I wonder why people find this surprising. This is how pop music has always been done and it even used to be more in the open. Bands/singers didn't have to get people to (ghost)write songs/lyrics for them - they used to just be performers.
Also, this list of names are the ones that are lucky.
At the low end of things, some songwriters end up selling their songs completely to the label and don't keep songwriting credit or royalties and those end up getting attributed to an artist or producer.
Go dig for names of people who write incidental music for TV shows (especially soap operas) and you'll find people who ghost wrote songs for major rock bands where no one will ever know about it. It's something I wouldn't have even known about myself had I not worked with a guy that did just that.
Well, you're right. But honestly producers have been the most important players in the game since Rick Rubin when producers started to contribute more to songwriting (actually that's sort of a lie - I'd argue it started with Keith Olsen). It's sorta shocking that people don't know. I only even mentioned ghostwriting because some other comments mentioned it and because it actually does happen where the credits aren't in the open.
How Motown slipped my mind completely I don't understand but yes you're right, but I wasn't under the impression that at Tin Pan Alley the songwriters did the production themselves. That said, I hadn't done much research into that era of recording.
There wasn't really production back then, as that stuff was usually cut live to two track, then the vocals overdubbed. But the song writers were also the arrangers in many cases.
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I wonder why people find this surprising. This is how pop music has always been done and it even used to be more in the open. Bands/singers didn't have to get people to (ghost)write songs/lyrics for them - they used to just be performers.
Many of the important names are on this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductees_of_the_Songwriters_Ha... and a really obvious example is a guy like Paul Williams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Williams_(songwriter) who made The Carpenters and Three Dog Night famous.
Also, this list of names are the ones that are lucky.
At the low end of things, some songwriters end up selling their songs completely to the label and don't keep songwriting credit or royalties and those end up getting attributed to an artist or producer.
Go dig for names of people who write incidental music for TV shows (especially soap operas) and you'll find people who ghost wrote songs for major rock bands where no one will ever know about it. It's something I wouldn't have even known about myself had I not worked with a guy that did just that.
I don't think this is really "ghostwriting" for the most part - the credits are usually in the open, the writers just don't get much publicity.
Well, you're right. But honestly producers have been the most important players in the game since Rick Rubin when producers started to contribute more to songwriting (actually that's sort of a lie - I'd argue it started with Keith Olsen). It's sorta shocking that people don't know. I only even mentioned ghostwriting because some other comments mentioned it and because it actually does happen where the credits aren't in the open.
I'll add parenthesis to make it more clear.
It goes way back before that. The whole Brill Building/Tin Pan Alley era, Holland-Dozier-Holland, etc.
How Motown slipped my mind completely I don't understand but yes you're right, but I wasn't under the impression that at Tin Pan Alley the songwriters did the production themselves. That said, I hadn't done much research into that era of recording.
There wasn't really production back then, as that stuff was usually cut live to two track, then the vocals overdubbed. But the song writers were also the arrangers in many cases.
Sort of a real life example of the 80/20 principle as it relates to the entertainment industry.