Want to cause a ruckus at your next Gen X happy hour? Casually drop into the conversation – loud enough for everyone to hear – that Beyonce isn’t as great an artist as Billie Eilish because we all know that Beyonce doesn’t really write her own songs. Sub in Taylor, Olivia, or Dua Lipa for Billie if you so desire, and check to make sure Kanye isn’t lurking by the bar before you make the proclamation. Then get ready for some noise.
The argument over how much a “songwriter” Beyonce is has burned for a while now. She is credited on many of her numbers, as are a plethora of other writers. I’ll state categorically that I have no idea who is responsible for the actual songwriting. I don’t think anyone not privy to the inner workings of her recording sessions has a legitimate opinion on the subject.
Given the complex nature of recording a modern pop song, I’m not even sure those in the studio know how to assign credit properly.
When is a vocalist more than "just a singer"?
So I want to go back a little further and discuss whether it even matters.
In one crucial regard, it matters a lot. Publishing royalties go to the credited songwriter(s). Consequently, there is an enormous financial incentive to snag songwriting credit. If the record is a hit, there is a great deal of money at stake.
But does it matter in terms of an artist’s reputation? And if it does, should it?
I’m thinking of this in the wake of Roberta Flack’s death. The brilliant vocalist’s life story has been much in the news of late. It’s a fascinating tale of determination, skill, and happenstance, and the telling of it was important because, at her peak, Flack never really got the recognition she deserved. I think a lot of that had to do with the way in which pop singers’ roles shifted in the 1960s.
Before the advent of rock & roll, it was not common for singers to write their own songs. Ella Fitzgerald may have adapted “A-Tisket A-Tasket,” and Barbra Streisand may have come up with the original song “Evergreen.” But with a few other exceptions, the vast majority of their major recordings were composed by others. I’ve never heard anyone claim that Fitzgerald and Streisand were not among the greatest vocal artists of the 20th century because they weren't prolific songwriters.
It wasn’t an issue of gender. Frank Sinatra wrote a few songs, but the majority of his hits were penned by professional songwriters. To the best of my knowledge, Dean Martin never put pen to paper for purposes of writing a song.
These vocalists may not have written most of their best-known songs, but their mark was all over them. They used their instrument – their voice – to lift the song off the paper and literally make it sing. And it wasn’t simply the way they sang.
All four of the above-mentioned singers, and many others from the 1940s-1960s, had ideas about tempo and orchestration that went beyond the specifics of the vocals. They knew what worked for their particular voice, and they had a clear idea of how they wanted the finished product to sound.
Singers are a different breed from other musicians. Other members of an ensemble can hide behind their instruments. But a singer is her own instrument. Her tone, her pitch, her emotion, her heart – there is no filter. She is the most vulnerable part of a band, and she is almost always the most compelling as well. That’s why Karen Carpenter had to abandon the safety of her drum kit and step downstage in order for the Carpenters to become successful. That’s why the singer stands out front.
Of course, there are the occasional exceptions. None of us know the rotating cast of singers Alan Parsons employed to sing his songs. But usually, if you know just one member of a given band, it’s the singer.
Things began to change in the 1960s. Blame Bob Dylan. He was the most famous “poet” of the early rock era. By the end of the decade, you weren’t an authentic artist if you didn’t write your own songs. You were, in the famous words of John Lodge in 1973, “just a singer in a rock and roll band.”
Record companies scoured the landscape for the next Dylan. James Taylor and Randy Newman. John Prine and Jackson Browne. Bill Withers. Loudon Wainwright. In addition to a voice and a guitar, you needed a pen to be taken seriously.
It applied to women as well. Joni Mitchell was the most famous, but Joan Baez and Janis Ian were right there. So were Maria Muldaur, Melanie Safka, and Bonnie Raitt. The hoi polloi may have grooved to the 5th Dimension, but the arbiters of taste knew that Laura Nyro wrote their cool songs. Nyro snagged them too – just not quite as well as Marilyn McCoo.
The relegation of non-songwriting singers that occurred in the 1970s affected the legacies of Roberta Flack and Linda Ronstadt more than any other great vocalists of the era. Like Flack, Ronstadt didn’t write her own songs. She was “just a singer.” But what a singer she was.
Listen to singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff’s recording of her own “Someone to Lay Down Beside Me” next to Ronstadt’s version and tell me that Ronstadt’s vocal performance is not sheer artistry. Ronstadt’s vocals transformed songs by the Everly Brothers (“When Will I Be Loved”) and both Dee Dee Warwick and Betty Everett (“You’re No Good”) into brand new songs.
The same applies to Roberta Flack. If you have occasion to hear Peggy Seeger sing Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” you will get some sense of how a singer can create a song even if she didn’t write it. Flack's precise, deliberate delivery is both sublime and raw. It is high art. She did the same with many of her other songs, but like Ronstadt, could never quite escape the label of being “just a singer.” The fact that she was a classically trained pianist never even entered the conversation.
I don’t mean to devalue songwriting. Writing a great song is an act of creation that borders on the divine. But I don’t appreciate it when listeners similarly devalue the work of an outstanding vocalist. If Beyonce never wrote a note or lyric, her place in music history would be secure.
Just as Roberta Flack’s and Linda Ronstadt’s ought to be.