Since Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles changed the world of songs and music publishing, relatively few care who actually write the songs because, well, don’t those cats look good onstage and on film (and what did they have for breakfast this morning)?
Brainstorming, as a group process, has been proven, scientifically, to be fairly ineffectual. [look it up; citations here, sometime, maybe.] So, is group songwriting, or songwriting by teams, similarly ineffectual? Or, is an assembly line of multiple individuals more successful than a single individual creating a song?
I looked up the “song of the year” for the past several years. Yes, on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Song_of_the_Year
As of 2019, here are the last 10 songs of the year (according to the industry) that were reportedly written by a single human being:
- 2008: Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”
- 2005: John Mayer, “Daughters”
- 2003: Jesse Harris, “Don’t Know Why”
- 2002: Alicia Keys, “Fallin”
- 1996: Seal, “Kiss from a Rose”
- 1995: Bruce Springsteen, “Streets of Philadelphia”
- 1992: Irving Gordon, “Unforgettable”
- 1991: Julie Gold, “From a Distance”
- 1989: Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
- 1984: Sting, “Every Breath You Take”
Only 10 “songs of the year” in the last 35 years have been written by a single person, instead of by a co-writing team. And, of course, at least one of these songs is not a “great” song, depending on who is subjectively speaking about it.
And, speaking of pure songwriting, only one “pure songwriter” in the past 35 years has been lauded for writing a song of the year–Irving Gordon (1915 – 1996), who does not appear to have been anything more, professionally speaking, than a fine songwriter.
So, all the songwriters who are writing by committee, and all the publishers paying their salaries, have recent history on their side.
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