Idolator

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?

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Fox News' Roger Friedman gleefully reported today that "sources" have told him the newly apologetic Kelly Clarkson will return to pop music, with a new album of songs selected by record mogul Clive Davis and his associates to come sometime in 2008. If it's true, it doesn't come as much of a surprise given the controversy surrounding My December, and the album's solid—though unremarkable—sales figures. However, Friedman's over-the-top reverence for Davis borders on outright fanboy drooling, and serves to highlight one of the more peculiar aspects of this whole Kelly/Clive debacle: Have we gotten to the point that people are so cynical about pop music that they prefer to reserve fandom for an industry executive who has facilitated hits rather than those who write and perform them?
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