Songwriter U: Is Songwriting a Racket?

Reflections on the Ethics of Songwriting

“So I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen.” So says the character of Hyman Roth, played by Lee Strasberg, in The Godfather II. Though he is referring to the Mafia, it applies as well to the music business, an industry with a long tradition of unscrupulous ethics. 

But although crooked practices in the industry have been rife for decades, this business is still often framed as a dream kingdom, something so far beyond the wildest dreams of regular people that any consideration of ethics is irrelevant. This is the business we’ve chosen. You knew when you got in what it was all about. And if you didn’t, it’s nobody’s fault but your own. 

In other words, it’s considered to be a profession not unlike politics. That if you enter it thinking normal concepts of morality and decency apply, you need to either grow up and accept reality, or perhaps consider normal work. 

Back in 1988, in the opening chapter of this writer’s entry to this industry, informed more by romance than any knowledge of reality, the truth gradually became apparent. 

“Songwriting is a racket,” Van Dyke Parks said, during our first interview “and we know that, and we wish it weren’t. I think you know that.”

In fact, I didn’t know. It was 1989, and I’d only been doing this work for a few years,  and truly hadn’t a clue.

Growing up a zealous songwriting music lover, always ready to bicycle to the record store for the newest record of a beloved artist, my vision of a songwriter’s life was more reverential than realistic. I considered recording artists as belonging to an elite club, and once admitted, you were a member forever. You are given that proverbial key to the kingdom, which was irrevocable. The idea of making an album, to me back when I was a kid, and how any records reached radio, seemed as magical and mysterious as making a movie.

But artists like Van Dyke, and Frank Zappa, who I also met back then, were quick to share the reality of this business, which shaped their own lives. 

Because of the nature of the business, Zappa explained, sales of 50,000 records was a failure. The pop music industry is necessarily geared toward mass sales – in the millions – so in spite of the fact that your music impacted 50,000 human lives – the size of a small city — it was no success. Not in this genre, anyway.

“If you were a classical composer and you sold 50,000 albums,” Zappa added, “you’d be a hero. But the regular pop industry spits at 50,000 records.”

So it is an industry built on odd equations. It’s also one in which songwriters have been cheated and exploited since the very start. Until the turn of the 20^th century, copyright laws as applied to the authorship of songs were non-existent, and all songs were essentially in the public domain. But with the advent of the printing of sheet music and development of copyright laws, the music business was born. Not to sell records, but sheet music.

Stephen Foster, songwriter of “Oh Susannah,” “Camptown Races” and countless other American standards, was in the music business before there was any music business. Sound recordings weren’t even invented until after his death, and radio was 66 years off. He made income by selling editions of his songs to publishers, who would pay him tiny amounts.

Often he would sell a song outright – so that he forever relinquished rights to many of his most famous songs. If he worked within our modern system, he would have made millions. Instead he died broke at the age of 37.

That’s where all this starts, and the reason ASCAP and BMI were established, to protect the rights of songwriters, and to collect royalties for performances of songs.

When radio became king, the music business was centered on sales of sheet music. Often a songwriter could have more than one version of his song on the charts. Radio hits generated sheet music sales, and songwriters made healthy royalties. Because of this, singers saw this profit stream based on their performances, and wanted a piece of that action.

This started an unfortunate American tradition in which famous singers insist their names be included as authors of these songs. Al Jolson was one of the first purveyors of this system, insisting on co-writer credit, and always with the reasoning that “half of a Jolson song is better than nothing.”

Other famous singers followed suit, including Elvis Presley. It was Colonel Parker, his manager, who insisted that Elvis got co-writer credits, though he never wrote a single song. Thus “Heartbreak Hotel” is credited to both Mae Axton, who wrote it, and Elvis. Both “Don’t Be Cruel” and “All Shook Up” are  credited to Otis Blackwell and Elvis.

Not every songwriter would play that game. Leiber & Stoller were already established, and refused, so that they have full credit of their famous Elvis songs, such as “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock.”

Also, Dolly Parton famously refused this deal – which wasn’t easy for her, as she loved Elvis, and also could have used the money – but it felt wrong to her, and so Elvis didn’t record her song. It did get recorded subsequently by Whitney Houston, the song being “I Will Always Love You.” It worked out pretty well for Dolly, becoming one of the biggest hits of all time.

These days, the music business has shifted so profoundly in the last decades that I know a lot of successful songwriters who no longer write songs. They told me they don’t even understand the business anymore, and don’t see why they should participate. It’s true that the whole engine of the industry as we knew it – the selling of physical records – has been revamped. Many great artists, who have been writing and recording for decades, now have no choice but to tour every year, as record sales no longer bring in significant income. It’s a different world.

The good news is that songs still matter. Though technology has changed the ways we purchase, own and listen to music, technology has not supplanted the song. At no point did anyone come up with any replacement for a song. Songs still inhabit and accompany every aspect of modern lives, from all our ceremonies and exalted times to the most mundane moments, in elevators and supermarkets. People in cars, on bike, on walks – all are tuned into music.

And songwriters continue to write songs which reflect modern times, and solve the equation of creating something timeless in the most timely environment ever.

As one friend said when asked why she still writes songs, “It isn’t a job. It’s a calling. Nothing matters as much. Not in the long run.”

Another, from a city called New York, said, “Why do I still write songs? What else am I gonna do? Go back to washing cars? It’s what I do. ” 

Indeed. Songwriting is a racket. But it’s our racket.