anyone getting into pop music, having the option to write your own songs goes without saying. So if you were a hot new artist, why would you want to sign with a label whose boss comes out and says your artistic ambitions are stupid and unprofitable?
I love pop songs written by professional songwriters. But surely there’s room for both in this rapidly shrinking music business, right, Clive? I know you sit at that big old desk and every afternoon around three the shakes really start, and you can see the future laid before you, and it looks kinda like the post-apacolyptic scenes in the Terminator movies. But that’s no reason to badmouth art, is it, Clive?
Billie Holiday did co-write “God Bless the Child,” but I suppose I’m splitting hairs.
I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one, Mike. Clive Davis’ job is to maximize profit, and at this point, even if you’re a huge star, if you don’t have a smash hit, your record is going to lose money. He shouldn’t be accepting poorer-selling albums in the name of ‘art’ (nor do I think many of us feel Kelly Clarkson’s new album had significantly more artistic merit than had it been written completely by professional songwriters). The simple fact is that if you don’t have at the very least one really good single, your album should not be released - and that’s why even 50 Cent’s album got pushed back. The talent should realize that they are employees of the label, and be doing everything that they can to make their albums the best they can, even if it means sacrificing their ‘artistic integrity’. That’s what being on a major label is about. If they felt otherwise, then they should not have signed with the label in the first place - there are plenty of smaller labels that are happy to let artists follow their creative vision.
A corrolary to the “if you can write big hits…” rule should be, “if you can recognize and/or give me good songs…” Weren’t they giving her Lindsay Lohan’s leavings?
And music industry success is so fickle, even geniuses have losing batting averages. For every Alicia Keys, there’s 20 artists on BMG I’ll never heard of. Let’s just admit it’s a crap shoot.
@dhochbaum: I don’t want to bring up Kolmar and Melamid here, but most of the time when someone tries to get a hit, it doesn’t work. We use the term “manufactured pop” but at the end of the day, writing a pop song is an art, not a craft, and you have to give the creatives–which includes the professional songwriters and the producers–the room to breathe. Great pop music almost never comes from artists, songwriters, or producers doing what the label tells them.
Can’t we do away with the canard that artists can only “express themselves” if they write their own material? Billie Holiday chose her material and shaped her performances according to her own vision, and expressed herself far more vividly through other people’s material than she probably would have done if she wrote her own. If you’re a lousy songwriter, but still insist on performing your own material, the only thing you’re going to “express” is your lack of talent (and lack of judgment).
There’s also the issue of artists receiving more money with a writing credit. Great performers don’t pull in a steady stream of income off of old hits like the writers do.
Well, Davis is right.
Sinatra, Holiday and Elvis did not need to write their own songs, because they and their management were such excellent judges of songwriter’s material.
No one has a super-duper career as a singer/vocalist and then after some years of success decides, “Hey, I am going to write my songs now…” Nor do they become just as or more successful as a singer/songwriter.
It’s great that Clarkson wanted to be independent and she’d written her song on her last album. But she wasn’t kidding herself into think she was going to be second coming of Joni Mitchell, Carole King or even Norah Jones…
Lest we all forget, Mariah Carey’s crazy painted on abs has been co-writing successfully for decades. Just sayin’…
Another random thought, I can’t believe that on the internet in 2008, so many people would line up to argue in favor of the intelligence of music executives. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re not right all of the time every time.
My December is Clarkson’s first “artistic” album. Properly promoted it would have yielded aprox 3 top ten singles and sold about 2 million. But it’s not a pop record the caliber of Breakaway and that pissed of Clive. He sees her as a $$$ goldmine.
She’s 25.. you really dont know who shes the second coming of. She might just be better than all those people. The biggest myth is that she’s not a good songwriter. She wrote half of Breakaway including 3 of the hits.
Personlally I think she’s smart. Another huge pop album and she might have been reaching the end of the line. Pop music doesnt let the same people stay on top forever.
I read an article about a month ago, here is a little excerpt:
“iTunes and Fox are committed to presenting contestants in a fair and balanced manner online and on-air,” the site says. “For this reason, sales performances from American Idol contestants from the current season will not be reflected in the iTunes charts.”
I know that yesterday I saw Jason Castro’s version of “Hallelujah” ranked in at #94 and today it disappeared, did someone at iTunes mess up?
I think you’re misrepresenting Ol’ Clivey a little bit here. Elsewhere in that article, he says something along the lines of “if you can write songs that are as good as or better than the ones being written by professional songwriters, great. If you can’t, don’t.”
While it’s not what most aspiring pop artists want to hear, I think it’s a pretty fair statement. I don’t think Clive would have minded Kelly Clarkson writing more of her own material had it yielded any hits (which, let’s face it, it pretty much didn’t, under-promotion or no). Nor would he have minded if Kelly Clarkson was a different type of artist…AKA someone whose perspective is so distinct that her writing her own material was essential to her appeal.
But let’s face it, Kelly Clarkson is a pop star. And however you slice it, a pop star without a hit is not a good thing.
But what Clive considers a “good” song is apparently a song that can become a hit in the perpetual 1985 twilight in which he makes his decisions. Clive Davis is maybe the last person on earth who I’d trust to tell me if a song is good. And it’s not that if YOU can write a song as good as a professional–it’s if you in collaboration with a professional can write a better song for you as a performer than the professional alone could.
@ Dick Malone, isn’t he the same guy that signed Alicia Keys, he knows his shit.
@janine: You cant? Im sure half the posters here are paid BY Clive.
Thats the nice thing about the internet, you dont know who is legit, and who is make 10 bucks a hour to make a old hack who probably has his blood changed every day to stay alive feel better about how poorly his industry has been run into the ground by him.
Once again a sure sign of just how obsolete the record industry has become. Clive Davis is the epitome of why the music business has become an obsolete plodding dinosaur.
Yes Clive, let’s continue to gobble that shiite you and your ilk have been jamming down our throats for years. All one needs to do is listen to the current crop of best selling forgettable pop/R&B to understand why greedy scumbags like Davis must go.
@Falconfire: Another nice thing about the internet is that you don’t need “evidence” or “facts” to back up your arbitrary, made-up assertions.