Why do pop songs have so many credited writers nowadays?

February 21, 2023 5:55 AM

Dianne Warren, a legendary songwriter, asked how there were 24 credited writers on a Beyonce song. This isn't unusual. It's part of a trend. Until 1991, the average number of songwriters on a hit song was two. Now, it's hovering around 7. Why are so many writers getting credits on pop songs?
posted by rednikki (33 comments total)

Before I read the article, I'm going to put my money on"Lawyers" as the answer. With an exacta box on "Capitalism."

After reading, this is a great article. And the nods it gives to just the evolution of the meaning of the words, and the credit it gives to Software-driven collaborative production is absolutely worthy of an article, and not sneering old man jokey-jokes.

side note: I really like the site this article is on. No layers of advertising, and large enough text to read. Thanks for this post.
posted by DigDoug at 6:14 AM on February 21, 2023 [14 favorites]

I'd thought about this briefly previously when I realised that Beyoncé's Lemonade has 72 distinct songwriting credits. The thing I find most interesting about that is the fact that the record still maintains a sense of intimacy and reflects the vision of a single artist, even though it involved contributions from a bigger group of people than I could comfortably fit in my house.
posted by terretu at 6:25 AM on February 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

Documentation is easier than ever, and it's more important in the age of digital collaboration. Not a really a bad thing to share the wealth and credit, are there downsides?

Very cool bit of investigation.
posted by eustatic at 6:33 AM on February 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

This has been on my mind lately, as a number of the songs on two of my (wholly unknown) albums benefitted greatly from the musical contributions of the people who played on them. Bass riffs, guitar lines, etc. They all deserve songwriting credit. Without them, my songs would be much less interesting.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:41 AM on February 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

i assumed it was because senior authors were including more junior authors to help pad their CV for when they go on the job market
posted by logicpunk at 6:45 AM on February 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

Will there be a sort of feedback loop happening here? If a song with seventeen credited songwriters gets sampled or interpolated into a new song, do those seventeen people get added to the credits? If so, I imagine by 2050 or so, songs will arrive with scores of songwriting credits each.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:06 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Since 1991 you say? I guess it's been a long road getting from there to here.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 7:12 AM on February 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

It’s interesting to think about whether the trend of crediting a set of writers as small as one or two, might be the aberration. Many enduring folk songs, passed along by word of mouth, would also have a long list of those responsible for the version we here (and no particular expectation that this particular version be definitive).
posted by rongorongo at 7:32 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I subscribe to Ernie's (free) newsletter and it is full of cool stuff like this! I recommend it.

I think it's great that the concept of the songwriting credit has evolved to be more inclusive (spread the money to as many creators as you can!), especially as the olden days were dominated by "songwriters" like Elvis who would pick up a mostly complete song and demand a credit/royalties principally from the choice to record it. It's nice that George Martin is recognized and revered for his "Fifth Beatle" work and his studio mastery, but I'd bet his family would think it a lot nicer if half of the Beatles catalogue was Lennon/McCartney/Martin.
posted by AgentRocket at 7:51 AM on February 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

Miley Cyrus talked about this on a podcast a couple of years ago. Streaming disrupted music sales, so to get paid, any musician who plays on a song gets a writing credit for contributing to the melody. Which looks much more fair than the old model.
posted by riruro at 7:57 AM on February 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

If so, I imagine by 2050 or so, songs will arrive with scores of songwriting credits each.

That's only if they credit the artists that the songwriting AIs were trained on.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 8:41 AM on February 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

If I were working on a pop star's album, I'd much rather have songwriting points that might pay out big time on the back end than get paid scale up front.

And if I were a pop star making an album, I'd much rather pay out with a songwriting credit that will only be worth anything if it's a hit (for me!) than to pay out cash on the front end.

(But if I were a session guitarist playing on some new act's first album, give me that up front money.)
posted by MrJM at 8:59 AM on February 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

Someone I know in Nashville joked,”If Taylor Swift goes into a room with five songwriters they will come out with a song”.
posted by aiq at 9:19 AM on February 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

This video covers the interpolation credit between Good4U and Misery Business, and also 2 (I think) other recent songs that use basically the exact same song structure, and 1.9% of total pop songs (again, I think) that use the same cord progression.

IMO, this shows that pop radio has basically already become machine-learning/AI ie: put in the inputs and get a hit, so to make them unique, you need an army to change them just enough to keep the product ever-so-slightly different.


I don't really care that much for Beyonce's everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production on her latest album, but the songs do not sound exactly like other songs, and the snippets keep coming and changing enough to where it does sound different and unique. If that's what it takes in 2023 to write pop music, that's what it takes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:24 AM on February 21, 2023

IMO he should have picked another more obscure genre of music to compare pop to, to see if the number of writers is increasing in pop alone or across the board. Are the number of writers of metal songs increasing?
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:26 AM on February 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was thinking about this in terms of producers lately. I re-listened to a bunch of Dr. Dre's songs as a solo artist and as a producer, and he's just not credited as a songwriter on them, which seems terribly unfair, since their entire sound came from him.
posted by goatdog at 9:56 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

It’s a slightly different sort of thing but “Lennon/McCartney” is itself a famous example of the abstract nature of songwriting credits, as it increasingly came to mean “Lennon or McCartney” but they still held to the agreement to be credited as a partnership.

Ringo Starr, The Beatles’ drummer, would likely get a credit because his swinging rhythm is so fundamental to the recording

I would imagine (and hope) that it has become more standard to include the rhythm section over time, but isn’t this just the flip side of “Lennon/McCartney” in that it has always ultimately come down to how the band agrees to share credit?
posted by atoxyl at 10:03 AM on February 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I re-listened to a bunch of Dr. Dre's songs as a solo artist and as a producer, and he's just not credited as a songwriter on them.

I don’t know what it says in the liner notes but that doesn’t seem correct.
posted by atoxyl at 10:11 AM on February 21, 2023

This is really fascinating, and makes a really interesting counterpoint to the conversation about AI-created art. If / when AI-generated music starts to become popular, does this make it easier to replace artists altogether, say with AI-generated pop stars (which is already a thing), or make it easier for real (live) artists to stay relevant and get paid?

Also today I learned the ! in "Oh! Suzanna" is in the middle.
posted by Mchelly at 10:15 AM on February 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

Re: Dre. I was going by liner notes. But on ASCAP too, "Nuthin but a G Thang" and "Let Me Ride" don't list Andre Young as a writer.
posted by goatdog at 10:22 AM on February 21, 2023

If anything Dre has taken some flak from former collaborators/protégés like Daz Dillinger for claiming credit on tracks (especially on the first Snoop Dogg album) where he didn’t do much.

By the 2001 album it was all more open and you can see the co-credits for guys like Mel-Man and Scott Storch.
posted by atoxyl at 10:23 AM on February 21, 2023

For anyone who missed it at the time, the key change article from Chris Dalla Riva that he mentions in the intro was fascinating and had a post here.

Since 1991 you say? I guess it's been a long road getting from there to here.

KIRK: [shaking fists, apoplectic] WARRENNNNNNN!
posted by cortex at 10:34 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I use so many royalty-free samples that I'm pretty sure I would end up with thousands of credits if I had to put them there.
posted by Kye at 11:18 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mod note: One comment deleted for violating the guidelines. Please "Read a thread before commenting."
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 11:18 AM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I use so many royalty-free samples that I'm pretty sure I would end up with thousands of credits if I had to put them there.

Well that’s presumably the point, that you don’t. But it’s interesting the middle ground that exists these days, the producers who specialize in making vintage-y loops for other producers to sample with credit (definitely overlapping with producers who make royalty-free stuff) because it’s less hassle than actually clearing vintage samples.
posted by atoxyl at 11:54 AM on February 21, 2023

I remember how my niece had Justin Bieber's "Baby" on a mix CD when she was really little. She would say stuff about Bieber like, "People say he looks like a girl, but he's a boy!" And she would lip sync through the Ludacris part of the song, which I thought was hilarious.

Anyhow, I later learned that the video for "Baby" had the most downvotes in the history of YouTube, but I didn't really get it, because I thought the song was mostly harmless, even catchy, with a very simple melody. Then, after I looked up "Baby" on Wikipedia, I saw the song had 7 songwriting credits! I was dumbfounded. I was like, "They had fewer people working on the Manhattan Project than they had co-writers for Baby?"
posted by jonp72 at 2:07 PM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

By the way, don't miss Bobby Parker's Watch Your Step, the song that was cited for a hypothetical co-credit with "I Feel Fine." The song slaps so hard. It's an American R&B song, but it's like a primordial soup of riffs for the entire British Invasion. I don't just hear the Beatles, "I Feel Fine" in it. I can hear echoes of the Kinks and Led Zeppelin too.
posted by jonp72 at 2:12 PM on February 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

There is something missing in the article--and in these comments, I think--which is that songwriters used to make a lot of money for their creative work. More so than the musicians, generally.
Surely the proliferation of songwriters has something to do with that, even though monies generated from music at all stages of production, including songwriting, have greatly diminished for the usual reasons.
posted by kozad at 6:41 PM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

For the people who ask "why is this a problem?" I invite you to read a FPP from two days ago: "She spent two years writing for an acclaimed album - and made only $4,000." Someone who does the vast majority of the work composing a song finds their already diminishing pay deeply decreased by these shared credits. And if I recall correctly, the money goes out equally to every person credited, no matter what level of work they did.
posted by rednikki at 4:49 AM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

And if I recall correctly, the money goes out equally to every person credited, no matter what level of work they did.

I used to work for a music publishing company, and the answer is slightly more complicated.
When you publish your song/composition, you can (must?) specify what % of the publishing rights each writer owns.
So for example, it's common for a song to have splits like 30%/30%/40%.

Also, if you played on a recording of a song (and can prove it), you are entitled (in some countries) to what are known as "Neighbouring Rights". Called that because they are close to publishing rights. They entitle you to money made by that recording of a song.

Music publishing trivia #1: Bob Marley is famous (in music publishing circles) for giving random people songwriting credits if he liked them, such that the total rights % for some songs add up to more than 100%. How do you split the money they generate? :shrug:

Music publishing trivia #2: These publishing rights splits used to be calculated and recorded in twelfths. With the advent of computers, they moved to percentages, which makes it surprisingly awkward to split three ways. There's potentially a Superman II scenario here.

Music publishing trivia #3: The computer systems across the world that record and transfer music royalties data are varied in both age and quality. Some only accept ASCII text (no unicode characters). So if you've named your rock band something like "ROCK BΔND" (note the unicode delta in there), your royalties might disappear into that system never to emerge again, as it barfs on the name. Best case scenario - it sends the royalties data on to the next system in the chain with the name "ROCK B?ND". Good luck for any system/person trying to match that with the name on their system.

I'll stop. I have so many of these :sweat_smile:
posted by faceplantingcheetah at 5:21 AM on February 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

Some only accept ASCII

ASCIIAP
posted by atoxyl at 10:02 AM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

My mother was chatting with a stranger at the symphony in Nashville and used a silly family in-joke word. "That's brilliant!" said the stranger. "I'm going to use that in a song! How do you spell it? What is your contact information so that I can give you the songwriting credit?"

Apparently, the current rule in the industry is "add a word, in for a third." If you are listening to two folks workshopping a song, and toss in a word that they use, the you are a co-writer. Everybody who contributes to the creation of the song is supposed to get some credit for it.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:56 PM on February 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

In the future, companies & people in the music industry won't create new songs at all. They'll all make money by suing each other.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:03 AM on February 24, 2023