The Songwriters Remain the Same

August 11, 2023 10:48 AM

Women singing the songs that they wrote might seem like a trifling detail, but it actually suggests something more vital: you cannot talk about the history of music without talking about men actively limiting the musical activities that women were allowed to participate in, sometimes via physical or sexual violence ... How often has a top 5 hit been written only by women in the last 10 years? It’s likely rarer than you think.
posted by chavenet (31 comments total)

Well, a lot of that has to do with why modern pop songs have so many credited writers generally.
posted by rednikki at 11:12 AM on August 11, 2023 [11 favorites]

Yeah, a real solution to this is to get more women in the process behind making the music. I can't off the top of my head name a single female record producer but I can name five male ones without even trying. When someone like Lizzo goes in to write a song, she isn't looking for a bunch of men to collaborate with, rather she's wanting to write a song and the people in the appropriate roles to assist in the industry are all men.

Also, going through all those lists of top songs across so many years has completely underscores to me that I am Officially an Old. If you need me I will be perusing pre-paid funeral plans and eating prunes.
posted by hippybear at 11:33 AM on August 11, 2023 [7 favorites]

Kate Bush was the first female ever to have a self written UK no. 1 single, Wuthering Heights in 1978.
posted by kenchie at 11:38 AM on August 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

This is so great. I love the Pudding. They do such fabulous work.

Random thoughts:

• I love the way they illustrated the songwriting teams - the varied poses are DELIGHTFUL. I wonder how they did that - if it was done by hand, or if there's a cool graphing tool that uses random images to create bar charts, or what? Looking at the code, I see each person is an SVG (and YAY for the Pudding putting alt text on each one, even if it is just "unidentified songwriter")
• "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" by Andy Williams was a Top 5 hits in 2021, and "A Holly Jolly Christmas" by Burl Ives in 2020? Huh.
• The "But there were none in 2019 ... or 2018 ... or 2017 ..." thing is really effective.
• When you get to the big grid of yellow blocks showing songs written by women, I was just scanning names and it's like "Diane Warren ... Diane Warren ... Diane Warren ... Diane Warren ... ". She has written a LOT of top 5 hits. (Also, at least 3 by Debbie Gibson? Huh.) (Also, is there an organizing principle for this grid? I thought it might be chronological, but now I'm not sure. Maybe by date it was a Top 5 hit, I guess? Might be nice if they had made it explicit.)
• I am woefully unfamiliar with popular music of the last 20 years (I ran a little indie record label and kind of got burned out). I am delighted to learn that there was a hit song called "ABCDEFU."
• I LOVE that they make their data so easily available. I have downloaded the spreadsheet. I will probably never get around to actually looking at it or doing anything with it, but now I HAVE it.

Their related piece, They Won't Play A Lady-O on Country Radio also looks super interesting.

The Pudding does such interesting stuff, and makes it so visually compelling. I am such a fan.

Thank you so much for posting this, chavenet! I'm off to share it with a friend.
posted by kristi at 12:01 PM on August 11, 2023 [10 favorites]

Well, a lot of that has to do with why modern pop songs have so many credited writers generally.

It's two sides of the same coin. A lot of the increase in credited writers comes from producers, sample litigation trolls, and other gatekeeping rent-seekers who are often disproportionately men.
posted by jonp72 at 12:18 PM on August 11, 2023 [7 favorites]

I am delighted to learn that there was a hit song called "ABCDEFU."

It caused a bit of a scandal last year, actually. Gayle has a prominent TikTok following, and she asked her followers to throw out songwriting ideas. One woman commented that she should write a breakup song based on the alphabet, and ABCDEFU was released a few weeks later.

The catch? The woman who commented was actually a digital marketing manager for Gayle's record company. This led to accusations that the whole thing was a setup by the record company, rather than an organic happenstance.

This is of course a tangent from the main point, which is that women songwriters are underrepresented in popular music. Luckily, if you get outside of the narrow range of "hit" songs, there are a lot of wonderful women songwriters out there. For example, one of my favorite albums (and live concerts) of this year was from boygenius, and all three women are credited as the songwriters on the album (except for a credit to Leonard Cohen on a song entitled... "Leonard Cohen").
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 12:34 PM on August 11, 2023 [7 favorites]

if you get outside of the narrow range of "hit" songs, there are a lot of wonderful women songwriters out there

I mean, that's great and all. Are they getting the same promotion and opportunities as the dude-centric hits listed here? Are they not "hits" because they were written by women? Because there's less opportunity for a lot of male industry insiders to make money as producers and co-producers etc. when women write their own songs?

Certainly seems plausible to me.
posted by daisystomper at 12:40 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Amy Ray of Indigo Girls had a solo song, Lucystoners [live, 4m] that was about Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone, not giving women a fair shake in the industry. Here are the lyrics via Genius, and here's the lifeblood.net page with background on the song that explains who Lucy was and much more.

Lyric sample:

Testing 1 2 3 in the marketplace
But its a demographic based disgrace
And a stupid secret white boy handshake
That we'll never be part of
So when its dj blow and the morning show
I give you one hundred reasons to just say no
And I said come on girls lets go right now
Oh girls lets go right now

I mean she was making this statement well over two decades ago. And Indigo Girls is one of the more successful female bands ever.
posted by hippybear at 12:49 PM on August 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

I was just scanning names and it's like "Diane Warren ... Diane Warren ... Diane Warren ... Diane Warren ... ". She has written a LOT of top 5 hits

Yeah, as soon as I saw this article I was like, Diane Warren is going to be the only multi-hit woman on here. And she's not, but it's pretty close. I can't stand her songs, to a one (and the Enterprise theme was such an embarrassing misstep on all sides, oh my god), but you can't deny that she was an absolute hit factory for a decade or so.

Music has always been, like basically any field where who-you-know opens doors (so, uh, everything), a boys' club. The particular way in which this analysis picks it apart is really striking, though. Amazing work.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:50 PM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Well, a lot of that has to do with why modern pop songs have so many credited writers generally.

The expansion of songwriting credits are part of why there are fewer female-only songwriting teams recently, and I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, some of the examples cited for "songwriting" (e.g., crediting a producer who found the perfect background vocalist, or crediting a different-but-similar song in order to avoid getting sued) clearly aren't. On the other hand, the traditional definition of "songwriting" as words and the melody and that's it seems wholly inadequate. Sure, sometimes the songwriter writes literally every part of the song down to the note, but very often the drummer is coming up with the drum part, the bass player is coming up with the bass part, the the keyboardist is coming up with the keyboard part. And it's easy for other members of a band to throw in things that are clearly little-s songwriting—"what if we changed key for the last chorus?", "what if we dropped the last note of the second measure in the bridge to give it a 'hurry up' feel?", "what if everything but the keys drops out under the last verse?".

(Context: I play bass, and I'm very aware that in some songs it's perfectly reasonable for me so just sink into the background and play roots and fifths and no one will notice, but in other songs, if you don't play the bass line as written, people will notice its absence. The current example I have in mind is The Jam's "A Town Called Malice".)
posted by The Tensor at 1:05 PM on August 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

The particular way in which this analysis picks it apart is really striking, though. Amazing work.

I will say one complaint I have about this list is there are a lot of songs by artists who are women known for being female songwriters performing their own songs, and their work is, I don't know the right word but maybe denigrated, in this list because they collaborated with men who got songwriting credit.

Like, if you're a woman who brought a fully finished song into the studio and you had a team work on the song in various ways and they all end up with songwriting credit. But you wrote the song yourself and the end product is a fancy version of your demo. But now the work you did has been buried in this analysis because of how the studio machine works.

It could have maybe really emphasized this machinery that lands a lot of not-songwriters on tracks with songwriting credits. It also could have emphasized a lot more, maybe done some deeper research, and found out how many of those songs that had one woman contributor who was also performing the song actually wrote most of the song and just had all those men "helping".

They could have weighted more for greater artistic input, is what I'm saying. Even as a sub-analysis, that would have been worthwhile to have broken out.
posted by hippybear at 1:06 PM on August 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

When it comes to those artists, I'm assuming the guy came in to provide some finishing touches or something if they're not a well-known team like Billie and Finneas.
posted by Selena777 at 1:08 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

What a beautifully done graphic. And Travis Scott there with over 30 people getting writing credits on his song. And Drake with more than 20. What a different world.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 1:41 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Even if women had to share songwriting credit with men for their own songs it still leaves something like 74% of all the hit songs they looked at that were written entirely by men. Why wasn't there at least one woman in the room for all these songs?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:56 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm kind of shocked that Taylor Swift doesn't appear more often in the list. I'm not a Swiftie by any means but isn't she known for both writing and singing her songs?
posted by peppermind at 2:08 PM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Even if women had to share songwriting credit with men for their own songs it still leaves something like 74% of all the hit songs they looked at that were written entirely by men. Why wasn't there at least one woman in the room for all these songs?

It probably has something to do with more record producers getting songwriting credits. If record producers are disproportionately men & a great share of songwriting credits go to producers, that means women's share of songwriting credits will go down.

I suspect it was probably better during the early 1960s Brill Building era, when women would often share songwriting credits as part of a husband/wife duo (Jerry Goffin & Carole King; Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil; Barry Mann & Ellie Greenwich), but at least women got some of the songwriting credit.
posted by jonp72 at 2:14 PM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm kind of shocked that Taylor Swift doesn't appear more often in the list. I'm not a Swiftie by any means but isn't she known for both writing and singing her songs?

If you get to the end of the article there's a database you can search. Taylor Swift is pretty mightily represented, with 26 songs listed in the database of these Top 5 Songs. There are only four of those she wrote without a credited male songwriter. And only 4 that she wrote with female co-songwriters, all of which involved men also.
posted by hippybear at 2:15 PM on August 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

I will say one complaint I have about this list is there are a lot of songs by artists who are women known for being female songwriters performing their own songs, and their work is, I don't know the right word but maybe denigrated, in this list because they collaborated with men who got songwriting credit.

I think that's the point though? I don't think anyone is being denigrated. There are many problems with the modern music studio system and the lack of women in jobs which get songwriting credits (whether that's producers, band members, or punch up writers) is one of the problems.
posted by muddgirl at 2:21 PM on August 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

Amy Ray of Indigo Girls had a solo song, Lucystoners [live, 4m] that was about Jann Wenner, editor of Rolling Stone, not giving women a fair shake in the industry.

That is so fitting. The rarest, most expensive garage rock record 45 is Denise & Company, Boy What'll You Do Then?, which a recent biography revealed is all about how shitty Jann Wenner was as a boyfriend. Denise later went on to found the Ace of Cups, the only 1960s San Francisco group with an all-female membership, but unfortunately, they were completely ignored by the record companies.
posted by jonp72 at 2:23 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

If you simplified this to every singer getting songwriting credits, and working with one other credited songwriter, then you should have 25% all-male credits, 25% all-female credits, and 50% mixed gender credits.
posted by muddgirl at 2:24 PM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Well, not anyone being denigrated, but certainly a lot of work appearing in this list that isn't reflective of the actual songwriting work that went into the track.

Songwriting credits don't mean much these days other than "I did a thing on this track".
posted by hippybear at 2:24 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

...OK? And half those that "did something on a track" should be women.
posted by muddgirl at 2:25 PM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yes, I agree. All my comments in this thread support my saying this. I don't know what you're trying to argue with me about.
posted by hippybear at 2:26 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

And it's easy for other members of a band to throw in things that are clearly little-s songwriting—"what if we changed key for the last chorus?", "what if we dropped the last note of the second measure in the bridge to give it a 'hurry up' feel?", "what if everything but the keys drops out under the last verse?".

Those are all things I think of as arranging. I think arrangement is an undervalued contribution, but I don't think it's the same as songwriting. I do think arranging should give you a cut in a similar way to songwriting though - the arrangement is often at least as much what gives a song its particular feel and soul as the actual writing.

(Also mostly a bass player, though I play other instruments as well.)
posted by Dysk at 3:45 PM on August 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Dysk: I do think of arrangement/producing a more a thing separate from songwriting, but there are separate credits for those within the music industry. That they aren't compensated properly is a parallel issue that if resolved might sort out a lot of this songwriting mess.
posted by hippybear at 3:52 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Another example of the overlap between writing and (mere) arranging that comes to mind in XTC's "The Mayor of Simpleton", where songwriter Andy Partridge specified the exact bassline for Colin Moulding to play. Moulding, for context, is the second songwriter in the group, typically writing several songs on each album, and it sounds like Partridge usually left it up to Moulding to come up with the basslines, but evidently this was never credited as "songwriting" unless Moulding wrote the whole song.
posted by The Tensor at 5:04 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

See that's the thing, I don't think there's anything "mere" about arranging. I think it should be given near equal credit to writing. I just don't think it is writing. Arrangers should get credit same as songwriters, but that doesn't mean we have to call them songwriters. Let's actually appreciate the art of arranging, and the people who do it.
posted by Dysk at 11:15 PM on August 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

(And I say this as a bass player who does a lot of arranging, and coming up with supplementary parts to existing songs, that sometimes end up being central elements. Those are skills I have! But I can't write songs. I can take songs others have written, and make them better through arranging. We don't have to redefine or recategorise that skill to appreciate it!)
posted by Dysk at 11:37 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

As a woman currently in the depths of 50/90 (write 50 songs in 90 days), this was an important read for me - thank you! I have many thoughts on the subject, but here are a few:
1. There are efforts to address the issue. Take a look at Maestra, which "provides support, visibility, and community to the women and nonbinary people who make music in the music theater industry.". Not quite the same as pop music, but it's a start. There's also Ring of Keys that does the same for queer women, trans, and GNC artists.
2. I had no idea that there were teams of writers for hit songs. I knew about duos; I feel rather naive! That said, the social dynamic that would happen in a writer's room, or for that matter in a meeting at my work, is not a great one generally for women. Seeing those graphs with a single woman in a group of men is painful.
3. Now I have a whole different perspective on what I'm writing. There's a guy who is working on a cover of one of my songs as a part of a song swap - so now I'm extra-glad that he's doing so!
4. As for arrangements, dysk - I am in awe of what people do when they arrange pieces. I've only been trained in writing what are essentially leadsheets - chords, melodies, lyrics - and feel completely unprepared for arranging my work. I was taught that it's the leadsheet that typically functions as the work that is copyrighted. Arrangements do create 'forks' of sorts for music - an arrangement is a legally distinct work that has its own rights - but I'm pretty sure it's the words and melody (and possibly harmony?) that get filed. Full disclaimer that my teacher is a lyricist in the music theater industry, though - they may be rather biased!
5. I was so glad to see Taylor Swift so prominent in the list! She's an inspiration for me.
6. Now, I'll stop procrastinating and go back to writing :)
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:17 AM on August 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

If you scroll to the bottom of the article you can get access to the Google Sheet with all of the data they used. I was curious to see how many songs each songwriter was credited on so I sorted by name. Just looking at the result it seems like the average has to be around 5 or 6 hits, with outliers like Max Martin. I didn't look at how frequently certain combinations pop up but it sure seems like the complaint that songs all sound the same these days isn't groundless.
posted by tommasz at 1:44 PM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think another pervasive bias is that male songwriter teams, like Lennon/McCartney, Elton John/Bernie Taupin aren't denigrated and are often celebrated, but when female writers collaborate with a man, it's treated as "oh, she can't write a song without help." Mariah Carey has co-written 18 #1 hits. None of her co-writers have that many. And yet she has only recently gotten a fraction of the respect other hit songwriters get, however one personally feels about her music.
posted by nakedmolerats at 9:17 PM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]