Music Musings

It's been a busy week and I haven't had much time to post any "real" blog columns. Here is something I posted on a music discussion thread on my church's website. Let's see if it generates discussion in blogdom, and if people here have different opinions than they did on the church website:

I think that one bad thing to come out of the success of Dylan and the Beatles, and the subsequent rise of the "Singer-Songwriter" due to said success, has been the subjugation of the professional songwriter. Nowadays, every singer is expected and encouraged to write his or her own songs, to be a "real artist." What it's done is helped to destroy and dumb-down modern music because frankly, people are rarely gifted to be great singers AND great writers. There are tons of great writers sitting on great, unpublished songs in this country while the Christina Aguilara's of the world have songwriting credits that they never could have gotten if they didn't happen to have great voices (along with connections, sexy bodies, etc.)

Why, really, would a solo singer necessarily have any more input or say in whether his/her own songs are good enough for a record than the drummer that the record company hires? If the record company cares about crafting a quality album, they should find the best songs. If a singer cares about crafting a quality album, he should find the best songs. If he is legitimately able to come up with songs that best follow his vision for what he wants to display to the world, then great. But for every Dylan, or Lennon/McCartney, or Elliot Smith, or Mindy Smith, there are tons of singers with great vocal chops who have no business taking up the pen, unless they legitimately want to learn how to be a songwriter and not record their own songs until they're actually up to muster.