songwriting
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Dustin Lynch’s new single, “Stars Like Confetti,” could have long-term consequences for his bottom line.
On one hand, if it succeeds, it could keep fans buying tickets to see Lynch sing it live for years. On the other hand, if “Confetti” becomes a signature song, it pretty much requires he blast celebratory bits of paper and mylar into his concert audiences nightly. And that comes with a cost.
“If this song becomes a hit, I guarantee you we’re going to need more trucks [to get] confetti blowers behind the stage every night,” he says.
That’s just one of the extra expenses. “Not only do you have to get it there, you’ve got to have people to operate it,” he adds. “And then with something like confetti, you have to have a cleanup crew. All those things go into the equation.”
“Stars Like Confetti” actually has its roots in Thomas Rhett’s concert productions — and in a family vacation. He and his wife, Lauren Akins, took their kids to Montana, and the state lived up to its Big Sky Country nickname, impressing one of his daughters. “In Montana, you see stars for years,” Rhett notes. “The light pollution in Montana is like zero, and so we were looking up at the stars, and Willa Gray said something like ‘Hey, that looks like the confetti from your show.’ ”
The comment became a teachable moment. “We just started to have a conversation about how God made the stars and how some of those stars are really old,” he says. “And sometimes those stars aren’t there anymore, but we’re just now seeing the light from the star. I’m not a scientist, but I was trying to tell her the scientific facts about stars, as well as I knew.”
Naturally, Rhett logged “Stars Like Confetti” as a possible song title, and he popped it out early in the pandemic during a Zoom songwriting session with Zach Crowell (“Body Like a Back Road,” “Sunrise, Sunburn, Sunset”) and Josh Thompson (“I’ll Name the Dogs,” “Ain’t Always the Cowboy”) on April 17, 2020. It was Crowell’s first experience writing via the video hookup, and he remembers it being awkward. But the nuts and bolts of the process — attempting to match words and music in a way that sticks with listeners — was pretty much the same.
“What in the world do we rhyme ‘confetti’ with?” asks Crowell rhetorically. “Do we say ‘Yeti’ in there? I’m surprised we didn’t.”
“Stars Like Confetti” suggests a cheery topic, though the narrative needed to fit the sound of the words and the down-to-earth mentality of the typical country plotline. “‘Confetti’,” Crowell says, “is a softer word, so we needed to kind of probably tell the story of a guy and a girl kind of thing.”
So they embraced a narrative about a young couple enjoying the same sky Rhett’s family saw in Montana. “I love that picture of looking at the star-filled skies and feeling like God was literally just taking a handful of confetti, just throwing it out over the universe,” says Rhett. “It turned into this love song about an epic night on a back road.”
They stuffed a bundle of images into the verses, providing enough background to get a sense of the couple and the setting: drinking beers in a rusty, cherry-red pickup on a dirt road, with perfume and physical connection encouraging passion. The pre-chorus used an ascendant melody to provide a sense that the mood and images were leading the listener somewhere. “It’s kind of a tension creator,” Crowell says. “Get ready for the chorus.”
In classic form, that chorus has a singalong quality, rolling optimistically toward its hooky payoff: “Stars like confetti — ah, ah.” The tag cinches the commercial effect, the two “ahs” giving it a punchy finality, with a scooped note in the middle providing an ideal “ah” separation. It was a T-Rhett move.
“During 2020, I was on a big kick of trying to find songs that what you thought was the hook actually wasn’t the hook,” he recalls. “When I listen to ‘Uptown Funk,’ Bruno Mars, ‘Uptown Funk’ is not the hook. The hook is [the horn riff]. That’s the part that you remember. And like, ‘Barefoot Blue Jean Night’ — ‘Whoa-oh-oh, we were livin’ it up’ — you remember the ‘whoas’ way more than you remember ‘on a barefoot blue jean night.’ ”
When they finished writing, Rhett recorded a vocal over acoustic guitar. Crowell started layering instrumental parts over that work tape to build the demo, calling on multi-instrumentalist Devin Malone for an assist. They created most of the final production in the process, and they fully expected Rhett to record it. But he never did.
“I don’t know why I didn’t cut it, to be honest,” says Rhett. “I don’t even recall why that wasn’t in the running. Sometimes I do think that God will just kind of put you off something because it wasn’t for you, because it was for somebody else.”
Once it was clear that Rhett was passing on “Confetti,” Crowell sent a copy of it to Lynch, who was partying with friends on his boat when it arrived on his phone. The group gave him immediate feedback.
“Thomas Rhett was actually singing the demo whenever we heard it for the first time, and everybody loved it,” Lynch remembers. “The best gauge you can have is whenever people that hear a song want to hear it again later in the day, and that was the case with ‘Stars Like Confetti.’ It was a great sign and a great starting point.”
Crowell and Malone used the demo as a foundation for the master recording, keeping an estimated 95% of it in place. Crowell brought in live drums and a handful of other instrumental parts, and the end product included appropriate spare touches — short bursts of guitars and steel that darted in and out of the verses behind the melody, creating a sonic stars-like-confetti effect. Lynch delivered his lead vocal with relative ease.
Broken Bow was bullish on “Stars Like Confetti” from first listen and finally released it to country radio via PlayMPE on Dec. 16, 2022. It rises to No. 45 in its fifth week on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart. As it moves upward, it seems likely that “Confetti” — bolstered by real-life production and airborne paper bits — could be suitable for American holiday celebrations and parades as 2023 unfolds.
“I’m sure those opportunities are going to present themselves,” says Lynch. “It does sit very well for wonderful TV moments, you know. With all it lends itself to, we can really spice things up with the performance. I’m hoping it connects and we’re offered those opportunities.”
The trend in songwriting is toward ever-larger collectives of writers collaborating. But some writers do very well – and maybe even better – on their own. Diane Warren has been the sole scribe on 10 of her 14 Oscar-nominated songs – including “Applause” from Tell It Like a Woman, which is vying for the award at the 95th Oscars on March 12. Only one songwriter in Oscar history has been the sole writer of more than 10 Oscar-nominated songs.
Warren worked with a collaborator, Albert Hammond, on her first Oscar-nominated song, the propulsive “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from Mannequin (1987). She later collaborated with Lady Gaga, Common and Laura Pausini on Oscar-nominated songs.
Warren’s roster of solo-written songs includes three of her signature hits – “Because You Loved Me” from Up Close and Personal (1996), “How Do I Live” from Con Air (1997) and “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” from Armageddon (1998), all of which also received Grammy nominations for song of the year.
Twelve songwriters in Oscar history have received two or more nominations for best original song for songs they wrote all by themselves. Six of these writers have only been nominated for solo-written songs. These include two of the foremost writers of the Great American Songbook, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, and four top contemporary writers – Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen, Randy Newman and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Here are all songwriters who have received two or more Oscar nods for best original song for pieces they wrote entirely by themselves.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, 2
Image Credit: Steve Granitz/WireImage
Miranda is the sole writer of both of his nominated songs to date – “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana (2016) and “Dos Oruguitas” from Encanto (2021). In the photo above, Miranda is joined by his mother, Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda, at the Oscars the first time he was nominated. Listen to Miranda talk about the songs from Encanto on the Pop Shop Podcast in early 2022.
Bruce Springsteen, 2
The Boss is the sole writer of both of his nominated songs to date – “Streets of Philadelphia” from Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia (which won, 1993) and “Dead Man Walkin’” from Tim Robbins’ Dead Man Walking (1995).
Dolly Parton, 2
Parton is the sole writer of both of her nominated songs to date – “Nine to Five” from the hit comedy of the same name in which she co-starred with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin (1980) and “Travelin’ Through” from Transamerica (2005).
Phil Collins, 2
Collins is the sole writer of two of his three nominated songs to date – the striking torch ballad “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” from Against All Odds (1984) and “You’ll Be in My Heart” from Tarzan (which won, 1999). Collins had a co-writer – Motown legend Lamont Dozier – on his other nominated song, “Two Hearts” from Buster (1988).
Lionel Richie, 2
Richie is the sole writer of two of his three nominated songs to date – “Endless Love” from the movie of the same name (1981) and “Say You, Say Me” from White Nights (which won, 1985). Richie collaborated with Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton on his other nominated song – “Miss Celie’s Blues (Sister)” from The Color Purple, which lost to “Say You, Say Me.”
Leslie Bricusse, 2
Bricusse was the sole writer of his first two nominated songs – “Talk to the Animals” from Doctor Dolittle (which won, 1967) and “Thank You Very Much” from Scrooge (1970). He worked with collaborators on his last three nominated songs. He teamed with Henry Mancini on “Life in a Looking Glass” from That’s Life (1986) and with John Williams on both “Somewhere in My Memory” from Home Alone (1990) and “When You’re Alone” from Hook (1991). Bricusse died in 2021 at age 90.
Johnny Mercer, 2
Mercer was the sole writer of two of his near-record 18 nominated songs. (Only Sammy Cahn amassed more nominations in the category – 26). Mercer was the sole writer of “Something’s Gotta Give” from the Fred Astaire/Leslie Caron film Daddy Long Legs (1955) and “The Facts of Life” from the Bob Hope/Lucille Ball movie of the same name (1960). He collaborated on his other nominated songs with Henry Mancini (five songs), Harold Arlen (four), Harry Warren (two) and Jimmy McHugh, Artie Shaw, Jerome Kern, Hoagy Carmichael and Marvin Hamlisch (one each). Mercer died in 1976 at age 66. Here’s more about the songwriter for whom the Songwriters Hall of Fame named their top award.
Frank Loesser, 3
Loesser teamed with composers Lou Alter and Arthur Schwartz for his first two nominated songs, but was the sole writer of his last three – “I Wish I Didn’t Love You So” from The Perils of Pauline (1947), “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from Neptune’s Daughter (1949) and “Thumbelina” from Hans Christian Andersen (1952). “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is one of the most enduring songs from the 1940s, though the storyline of seduction, once viewed as charming, is now seen as problematic by some. Loesser died in 1969 at age 59.
Cole Porter, 4
Image Credit: Underwood Archives/GI
Porter was the sole writer of all four of his nominated songs – “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” from Born to Dance (1936), “Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye” from You’ll Never Get Rich (1941), “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” from Something to Shout About (1943) and “True Love” from High Society (1956). “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” is one of Frank Sinatra’s signature hits. “True Love” was a smash collab in 1956 for Bing Crosby & Grace Kelly. Porter, pictured here at the piano in 1956 with his dog beside him, died in 1964 at age 73.
Irving Berlin, 7
Berlin was the sole writer of all seven of his nominated songs – “Cheek to Cheek” from Top Hat (1935), “Change Partners” from Carefree (1938), “Now It Can Be Told” from Alexander’s Ragtime Band (also 1938), “I Poured My Heart Into a Song” from Second Fiddle (1939), “White Christmas” from Holiday Inn (which won, 1942), “You Keep Coming Back Like a Song” from Blue Skies (1946) and “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep” from White Christmas (1954). “Cheek to Cheek” came in second in the Oscar voting for 1935. The winner that year was “Lullaby of Broadway.” Both songs are famous to this day. And wouldn’t it be great if the Academy revealed the runner-up nowadays, as they did that year? Berlin died in 1989 at age 101.
Diane Warren, 10
Warren is the sole writer of 10 of her 14 nominated songs to date. Warren teamed with Albert Hammond, best known for his 1972 smash “It Never Rains in Southern California,” to write her first Oscar-nominated song, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from Mannequin (1987). She later teamed with Lady Gaga on “Til It Happens to You” from The Hunting Ground (2015), Common on “Stand Up for Something” from Marshall (2017) and Laura Pausini for “Io Sì (Seen)” from The Life Ahead (La Vita Davanti a Se).
She has been the sole writer of her other 10 nominated songs – “Because You Loved Me” from Up Close and Personal (1996), “How Do I Live” from Con Air (1997), “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing “ from Armageddon (1998), “Music of My Heart” from Music of the Heart (1999), “There You’ll Be” from Pearl Harbor (2001), “Grateful” from Beyond the Lights (2014), “I’ll Fight” from RBG (2018), “I’m Standing With You” from Breakthrough (2019), “Somehow You Do” from Four Good Days (2021) and “Applause” from Tell It Like a Woman (2022).
Here’s a closer look at Warren’s 14 Oscar-nominated songs.
Randy Newman, 13
Image Credit: Arturo Holmes/ABC/GI
Newman is the sole writer of all 13 of his nominated songs to date, including a song from each of the four Toy Story movies. He was nominated for “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from Toy Story (1995) and “When She Loved Me” from Toy Story 2 (1999), won for “We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3 (2010) and was nominated for “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” from Toy Story 4 (2019). In the photo above, Newman is performing the latter song on the Oscar telecast.
Newman’s first Oscar winner was “If I Didn’t Have You” from Monsters, Inc. (2001). Newman is the only writer in Oscar history to win twice for solo-written songs.
His other nominees are “One More Hour” from Ragtime (1981), “I Love to See You Smile” from Parenthood (1989), “Make Up Your Mind” from The Paper (1994), “That’ll Do” from Babe: Pig in the City (1998), “A Fool in Love” from Meet the Parents (2000), “Our Town” from Cars (2006), and “Almost There” and “Down in New Orleans” from The Princess and the Frog (2009).
Sting will become an Academy Fellow, the highest honor The Ivors Academy bestows, at the 2023 Ivors, which will be presented at Grosvenor House in London on May 18.
Sting is the 23rd Fellow that the Academy has inducted in its 79-year history. He follows such songwriting greats as Sir Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Joan Armatrading and Peter Gabriel. The latter received the award last year.
“Of all the awards in the world of music, The Ivors are for me, the most prestigious,” Sting said in a statement. “Songwriting is a skilled craft and The Ivors Academy are its guild. So, I am delighted and honoured to be offered this Fellowship of the Academy, joining and acknowledging this extraordinary group of fellow songwriters, and all of those who went before us.”
Sting has won seven Ivor Novellos, including their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002. He was inducted into the New York-based Songwriters Hall of Fame that same year.
Sting has won 17 Grammys, including two in songwriting categories – the 1983 award for song of the year for “Every Breath You Take” and the 1991 award for best rock song for “The Soul Cages.” He won a 2002 Primetime Emmy for outstanding individual performance in a variety or music program for A&E in Concert: Sting in Tuscany…All This Time. In addition, he has been nominated for the two other EGOT awards. He has amassed four Oscar nods for best original song and a 2015 Tony nod for original musical score for The Last Ship.
Speaking on behalf of The Ivors Academy, Armatrading, Sting’s labelmate at A&M Records from the late ’70s into the early ’90s, said: “Across all of Sting’s work as a solo artist and with the iconic band The Police, he is without doubt one of the UK’s foremost successful songwriters and performers and is certainly deserving of one of the most prestigious awards in the music business. My huge congratulations on being made a Fellow of The Ivors Academy, Sting.”
Sting is managed by Martin Kierszenbaum of Cherrytree Music Company.
The Ivor Novellos, which were first presented in 1956, are judged by songwriters and composers from The Ivors Academy, the U.K.’s professional association for songwriters and composers. Past winners include Adele, Stormzy, Little Simz, Cathy Dennis, Annie Lennox, Amy Winehouse, Dave and John Lennon.
This year’s nominations will be announced on Tuesday April 18. The winners will be revealed at The Ivors on Thursday May 18.
The Ivors Academy also announced that Amazon Music is the new title sponsor of The Ivors as part of a multi-year, global deal. Amazon Music will bring music creators to the forefront through exclusive content offerings, as well as live performances, an immersive red carpet and backstage interviews that will be livestreamed on the Amazon Music UK Twitch channel in 2023.
Tom Gray, chair of The Ivors Academy, said, “Globally, songwriters are justly demanding the recognition that they deserve. As we push back against the historic undervaluing of the song and songwriter, we are delighted to collaborate with Amazon Music to celebrate songwriters, explore their craft and firmly place their value and originality at the centre of music. Together, we will make sure that The Ivors is recognised around the world as the most important celebration of songwriting.”
Amazon Music will integrate this year’s Rising Star nominees into their global developing artist program, Breakthrough, which provides long-term, customized global plans for emerging artists. This support includes video and audio content, global marketing, increased visibility across Amazon Music playlists and programming and high-profile Amazon Original tracks available only on Amazon Music.
Tom Winkler, head of songwriter, publisher and society relations for Amazon Music explains, “By globally amplifying the exceptional work of The Ivors Academy, Amazon Music will continue to celebrate songwriters and empower fans to discover the craft behind the music.”
To commemorate Sting’s honor, an unheard, Amazon Original demo of “If It’s Love,” taken from the musician’s most recent studio album, 2021’s The Bridge, is being released exclusively via Amazon Music. This is the seventh installment of the newly-launched demos program, which provides Amazon Music customers with the opportunity to hear demos of artists’ songs. Previous demo releases include songs by Walker Hayes and Maren Morris.
As we reported earlier on Wednesday (Feb. 15), Tim Rice is this year’s recipient of the Johnny Mercer Award, the top honor given by the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Rice joins a long list of Mercer Award recipients which includes Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Paul Simon, Stephen Sondheim, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Dolly Parton and Neil Diamond.
Mercer died in 1976, so you can be excused if you don’t know all that much about him. Mercer was a top lyricist of the Great American Songbook era, but his creative peak extended beyond that era. He won back-to-back Oscars in 1962-63 for co-writing “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses.” Henry Mancini, who composed both of those hits, saluted Mercer with a memorable line from “Moon River” when they won for “Days of Wine and Roses,” saying “and my huckleberry friend, Johnny Mercer.”
Mercer’s other most famous songs include “Hooray for Hollywood” (a perennial on the Oscars), “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” (a classic saloon song that is one of Frank Sinatra’s signature hits), “Summer Wind” (another Sinatra classic from 1966), “Fools Rush In” (which Rick Nelson revived in 1963), “Dream” (one of the most melancholy ballads of the World War II years), “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate-the-Positive” (it appeared recently in M3GAN), “I’m an Old Cowhand (From the Rio Grande)” (Lucy and Ethel sang it on a 1954 episode of I Love Lucy), “That Old Black Magic” (Louis Prima & Keely Smith’s classic version was a winner at the first Grammy Awards) and “I Wanna Be Around” (Tony Bennett’s highest-charting Hot 100 hit).
Here are more Mercer songs you probably know: “Autumn Leaves,” “Blues in the Night,” “Jeepers, Creepers!,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “I Remember You,” “Charade,” “Skylark” and “Too Marvelous for Words.”
Scan these 13 Fun Facts and learn more about the man for whom the Songwriters Hall of Fame named their top award.
Diane Warren is getting up there on the all-time list of top Oscar nominees for best original song. Her nod this year for “Applause,” sung by Sofia Carson in Tell It Like a Woman, is her 14th — a tally equaled by only seven other songwriters in the 89-year history of the category).
Moreover, this is the sixth year in a row she has been nominated, the longest continuous run streak of nominations in this category since Alan Bergman and his late wife Marilyn Bergman were nominated six years running from 1968-73. (Their streak was bookended by two winners – “The Windmills of Your Mind” and “The Way We Were.”)
Only two other songwriters in Oscar history have had six or more consecutive nods. Mack David, the older brother of Hal David (of Bacharach & David fame), was nominated every year from 1961-66. He never won. Sammy Cahn holds the all-time records both for the most consecutive years with a best original song nod (eight, from 1954-61) and most total nods in that category (26). Cahn won a record-tying four Oscars in the category.
If you’re looking for a common denominator among Warren’s best original song nominees – besides quality – good luck. Three of them reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, but several others didn’t even crack the chart. Three are from blockbuster action films, but several others are from smaller indie films that barely made a dent at the boxoffice.
Four of the 14 songs, including the current one, are from films directed by women. That’s far higher than the industry-wide percentage of films directed by women. The only director Warren has worked with on two nominated songs is Michael Bay. She wrote songs for his blockbusters Armageddon (“I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”) and Pearl Harbor (“There You’ll Be”).
Warren received an honorary Oscar in November. She’s only the fifth person in Oscar history – and the first person from the world of music – to receive an honorary Oscar and a competitive Oscar nomination in the same awards year. Warren, 66, has the work ethic of a songwriter half her age, one still trying to make her mark. That could be her secret.
Let’s take a closer look at Warren’s best original song nominees. The films’ worldwide box-office receipts are taken from boxofficemojo.com (rounded off to the nearest million). In two cases where the film grossed less than $1 million, we show the exact tally.
They’re the keys to a solid business plan: a sound product, an understanding of the target customer, focused marketing and country music.
That’s right — country music. Nashville songwriters have over the last decade amplified a secondary source of revenue by giving more in-the-round performances beyond Music City’s club circuit, particularly for America’s corporate movers and shakers. Sometimes it’s a hometown gig at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe or The Listening Room for 50-75 staffers with a company enjoying an entertainment break during a conference. In other instances, the composers may travel out of town to perform for a dozen senior members of different companies that are engaged in a leadership exercise.
Regardless of a company’s purpose, it gives songwriters — who create their material in small rooms — a chance to see their songs at work in front of an audience and to get paid for the privilege.
“A lot of songwriters are doing it because they’re not making money on getting cuts anymore,” says songwriter Hillary Lindsey (“Blue Ain’t Your Color,” “Jesus, Take the Wheel”). “Even if you get the album cut, if you don’t have a single, you’re not making money. So a lot of people are hustling and getting a lot of these gigs. If you do enough, I think you can make some money.”
The development was not born in a songwriting room. Instead, it came indirectly from the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp., which is tasked with marketing Music City as a destination for both vacation and business travel. Songwriters are “a secret weapon of Nashville,” says NCVC CEO Butch Spyridon. Roughly 20 years ago, he rounded up three writers — Brett James (“I Hold On,” “Blessed”), Rivers Rutherford (“Ain’t Nothing ’Bout You,” “Real Good Man”) and Tim Nichols(“Live Like You Were Dying,” “Heads Carolina, Tails California”) — and hit a handful of other markets, attempting to entice convention bookers to plot their events in Middle Tennessee.
“The irony was it was so good, so cool and so special,” Spyridon says. “The client base responded better than if they were seeing the artists. It resonated out of the gate, and so then we just never stopped.”
Around 10 years ago, some of the executives who experienced those songwriter-in-the-round performances started booking them for their own corporate events. The price was much less than booking, say, Tim McGraw, and the event proved more personal and intimate, as attendees heard familiar songs in the vocal-and-guitar format in which they were originally conceived. While prices vary, the typical writer might get $5,000, so a company could conceivably book a four-person event for $20,000 and minimal production costs, far cheaper than a corporate McGraw gig.
“Not only that, you can get the writers that wrote most of the Tim McGraw hits,” says songwriter Rob Hatch (“I Don’t Dance,” “If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away”), who co-founded a songwriter booking agency, Entersong, with Jerrod Niemann and Indiana-based entrepreneur Steve Stewart this year. The company has over 50 writers on its roster, and bookings can range from appearances at established venues to informal dates at backyard barbecues or house parties.
“COVID-19 created a situation where people couldn’t go out and go to concerts,” Hatch says. “A lot of the private concerts popped up more because they couldn’t go anywhere else.”
Like any other performer, songwriters determine the workload that suits them. Ashley Gorley (“You Proof,” “You Should Probably Leave”) takes out-of-town dates only if they’re with fellow writers who are already friends and/or it’s in a location where he and his wife would like to vacation. Chris DeStefano (“At the End of a Bar,” “Something in the Water”) is more aggressive.
“I try to do as much of it as possible,” he says. “It’s a great way of reaching fans and [a chance to] do some traveling, too, which I go do a lot of times. I get to bring my wife, and that’s always great. It’s working vacations, but also, it’s a way of really communicating directly with fans. And any opportunity I get to do that is some of the best parts of what I do.”
But a number of writers have also found that the shows can become too much of a good thing, as they start eating into their family time or damaging their creativity in the writing room.
“They are good for a songwriter to get some hard cash because our money is so delayed, the way we get paid,” says Jessi Alexander (“Never Say Never,” “I Drive Your Truck”). “If you’re going to pay me to come sing five songs with my friends, I’m going to do it, but I found that it was really starting to disrupt my writing — go play a gig, get home late at night, start all over again.”
Some of the gigs are ideal — Corey Crowder (“Famous Friends,” “Minimum Wage”) did one for Waldorf Astoria Hotels in Hawaii — and others have ranged from a trucking tire company that employed Track45 to a winery that booked Hunter Phelps (“wait in the truck,” “Thinking ’Bout You”). Another songwriter booking agency, Mike Severson’s Songwriter City, lists a bundle of clients — including Morgan Stanley, AT&T and Amazon — on its website.
In the end, the trend is one that takes advantage of the most unique feature of Music City’s creative class, providing an extra income stream to songwriters and setting the community apart in the business world.
“This kind of shows who we are,” Spyridon says. “You clear away all the clutter, and there’s a heart and soul, and it comes from the songwriter.”
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In the 65th Annual Grammy nominations, which were announced last week, Jay-Z is competing with himself for song of the year. He is nominated for co-writing his wife Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul” and also DJ Khaled’s “God Did,” on which he is one of the featured artists.
Two songwriters – Brandi Carlile and D’Mile – achieved double nominations for song of the year last year – when the Recording Academy expanded the number of nominations in this category to 10. The expansion obviously makes it easier to achieve double nominations. Still, at this point, the list of songwriters with two songs nominated for song of the year in the same year is fairly exclusive – just 12 individual songwriters or songwriting teams have accomplished the feat.
Three songwriting teams have done this – Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Dino Fekaris & Freddie Perren and Elton John & Tim Rice. John and Rice are also the only songwriters who were born outside of the U.S. who have done it.
Carlile is the only female songwriter who has done it.
Three songwriters — Jimmy Webb, Bobby Russell and Michael Jackson — have achieved the feat with a pair of songs they wrote entirely by themselves – a practice that has fallen out of fashion.
Webb is the youngest songwriter to achieve the feat. The prodigy was just 21 when he did it. The oldest? Johnny Mercer, who was 54.
We’ll find out if either of Jay-Z’s songs wins for song of the year on Feb. 5, 2023 when the 65th annual Grammy Awards are presented at Crypto.com Arena (formerly Staples Center) in Los Angeles.
Here’s a complete list of songwriters who have received two Grammy nominations for song of the year in the same year, working backwards:
In early October, Lil Yachty uploaded the 83-second track “Poland” to SoundCloud along with a grumpy message: “STOP LEAKING MY SHIT.” “Poland” consists of two keening hooks and some slack rhymes; a veteran publishing executive calls it “an idea, almost a tweet,” more than a song.
Either way, it’s a hit — it reached No. 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 — and it’s part of a larger trend: The average length of popular songs has been shrinking steadily for years. A 2018 study by San Francisco-based engineer Michael Tauberg concluded that songs on the Billboard Hot 100 shed around 40 seconds since 2000, falling from 4:10-ish to roughly 3:30. The average length of the top 50 tracks on Billboard‘s year-end Hot 100 in 2021 was even less, a mere 3:07. (Though this is a simple average, whereas Tauberg’s calculation was weighted by weeks spent on the chart.)
“Everyone’s aware of it — it’s a reaction to the culture of soundbites that we moved towards,” says Vincent “Tuff” Morgan, vp of A&R at the indie publisher peermusic. “I have producers in the studio this week just going through and making songs shorter.”
In this climate, writers are increasingly willing to ditch a third chorus and a pre-chorus — the musical alley-oop that sets up the hook’s slam dunk — according to the analytics company Hit Songs Deconstructed. And the portion of sub-three-minute top 10 hits ballooned from just 4% in 2016 to 38% so far in 2022. “Over the last two years, as I get demos back from artists, they’re consistently down to two minutes and 30 seconds or even two minutes,” says Caterina Nasr, senior manager of A&R at Elektra Entertainment. “Artists feel like they can express themselves quicker.”
Shorter songs aren’t exactly a new trend. Back in the early 1960s, little miracles of concision like The Chiffons “He’s So Fine” (1:52) topped the Hot 100 and The Beatles rose to international fame by releasing a series of snub-nosed pop missiles. More recently, Piko-Taro’s “PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen)” made history as the shortest Hot 100 entry ever (45 seconds) in 2016. The following year, XXXTentacion‘s 17, which cycles through 11 songs in just 21 minutes, became a streaming sensation. In 2018, Travis Scott effectively mashed three 90-second songs into the massively successful “Sicko Mode.”
If the focus on brevity in the early 1960s was driven by the pace of AM radio, the streaming economy imposes its own pressures on song length. One theory holds that a concise track is more likely to spur multiple listens. “There’s charm to a short song because the person hits repeat — play it again, play it again,” according to Mitch Allan, a longtime writer-producer (Demi Lovato, Kelly Clarkson).
The other side of the same coin: “People are acutely aware of skip rates and how that relates to success on streaming services,” says Talya Elitzer, a former Capitol Records A&R who co-founded the indie label Godmode. Tracks with lower skip rates are prioritized by the platforms, and Elitzer believes that “a short song is less likely to be skipped.”
Most importantly, song snippets resonate with a generation of listeners used to short-form video apps. “To me this really started with the Vine era and Instagram,” says writer-producer David Harris (H.E.R., Snoh Aalegra). Brief clips have achieved a new level of commercial resonance in the music industry thanks to TikTok, where users repeatedly seize on fragments of unfinished singles and incorporate them into videos, making a mockery of the idea that a popular track must include a verse and a hook.
“Generally a song that pops off on the platform is based around a little moment,” says Elie Rizk, a writer, producer and multi-instrumentalist (Mazie, Remi Wolf). “Subconsciously you think about that: ‘Let’s pack a track with moments and try to hit the jackpot.’ I don’t feel the need to repeat a section three times — they’ve already heard that part; it doesn’t matter.”
What’s the difference between an explosive moment and a song? Since 2020, if not before, a heap of young acts have gone viral with the former and then scrambled to transform them into the latter — to build a full track around the snippet that captivated TikTok. Examples include Will Paquin’s flashy “Chandelier” (85 million), David Kushner’s woebegone “Miserable Man” (73 million), and Avenue Beat‘s goofy “F2020” (54 million).
As singles get shorter, though, the gap between a song and a hooky fragment begins to lose meaning. “To a lot of people, I think the snippet [they encounter on TikTok] is the song,” says Bart Schoudel, a longtime engineer and vocal producer (Pop Smoke, Selena Gomez).
Kuya Magik, a producer and DJ with more than 11 million TikTok followers, agrees. “If you go to a club and you watch people dance, they only dance to the 15 seconds of a song that’s famous on TikTok,” he says. “For the rest of it, they just sit there.”
For now, platforms like Spotify count 30 seconds of listening as a full play that triggers a royalty payout, so it makes sense to expand a musical idea to that length. But a generation native to TikTok may not require even 30 seconds to engage with the music. With that in mind, it’s easy to imagine that the length of singles will continue to shrink.
When a short verse goes viral on TikTok, “if that’s what the artist wrote and that’s what’s being used [on the platform], who’s to say that’s not the song?” asks Daniel Sander, chief commercial officer for the music-technology company Feature.FM. “The question is: How do you monetize that differently?”