They recorded “When the Levee Breaks” in 1971, and Beyoncé sampled a few seconds of it in “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” Led Zeppelin did not write the song either. Led Zeppelin obviously did not sit down with Beyoncé to write a song in 2016. The list of writers includes Jack White of the White Stripes, the songwriter Wynter Gordon, Beyoncé, and a quartet of highly unlikely collaborators, including one, John Bonham, who died in 1980. A closer look at just who gets them is revealing.
The biggest hit Aretha Franklin wrote and sang was “Who’s Zoomin’ Who.”Īll the same, it is fair to wonder why so many people get songwriting credits on Beyoncé’s new album. The singer-songwriter model is taken to be the norm by Beyoncé’s detractors, but Bruce Springsteen, Prince, and Beck are, in fact, aberrations.ĭetractors can argue that that makes them superior to her, but there has never been a connection between the quality of a song and whether its performer also wrote it. In the past decade, producers like Timbaland, Max Martin, and Diplo have become big stars. In the 60s, singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan tapped into a Romantic model of the artist in isolation, but in country music, R&B, disco, and-later-rap, the Tin Pan Alley model continued to thrive. Popular music in America started in Tin Pan Alley and continued in institutions like the Brill Building and Motown, all places where teams of musicians and lyricists wrote songs for performers. Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday did not write their songs they interpreted them and, at their best, made them their own. For much of modern music history, the same has been true of musicians. Meryl Streep isn’t celebrated because she writes such good parts, but because she creates them out of the words that are given to her.
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