A Selection of Great Songs

See also: Song themes, Cover versions, Christmas songs

This page features notable songs which are either exceptional examples of the work of songwriters listed on this site, or are by other notable songwriters not otherwise listed, so giving them some due recognition. There are also some exceptional songs by little-known songwriters. This list attempts to distinguish between "great pop records" and "great songs" and attempts to omit records which were good only because of their performance. For example Twist and Shout was a great recording by the Beatles and a very popular when they performed it live, BUT it cannot be considered a great piece of songwriting because it is just a variant of La Bamba (and who wrote that?).

Instrumental content is taken into account where it is part of the composition (e.g. The Young Ones). Lyrics are taken into account though they might not always be a literary masterpiece, and might even be unintelligible and meaningless (great!), so long as they work well with the song; e.g. Wooly Bully!

Not all songs here are to the taste of the author of this site, but included because they are clearly very successful songs, especially those popular with performers, and performed by many people, such as My Way.

Songwriters listed here are the officially credited songwriters. Any missing information is awaiting completion when information has been researched and checked. The list is in approximate chronological order, and the dates quoted are approximate and based on the version of the song listed. Note that some may have been written earlier.

This list is only a small selection of songs. Many of the songwriters above have written a vast amount of material and some of these songs are just a representative sample of a much greater body of work.

Hidden information. Some small amount of extra information including the sources of verification, is available in comments in the source code of this file.

See also: Song themes, Cover versions, Christmas songs

Who wrote the songs...
...and...
who really wrote the songs?

There are many reference books on pop songs showing performers, chart positions, band members and many other things, but they nearly always omit songwriter information. A notable book like this is the Guinness Book of Hit Singles. Similarly with Internet resources. This site will attempt to redress this, partly by actually providing the information, but also as an ongoing task, to gradually add links to reliable sources of information.

The best, and most reliable way to see who is credited as the songwriter is to look on the actual disc, or its packaging. Typically the songwriters follow the title and written in brackets, for example:

One of the few places on the Web which gives songwriter information, are Lyrics sites. See the Lyrics page on this site.

Who really wrote the songs?

Sometimes the people credited with the songwriting are not quite the real people who actually wrote the song. That might be fine if all you want to know is who got the money, but if you are interested in the styles of songwriters it can be misleading. There are various reasons for this. In the early days of rock and roll in the USA new songwriters where required to share the credits with other people such as A&R men and record producers in order to get the recording contract and promotion. As a result other people muscled in on the songwriting credits when they actually played no part in it. It happened to Buddy Holly for example. Conversely there are songs officially written entirely by some great star, but he may have bought in expert help, especially from instrumentalists, and they may not be credited.

There are more benign reasons why the credited songwriters might not be the actual ones. John Lennon and Paul McCartney famously had a pact that all the work they did together or separately would be credited as Lennon McCartney. (This started as an informal verbal agreement and later became formal). This oddly resulted that Paul McCartney's instrumental piece for brass band Thingumybob (which was nothing to do with the Beatles) was credited to Lennon McCartney.

Performance

"It's the singer not the song" is a well known saying. I disagree with this entirely and believe that songwriting is more important. However, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish whether a good recorded song is due to the songwriter or the singer. Clearly both play a part. Being a good singer can certainly enhance the success of a songwriter (For example Morrissey is a great singer).

Collections of original songs

This is a short list of albums which are notable for being each almost entirely the work of a single songwriter or team, and mostly represent the greatest work of those songwriters.

You can vote for your top 5 albums at www.pollthepeople.com

Eurovision

The Eurovision Song Contest is a major international contest which is actually meant to be for SONGS, but it is often taken to be a contest of performers and their performances. It is notorious for favouring bouncy pop songs and anything with any artistic merit or belonging to any kind of genre usually does not succeed. One of the best winning songs was A Little Peace in 1982 performed originally in German as "Ein bißchen Frieden" by Nicole. At the end she launched into an English version and it was stunning.

This site has all the eurovision results:
www.eurovisiondatabase.co.uk

Traditional Songs

Traditional songs have sometimes been adapted and used as pop songs. Notable examples are House of the Rising Sun recorded by The Animals, Hey Joe recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Whiskey in the Jar recorded by Thin Lizzy. An advantage of traditional songs is that they are free of songwriters copyright and so semi-professional performers can freely publish their recordings without red tape, and it is entirely legitimate to publish the lyrics and music. Much material can be found on the Internet, including midi files of the music.

See below for a small selection of Midi files on this site.

Sources for traditional songs (and a huge amount of traditional instrumental music) can be found by using the search facility at:

www.folk-music.org.uk/tunes

Midi Files

There are plenty of sites on the web which provide Midi files, both of traditional songs and those whose composition is still copyright. Midi files normally contain only the music and not the words, so the issue is whether the tune is copyright. If so, it is a breach of copyright to distribute the midi file, but nevertheless it is still done extensively despite attempts by the industry to stop it.

Midi files are often classified by performer, which (as for lyrics sites) is the wrong approach. Midi files can vary enormously. They may be portrayed as being associated with a particular hit version of a song, and occasionally be a pretty good approximation, but some midi files are 'performed' in an entirely different style.

Sometimes a Midi file might consist only of the backing part of the music, and omit the tune. There are reasons for this. Firstly, a Midi file cannot contain adequate representation of vocals, and certainly not words. Some singers use them as backing material for live performance. Also, the melody is the main thing subject to copyright. Whether the backing is part of the composition is more questionable and more difficult to enforce.

There is another aspect of a Midi file which may be subject to copyright and that is the work of creating the Midi file itself. It takes a great deal of work to produce a good quality midi file and there may be copyright rights even in the midi files of traditional music. Many of the files available on the internet are just copies of each other, or perhaps edited variants. Any credits in the file can easily be deleted and the origin gets lost.

As with lyrics sites, Midi sites tend to be a bit shady. Some sites make a point of not actually providing the midi files directly, but provide links to those who do. The sites which do distribute midi files seem to be mainly amateur enthusiasts, and because of an ongoing effort to stop this by the music industry, it is an ever-changing landscape.

Here are two such Midi files:

House of the Rising Sun - In the style of The Animals.

Hey Joe - In the style of Jimi Hendrix

This site is a good starting point for searching for a midi file:

www.midisite.co.uk

Further information on the MIDI file format and sources of Midi files for traditional songs and tunes see my other site:

www.folk-music.org.uk/tunes

Other Song Information

Wikipedia, the well-known online encyclopedia, has a lot of information about songs and songwriters.
Wikipedia

A site is primarily about Traditional Music (I know it well), but now has a "Song Finder" facility for a wider range of more contemporary songs and includes songwriter information.
www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/song-finder/sf00.html

In case of difficulty, for example if the page name is changed, go to the main page and find the Song Finder using the site's navigation facilities. www.traditionalmusic.co.uk

Rockin' Country Style
rcs.law.emory.edu/rcs
Large song index and discography.

dbopm The Database of Popular Music
www.dbopm.com

Popularsong.org. American Popular Song past and present.
www.popularsong.org/

Please put a link to this page using one of the following locations:

www.songs1.com

or direct to this page:

www.songs1.com/songs.html