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Over- Gilding The Lily
July 2010ZANI – And Song writing
Some while ago I wrote about a hissy-bitchy spat between Lily Allen and X Factor’s own Cheryl Cole. According to press reports, the rumpus kicked off when the fragrant Geordie lass made a catty remark about Lily’s appearance. Now, considering my own dress sense, it’s not for me to say whether the criticism was justified or not, but I can tell you that Lily’s response won her some tin-pot award for the best putdown of the year. Just so you know how I was feeling at the time, as a writer of modern-day fiction, I’m always on the lookout for a caustic one-liner to spice up a wise-guy character’s dialogue. And so, given the prospect of unearthing a cut-’em-dead diss amongst the same-old-same-old jive-talk, my heart started pumping as if Angelina Jolie had promised to jump my bones.
And yet, it felt as if the pouting sex-goddess had vaulted off the sofa and landed feet-first, squarely on my rib cage when I learned that this so-called prize-winning putdown amounted to little more than: ‘at least I write my own songs.’
Now, for all I know, Lily might have hissed her words like a cobra whose forty winks were rudely interrupted, or perhaps her pleasantly-podgy face bore an uppity smirk as she waved a V-sign and bitched about her rival’s convenient marriage to a famous footballer; but with or without my second-guessing, there’s no denying her supposed backbiting slur was … well, more Snow White than Wicked Witch; more Joan Baez than Joan Rivers.
And now that the festival season is in full swing, the overwhelming number of bands performing their self-penned songs might lead many to believe that the feisty Londoner had every right to crow about her achievement. But was Lily doing herself an injustice? Might she have been equally as successful if she had never written so much as a birthday card, let alone the lyrics to a song?
Okay … okay, even without a musical bone in my body, I can imagine that hearing your own song played on the radio for the first time must be a monster buzz – I know for a fact that if it was me and not Tom Waits who wrote the breathtaking Kentucky Avenue, I’d be forever strutting about the place like a dog with two, er … Richards. And of course there’s the financial benefit to take into consideration, and when the time comes to divi-up the royalties, a two-way split is guaranteed to bring a smile to any agent’s face.
But setting aside the singer/songwriter’s ego-trip and the new baby Bentley in Mr Twenty-per-cent’s 3-car garage, does the record-buying public really care a hoot who penned the latest dance-club favourite or the current chart-topper?
Of course there are those clever-clogs who thrive on having that kind of info at their fingertips but, as with the geeky birdwatcher who can tell you everything there is to know about a widgeon or a mallard or a teal, it doesn’t make your portion of Kung-Po duck and fried rice taste any better.
But getting back to the quandary: I for one couldn’t care less if my all-time favourite singers write their own material or not, and a flick through the two-inch-thick annals of pop music will show that I’m far from alone.
Take the world-wide fans of Elvis Presley for example: for more than fifty years they’ve flocked to buy his records regardless of him being more famous for his gyrating hips than his song writing.
Trawling through the list of his hit singles, I counted forty-four different songwriters … and that was before I got around to his albums. Blimey! I didn’t realise he’d released so many. And when I couldn’t be arsed to start going through them, I felt a tad guilty, but then it occurred to me that even if I’d come up with another thousand-and-forty-four songwriters, it wouldn’t change the way people think: throughout the world, he will always be known as The King … a word of warning to those who think it’s funny to insert the word ‘Burger’: the scriptures tell of a vile pox befalling heretics, their children and their children’s children.
And while we’re in evangelical mode, what about Britain’s King of Rock ’n’ Roll?… and before all you festival-lovers and clubbers start groaning, I’ll have you know that Sir Cliff Richard OBE has spent more weeks on the charts than Queen, Madonna, even The Beatles.
Okay, anoraks will tell you that he is credited with a couple of dozen self-penned ditties, but when set alongside the arm-long list of other writer’s songs he’s recorded, it’s like eating a family-size can of baked beans and then trying to pinpoint which spoonful caused you to break wind.
And yet, despite him having swapped his blue-suede beetle-crushers for a pair of goody-goody two-shoes, tickets for his concerts are so in demand that die-hard fans have been know to pray for rain in the hope of getting a cheap centre court seat and a turn from their tennis-loving idol. (I know this isn’t the time or the place, but whenever I think of Wimbledon, I always end up laughing about the much-loved Half Man Half Biscuit and their brilliantly-titled song An Outbreak of Vitas Gerulaitis.)
And talking of Sir Cliff’s die-hard fans, here’s something for you nice people to mull over: you might have got a trifle hot under the collar (sounds more dignified than ‘pissed off’, eh?) when a 2004 poll named Millennium Prayer as the worst-ever number one, but could you pick the song writers out of a line-up? … You couldn’t. Okay, let’s make it easier: who wrote Living Doll? … No? What about Devil Woman? … More head shaking, eh? One last chance: Miss You Nights … any ideas? … No, it wasn’t Cliff, sorry. He didn’t write any of 'em … you know what, I’m starting to think you don’t care … oh! You don’t. Well I suppose that’s it then.
Just in case anyone is still not convinced that the world-at-large is more interested in the singer than the songwriter, look no further than Rod Stewart … and I’ll put my hands up straightaway and say that I’ve worn out more than one stylus playing his early albums with The Faces. But soon after he quit the band, he began to lean more on the writing talent of others, with Van Morrison and Don Whiten penning two of his chart-toppers and Tom Waits (yes, him again) providing the third with Downtown Train … he also wrote the unforgettable Tom Traubert’s Blues and if I …sorry, getting carried away again.
There were glimpses of his creativity leading up to the millennium, but his six album output during the last decade has comprised solely of cover versions.
The release of It Had To Be You – a collection of classic American smoochies – saw him become the darling of the crudité-and-Cava set, and by the time the fourth volume of The Great American Songbook hit the shops, a chichi dinner party without the sound of old Rod crooning in the background was as unthinkable as a salad of buffalo mozzarella and organic sun-blushed tomatoes without a dribble of cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil.
And yet, even as I scribble away, I can sense a certain smugness about those who would gladly crawl over broken glass to drink from Bruce Springsteen’s toilet. There they are, sitting on their high-horses, safe in the knowledge that their hero’s vast back-catalogue of songs has been published in book form – a glossy coffee-table tome which, by all accounts, weighs almost as much as Nils Lofgren.
Well, before they get too comfy in the saddle, let me point out that his first and only recording of other tunesmiths’ material – We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions – outsold Devils And Dust by 50,000, and rising.
And here’s another snippet … and I write this wearing a smug grin taken from a Springsteen fan who had no further use for it: the writers of eleven of the thirteen songs are listed as unknown. Put another way, our shanty-singing forefathers didn’t give a brass farthing about the name of the songwriter … plus ça change. (Note the hoity-toity, self-satisfied use of French.)
But even as I take the reins of my new-found high-horse, I can appreciate that there are those for whom Lily can do or say no wrong. And why not? That’s what being a true fan is all about. Sadly, blind devotion has its drawbacks, and if you go on believing that she was right to make a big deal about the importance of singers writing their own songs, then you had better be prepared for those who ask: ‘How come Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey went down such a storm at Glastonbury?’
You might also have to accept the notion that Diana Ross, Barbara Streisand, even Kylie Minogue can’t hold a candle to Madonna.
And finally … and I’m holding my breath as I type this little doozy: with only thirty songs to his name – including the one he was found guilty of plagiarising – Michael Jackson is a pauper when compared to Prince with his reputed vault of a thousand songs.
Try posting that on your Facebook page … on second thoughts, better not.
© Words – Dave Evans/ ZANI
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