A Selection of Great Songwriters

This list is in approximate chronological order, based on dates of the songwriters' main body of work.

Notes on Songwriters

Buddy Holly.

His songs were often credited to Petty; Hardin. Hardin is Buddy Holly (his real name was Charles Hardin Holley). Norman Petty was the producer and probably did not write any part of the songs.

Lennon McCartney.

With most songwriting teams the first thing people used to ask was "Who writes the words, and who writes the music" Well that is not a valid question for Lennon McCartney. We all know they both wrote both. It is well known that they used to credit all their work to Lennon, McCartney even though they made different contributions, including when they wrote individually. Perhaps not so well known that this was a definite agreement between them, first informal, and then made as a binding legal agreement. It is now more interesting to ask which songs were written by who, and when they wrote jointly, which bits were written by who.

Lennon McCartney - who wrote what?

Some insight into this. Most people know that their later work was largely written individually, notably the White album. Nobody thinks that John Lennon had anything to do with the wrting of Blackbird, or that Paul McCartney had anything to do with the writing of Julia. There are distinct differences in the styles of Lennon and of McCartney. John Lennon wrote songs from his own personal perspective and largely about himself. The melodies in Lennon's songs often have the same note repeated many times. Julia is a good example of this. McCartney was writing songs as an art form in the tradition of great songwriters of the past, and has much more varied melodies. At that stage of their career they each sang their own compositions.

These characteristic styles can be seen in their earlier work. As you go back in time you first see the performance becoming integrated, with both singers singing on the same song, even if some songs were written individually. Going back to still earlier work, especially around the time of A Hard Day's Night (film and album) we see something revealing. The title song itself is an excellent example The main 'verse' is sung by Lennon, and is clearly in his writing style. The middle part or 'chorus' "When I'm Home..." is sung by McCartney and is in his writing style. In this song at least it seems that you can deduce who wrote which bit of the song, simply by listening to who sang that part.

Jagger Richards

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were the principal songwriters in the Rolling Stones. Some early Stones' own compositions were credited to Nanker and Phelge which was a codename for the band. These early songs were largely based on existing blues material but with new lyrics and some changes to the tunes, e.g. Little By Little.

There is a story that Jagger and Richards first song was As Tears Go By. It might well have been their first truly original song, and certainly the first written for another performer, i.e Marianne Faithfull.

Their great songwriting period was around 1966 and around this time they were clearly striving to write ceative songs of merit in the mainstream pop genre and suitable for performance by others, and this motivation was probably inspired by the Beatles. They had songs taken into the charts by others, notably Chris Farlowe. Remarkably Cliff Richard recorded one of their songs, When Blue Turns to Grey.

The best Stones album featuring their own songs was Aftermath which consisted enirely of Jagger Richards compositions. It was quite unlike other Stones albums, and had a long playing time. One of their best.

In later years they continued writing some great songs, but they were best suited to performance by the Stones, and not recorded much by others.

The Doors.

Most of their own compositions were credited to "The Doors". It seems very likely that nearly all the lyrics were by Jim Morrison, and much of the music was by Ray Manzarek (the keyboard player).

The Bee Gees

The Bee Gees had two distinct periods of success. Firstly in the 60's when they did rather old-fashioned ballads and love songs. They then found great success in the world of Disco. The whole style of the music seemed to change radically. In an interview one of the brothers said they had not consciously made a decision to change style. With hindsight there are similarities between their old and new styles and much of the difference can be accounted for by performance, and particularly instrumentation and production. Like many developments in art, technological developments (synthesizers) may have been largely responsible for the great change in their sound. All credit to them for making the most of it!

The Traveling Wilburys

The Traveling Wilburys are notable because of their membership, consisting of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. The first four of these were not only great and successful performers, but were also some of the greatest songwriters around. Their songs seem to be written principally by one or more of the group in their own distinctive styles, but they credited all to "Traveling Wilburys".

Links

The Songwriters Hall of Fame includes short biographies and photographs of many songwriters, mostly American.
www.songwritershalloffame.org

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

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www.songs1.com

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