Why do women write so few popular songs?

There’s Stevie Nicks and Joni Mitchell. Not as a team though.

Did the Wilson sisters maybe write songs together for Heart? I think so.

Women wanna be serenaded to than serenade someone else.

Same with comedy. Men need humor to attract women. Women just need to look pretty.

Also, male sexual behavior is pack oriented.

Pack of men eye women and try to get them. Men may fight each other for the woman in the end, but they work together to target the women. It’s like pack animals. They may fight over the kill once it’s brought down, but they work together to bring it down.

In contrast, women don’t work as a team to get a guy. Each woman wants to sit pretty and be noticed and attract the men.

Male sexuality is cooperative-competitive. “We all want the same thing”, which is to hump the ho. So, they cooperate and gang up to get the woman. It’s like gang-rape. Men work together to rape the woman, like in the movie TWO WOMEN with Sophia Loren. Now, the men may push each other off to get the action once the woman is down, but their mentality is ‘work together to bring her down’. It’s like football. All the defensive linemen work together to sack the QB or stop the RB, but once they break through, each tries to be the trophy-taker.

Women don’t think gang-like when it comes to sex. For one thing, it’s much harder for women to overpower a man even when he’s outnumbered. Also, what are they gonna do once they quell him? All they can do is lay down and spread their legs and say ‘conquer me, big boy’, which defeats the whole purpose of conquering the guy.

It’s also like sperms and eggs. Egg sits pretty alone while millions of sperms have the same purpose in mind. So, even as sperms compete with another, they are on the same path and same wavelength.

In most songwriting teams, weren’t the women usually the lyricists and husbands wrote the score?

Women have always been bad at writing or creating the actual music.

BTW, Comden and Greene weren’t married and both of them usually wrote the book and the lyrics, and someone else wrote the actual music.

Their parents were a husband-wife writing team, something that was more common in the past.

A good friend of mine from college is the grandson of popular classicist[!] Gilbert Highet and his wife the popular novelist Helen MacInnes. I don’t know that they ever wrote anything together, but they used to write together according to him: across from each other at home, at an old partners’ desk. That sounded pretty pleasant to me.

There are exceptions that prove the rule.

Same goes for composers, lead guitarists, even pianists..

Girls just wanna have fun.

Tonya Donnelly, of Throwing Muses and The Breeders, is in both of the all-gal I can think of. Sleater-Kinney?

I don’t know. I am not interested in pop music. You could ask Mark Steyn.

Off topic, and you may already be on top of this, but the State Bar released its study on lowering the bar passage rate.

https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/documents/communications/CA-State-Bar-Bar-Exam09122017.pdf

It’s a gold mine of interesting data lost in a mountain of obfuscation. The whole purpose of the kerfuffle is to increase the numbers of African-American lawyers, a dubious crisis at best, but instead of encouraging more qualified applicants, it proposes three new, lower passing scores for the exam. All of the changes would be harmful for the profession, and actual lawyers hate the idea at a rate that is much higher than I would have figured.

At the end of pg. 36, it does the math for only the least harmful of the three options, essentially concluding that if they lowered the pass rate just a little bit, it would get a grand total of 13 new black lawyers out of a total of 258 new passers. They then decline to do the math for the other two options, which I presume would be even worse.

I would say in response to the larger question that Aimee Mann and Joni Mitchell are both really good songwriters. And that there are others. But obviously nowhere near the number of guys, which is your point.

Why? Short guys need to get laid too, would be my answer. Girls don’t, which is to say that they get it anyway if they want. Plus maybe some other stuff.

The Go Gos and the Bangles?

I want to say the reason is the same reason there aren’t more women doing everything of value: because men are better at it, with the added fact that women don’t work well with eachother creatively.

Playwrighting and screenwriting are better questions, because if there’s one arena of art in which women at least show up to the game, it’s literature. (Songwriting involves literature if you’re a lyricists, but someone on songwriting teams has to write the music.)

I just want to say, though it’s beside the point, Rogers and Hart beats the hell out of Rogers and Hammerstein.

But really, both are 99% Rogers. Pop lyricists get way too much credit, in my opinion. Heck, one recently got a Nobel Prize, for crying out Pete.

That’s not counting poets on the level of a W.S. Gilbert. But how rare are they?

queen bees fight to the death!

Well Carole King had a fruitful relationship with Toni Stern, a lyricist otherwise so inconsequential that she doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, but they did write 2 pretty good songs and one terrific one (It’s Too Late).

King could probably have benefited from more female partnerships – she’s a supremely talented composer but has trouble apparently finding lyrical inspiration. But as you’ve hinted women just aren’t into the team thing, apparently preferring to create in isolation.

McCartney always said he could never partner with anyone but John, because he could only take criticism from John. Maybe female artists tend to be hyper-sensitive to criticism.

There’s always Garfunkel and Oates . . . .

The McGarrigle sisters?

There’s Tegan and Sara. “Back in Your Head”

Tegan and Sara. I think they are twins though.

Chrissie Hynde was a really terrific songwriter at her peak, before her sidemen started dying off.

Neko Case knocked a trio of great early albums out of the park, ending with he masterpiece “Blacklisted” in 2004.

The great Stalinist Scottish folksinger Ewan MacColl’s daughter Kirstie MacColl wrote some charming hits before dying tragically young.

Can’t think of a single team, though. The Indigo Girls apparently write separately and arrange together. But that’s essentially true of late Lennon/McCartney as well, and close to the way Jagger/Richards have worked since Mick learned to play guitar back in the 60s.

Bangles Susanna Hoffs and Vicki Peterson co-wrote a number of the band’s songs, but in general, their strongest tracks were from other pens (Prince, Alex Chilton, Kimberley Rew, Jules Shear, Emmit Rhodes).

Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin collaborated on four of the Go-Go’s debut Beauty and the Beat. (Caffey wrote two others on her own; Wiedlin wrote one herself; I think each collaborated with a different co-writer on other tracks. I don’t have the LP in front of me to confirm this, so I may be off by a bit.)

The difference is that (at least until recently) there weren’t a lot of all-woman bands. In the ’60’s, there were plenty: yet they were “girl group” types, who generally had professional songwriters — mostly men — providing them with material. Producers like Phil Spector and his protege Jack Nitzsche were the “auteurs” of those groups’ records.

The late ’70’s-early ’80’s had a lot of fine female-fronted bands in which the women wrote: the Raincoats, the Slits, the Au Pairs, Delta 5 and Essential Logic are the first that come to mind. I can’t recall if any of those groups had female songwriting teams generating their material.

Here’s a good example of the McGarrigle sisters: https://goo.gl/qvTeYa

They remind me of Emily Dickinson.

Here’s one:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2016/10/27/how-writing-songs-together-changed-tegan-and-sara-sound/SfDbCCDkaRMBdrw7cq83XM/amp.html

Tegan and Sara have begun writing awful songs together after many years of writing them independently.

Maybe female artists tend to be hyper-sensitive to criticism.

Usually women are smarter. Like many successful comediennes getting started, they get guys who want to fuck them to write stuff for them. Cheryl Crow had a group of forlorn guys helping her. One committed suicide after she cut him out of the profits for “Leaving Las Vegas.”

Girls writing songs together doesn’t work so well.

The nasty petty fighting between macho Pink and the 4 Non Blondes writer/singer and devoted lesbian midget Linda Perry, who helped make Pink’s career, by writing songs with Pink she could never have written alone, is well known. Here’s Linda before she dropped out of singing, and went on to a very successful songwriting career. I think she’s still writing, but she an old dog who’s seen a lot of road by now…

Agreed in error. Should be against the following comment about the McGarrigles.

Besides what others have mentioned, Linda Perry has written a bunch of recent hits for female artists, albeit mostly credited just to herself.

There’s these women, who seem to have faded into immediate obscurity:

The Wachowski sisters cowrote 3 popular Matrix films.

Jackie DeShannon was a pretty good tunesmith and said Sonny Bono stole “Needles and Pins” from her which might be an explanation in and of itself. The bigger ‘star’ can take credit for a song and get away with it. I would note that Tony Hatch, the songwriter behind Petula Clark’s hits gave her co-credit on a few of their hits.

There have been plenty of successful female songwriting teams inside bands, including those already mentioned. In the Rodgers/Hart or Goffin/King sense (i.e., the Tin Pan Alley/Brill Building model), the only really successful female songwriting team was Jackie DeShannon and Sharon Sheeley, who wrote a number of hits in the early sixties before DeShannon’s energies were diverted to her solo career. (Before she met DeShannon, Sheeley was also the first female songwriter to pen a #1 hit in Billboard on her own…she sold “Poor Little Fool” to Ricky Nelson when she was a teenager after stalling her car in front of his house and mentioning that she was on her way to pitch a song to Elvis when he came out to help her.)

If, say, only 1 out of 10 songwriters is female, then, if you pair up songwriters at random, only 1 out of 100 pairs of songwriters will be female-female.

They’re like recessive genes. Maybe you don’t see them because they’re lethals?

Why do women write so few popular songs? And, especially, why do they so seldom team up?

I don’t know that it’s accurate that women write few popular songs, it’s just that men write more of them. Taylor Swift has a a lot of solo songwriting credits, and Sia has written a lot of hits both for herself and other artists. Early Mariah Carey and Madonna were the primary songwriters on a lot of their hits (unlike a lot of stars, both men and women, who get songwriting credit for changing some tiny thing). There’s a respectable number of popular songs in just that small group. Co-writing among women does seem to be rare. All I can think of is Linda Perry’s cowriting credits with Pink, Gwen Stefani, and Christina Aguilera.

I just checked The Runaways. Doesn’t look any of them wrote hits except for Joan Jett.

Looks like Caffey and Weidlen of the Go-Go’s co-wrote some songs.

More great male songwriting teams:
Difford and Tilbrook (Squeeze)
Fagan and Becker (Steely Dan)
Petty and Campbell (Petty and The Heartbreakers)
Taupin and Elton John

Just to name a few famous ones.

Oh, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Duh.

Do women collaborate together well in any sphere for longer than a few hours? Teamwork is a Male evolutionary development. Guys could have it out violently over any strategy or tactic during the day, but be drinking beers and slapping each other’s backs that night.

Do The Judds count?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Judds

I imagine they collaborated creatively, though the Wikipedia profile indicates that Wynonna was always the artistic talent while her mother Naomi was more concerned with the business side of things.

CocoRosie (sisters). The Shaggs (sisters).

Simon and Garfunkel.

Maybe there are a few female songwriting pairs but none that you know of because none are any good. Just like there are many male pairs that you never hear about because they just don’t cut the mustard.

I nominate The Indigo Girls.

And um, snorlax, Lindsey Buckingham is a guy. Funny, tho, a girl named Stevie and a guy named Lindsey.

I recall seeing an analysis many years ago, I think in The Economist of all places, showing that songwriting volume seemed to be a young man’s game, and dropped off with age, so maybe some kind of correlation with testosterone levels or some other sex-related factors

Songs first started with masculine themes like mass killings, for example in the Bible the song of Samson goes:

With the jawbone of a donkey,
Heaps upon heaps,
With the jawbone of a donkey
I have killed a thousand men.

After this shocker new legislation decreed that teeth in jawbones must be filed down.

Then the guy/girl songwriting team of Moses and Miriam then came up with a more feminine touch with their popular hit that had the female chorus chanting the foot-stomper:

Sing to the LORD, for He is highly exalted;
The horse and his rider He has hurled into the sea.

The Indigo Girls?

Perry had the idea she could make it alone, and not have to share publishing rights with a brat like Pink.

The Beatles’ Paul and John stuck together and shared credit even when they annoyed the hell out of each other, sometimes one not having anything to do with the other’s composition, for a loooong time.

Guys are just genetically programmed to “take one for the team” out of honor. Women tend to do it out of fear or abuse. Not on their own volition.

Another question would be how many successful comedy writing teams there are in sitcoms. I’d imagine not many, percentage-wise population to men.

Women tend to place blame quicker, and say “fuck you” sooner.

They may make up sooner, and more often than men do, but their “we have to talk.. NOW” gene precludes consistent successful team creative-writing under intense pressure.

Not always. Just enough to matter.

Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron have made a successful team on Broadway.

Other than that, I’m drawing a blank.

And, especially, why do they so seldom team up?

This strikes me as two women sharing a kitchen. Very unwise. 😉

Indigo Girls. Amy Ray and Emily Saliers.

I also must add one male songwriting pair: Garcia-Hunter. After all, they are source of my screen name.

These days, brother-brother writing teams seem more common than husband-wife ones.

I don’t doubt this has something to do with the overall decline in the moral qualities of the women. How many girls these days want to struggle along with an aspiring writer or artist who has yet to make it big, when they can just go dig gold somewhere else?

I know I would write much more and much better things if I had a small inheritance and tough, gritty-but-pretty amanuensis that I could have a torrid affair with. I don’t know where to meet such women anymore.

Teagan and Sarah Canadian Indie-pop band formed in the late 90s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegan_and_Sara

There is Garfunkel and Oates, a parody group with some listenable ditties.

The nonsongwriter Deal is a junkie, iirc. It caused problems I think.

Sleater-Kinney, while you have aged out of, was really good. Lots of lesbians at shows (55%) but a real good rock band. Portlandia has a gal from Sleater-Kinney, and that is funny.

Laura Davis and Donna Destri (sister of keyboard player Jimmy) wrote a few songs for Blondie in their hit era.

LOL.

Screenwriters: How about the Wachowski sisters?

Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry were perhaps the most successful songwriting team of the Brill Building era – nine Top Ten hits from 1963 to 1967! They were successful producers and performers as well. But the chemistry seemed to be of the female-male kind, not female-female.

Carole King did pretty good after splitting from Gerry Goffin.

I second the person upthread about Aimee Mann’s songwriting skills, although unfortunately said talents weren’t on display on her latest album “Mental Illness” (a boring whine fest). But the stuff she was doing from about 2000 through 2010 was excellent.

Women don’t work well together.

You could ask a similar question about screenwriting

I can’t believe you forgot about the Wachowski sisters!

Maddie & Tae. Although I don’t think they’ll replicate the success of their one big hit, since it was kind of a gimmick.

Whoops. Showing my age (<30) there. Just remembered that there were two women in Fleetwood Mac.

The other one’s Christine McVie, for the benefit of any other Millennials ITT.

How about the Carter family? They pretty much invented the entire country music genre. Did Sara and Maybelle do a lot of composing?

Lennon and McCartney were an unusual songwriting team in that they didn’t really write most of their songs together (the dual credits was part of their business arrangement). Pretty much, whichever one sang lead was the one that wrote that particular song. What they did do, however, was keep each other’s worse tendencies in check. That’s why their solo material was nowhere near as good. McCartney drifted off towards lightweight pop fluff, while Lennon became abrasive and unlistenable.

Speaking of Old Testament songs, the Grateful Dead sing Samson and Delilah”:

“You read about Samson, all from his works,
He was the strongest man that ever had lived on earth.
One day when Samson was walking along,
Looked down on the ground, he saw an old jawbone.

He stretched out his arm, God knows, chains broke like thread,
When he got to moving, ten thousand was dead.

If I had my way, if I had my way, if I had my way,
I would tear this old building down.”

This was written by an old blues preacher, not anyone associated with The Dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUIXERR_vp8

It might be more useful to figure out why a buddy system works so well for men in writing great songs and work back from there and figure out why women don’t use it.

There was a sappy B movie chick flick a few years ago with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore about a man and woman songwriting team.

Chrissie is still a formidable songwriter. When two of her three bandmates died, she doubled down as effectively a solo act while having two kids. A woman fronting a rock and roll band well is tough enough. Chrissie did it with an infant on the tour bus and another in her belly.

She’s a quarrelsome bitch under any circumstances, but that’s an achievement.

King could probably have benefited from more female partnerships – she’s a supremely talented composer but has trouble apparently finding lyrical inspiration. But as you’ve hinted women just aren’t into the team thing, apparently preferring to create in isolation.

King composed a ton of familiar tunes in the early 60s in partnership with her husband.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_King

Then feminism got her, but it did give her a decent singing career.

Tonya Donelly and her stepsister Kristin Hersh shared lead vocal and songwriting duties in Throwing Muses. Hersh was the more dominant one, so Donnelly eventually left and teamed up with Kim Deal, the Pixies bass player who was likewise chafing under the leadership of front man Black Francis. As the Breeders, they released one independent label record together, and then went their separate ways. Donnelly was replaced by Kim’s twin sister Kelly, who was previously working as a computer programmer and had never actually been in a band before. Tanya Donnelly fronted her own band, Belly, which scored one big hit in the early 90’s, “Feed the Tree.”

There’s a series of movies out this year breaking down each song (one per album).

Ha, just saw your comment after I tried to embed Samson and Delilah. Yeah, I really like the Indigo Girls’ music. The fact that they were lesbians wasn’t known to me until their 2nd album. It wasn’t the lesbianism that turned me off to that duo, just their audience, most of who made this into the most important thing about them. The songs that I knew would not clue me in about it, and some could have been regular love songs.

This one, along with their first (only?) hit Closer to Fine really have the same theme, that sometimes you’ve got to quit brooding on the world, and get out and build something, to lift your spirits. It reminds me to get the hell off the internet for a while … maybe a half day or so.

“Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail,
learn how to use my hands,
not just my head I think myself into jail.
Now I know a refuge never grows
from a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose,
gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.”

Yep, and she was the better woman singer, in case you heard otherwise.

I don’t know where to meet such women anymore.

Try rolling your own. Not like there’s a lot of competition.

Speaking of which, anyone know what happened at America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s Country?

It’s decent fare for cord cutters, though worse without Kimball (the creator).

Carole King and her husband Gerry Goffin are the big exception to the standard female lyricist male melodicist. While I’d agree that female songwriters lag significantly behind male songwriters, let’s give credit where credit’s due. Carole King churned out lots of 60’s pop gems that aren’t widely associated with her name:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_with_lyrics_by_Gerry_Goffin#Hits.2C_charted_songs_and_notable_album_tracks_by_Goffin_and_King

Likewise, both Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush were great in their prime, though both (and Mitchell especially) had a big dip in quality after their “golden era.”

Her and Merle Kilgore.

Stevie and Christine get along really well but I don’t think they are a songwriting pair.

See the weird thing is both Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers were truly great separately but somehow not quite as stellar together. Hammerstein’s earlier work with Jerome Kern (Showboat, Music in the Air, Very Warm for May etc) and others like Sigmund Romberg was outstanding. Somehow Rodgers brought out his overly sentimental side. It was still very good, but not quite as great as his earlier stuff.

The Roches collaborated occasionally but mostly wrote their own songs.

“The Enemy Within”, the episode where Kirk is divided into the Good Kirk and Bad Kirk.
Pretty much describes Lennon and McCartney.

Not to be confused with “The Enemy Below”, a submarine warfare movie that became the basis for a Star Trek TOS episode.

The 1966 Star Trek episode “Balance of Terror” is closely based on this film, with the USS Enterprise cast as the destroyer and the Romulan vessel, using a cloaking device, as the U-boat.[5] It is reported that Gene Roddenberry later paid a fee to the estate of Gary Cooper, who owned the rights to the film.

Women songwriters are probably less common now than in the past because the music industry is a lot sleazier than it used to be. Same reason there are fewer husband-wife teams. That’s kind of wholesome and today’s music industry is the opposite.

Also women are less into making music in general. Isn’t it more something otherwise unattractive or plain men do to get girls? Women who are creative are more into art or writing books (most run of the mill fiction today is written by women).

Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz, two 60’s pre-punk femme songwriters. They wrote some of the most iconic of garage and tough pre-psychedelic songs of the era.

Artist Biography by Bruce Eder
Nancie Mantz was a songwriter whose 1960s work in collaboration with Annette Tucker helped jump-start the psychedelic punk boom and, 15 years later, became one of many flash points for the paisley underground. Mantz was principally a lyricist, trained on piano, guitar, and violin but proficient on none of them. Her focus was words, and she was good enough as a song-poet to get signed to Four Star Publishers in the early ’60s — her collaborators there included the company’s head, Dave Burgess, and 1960s Crickets member Glen D. Hardin, as well as a young composer with bigger aspirations named Harry Nilsson. She collaborated with Hardin and Nilsson, among others, and had some successes with Keith Colley (“Human Kindness,” “Ladder of Success”) and with Burgess (“He’s a Big Deal”), but it was when she was teamed with Tucker that some very interesting lightning seemed to strike.

Tucker had gotten a band called the Electric Prunes signed to a company owned by engineer turned producer Dave Hassinger, who had gotten them a contract with Reprise Records and now needed some songs that could be potential hits. In the interim, Tucker had presented her with the proposed title “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night),” which the pair knocked off as a finished composition in less than an hour. Presented to Hassinger and the Prunes in a demo sung by Jerry Fuller, it was recorded by the Prunes in their style and hit number 11 nationally, and suddenly Tucker and Mantz were turning in seven songs (plus two more written by Tucker and Jill Jones) to Hassinger and the Prunes for their debut album. I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night) was a landmark psychedelic punk album, and a unique creation from a major label, as well as the best showcase that any rock-era songwriter this side of Jimmy Webb ever had for his or her work. Among Mantz’s most personal contributions to the album — though one the band didn’t fully appreciate — was the gentle ballad “Onie,” which Mantz had written for her own daughter, Tracy, but her most striking contribution may well have been the raunchy psychedelic punk showcase “Are You Lovin’ Me More (But Enjoying It Less).” Some of Mantz’s more conceptual songs, such as “The Toonerville Trolley,” were less successful, but on the whole the album was a great creative showcase.

It was also to be the last, as only three of Tucker and Mantz’s songs would appear on the next Prunes album, Underground, and none of them would be recorded as well as the stuff off the first album. The Tucker/Mantz team saw subsequent success as another song, “I Ain’t No Miracle Worker,” was recorded by the Chocolate Watchband and also later topped the charts in Italy. Mantz continued writing songs through the end of the 1960s, and saw hits with the Newbeats and the American Breed. She gave up composing in 1970 following the murder of her mother, and in the ensuing years left the music business.

She says she’s open to that idea but in reality, no. She wants men, preferably charismatic, blokey, English and vegetarian. Young helps too.

To not be the only mare in the stable would be chafing for her.

Amateur choral groups and church choirs-even in conservative fundie and old line Catholic churches-have mostly women and/or gays. Straight men are rare in that environment.

Church organists lean that way too.

OK, last one for the night, I promise. About Joni Mitchell, she wrote some great melodies and lots of great lyrics, but her thing was jamming the lyrics into melodies when they really didn’t fit. I figure she wrote the melodies first.

It seems like it would be harder to write songs that way (a good discussion for another time), but when you write the lyrics afterward, you know how they have to fit. I think Joni just had enough to say that would not fit in some parts of the tune, so she’d just sing it anyway. I wish I could think of examples right now – maybe later.

Even though she went to California fairly young, you can hear Joni Mitchell’s Canadian accent on lots of the songs.

Try rolling your own. Not like there’s a lot of competition.

Perhaps it’s just late and I’ve had a long week, but I have no idea what you mean by this.

“Why do women write so few popular songs?”

In part because men are the more romantic of the two sexes (men are the pursuers, women the pursued), and the dominant theme of popular music is the pursuit of romance.

That’s if you believe Lennon, who was not a reliable witness. No one around the Beatles is or was, really, with maybe an exception of George Harrison. Harrison has his own problems as a source, namely; he wasn’t around for songwriting, he wouldn’t speak out of turn on who wrote what (once mentioning that Lennon wrote a line or two of ‘Something’ but he wrote a few in other songs and didn’t find it right to reveal line for line, song for song, what belongs to whom,) and his sour disposition towards the whole Beatles machine colored his perception.

As “The Historian and the Beatles” blog explains (link below):

Lennon cannot be trusted because he:

1)tended to exaggerate
2)was overly-emotional
3)was inconsistent as a witness
4)was psychologically unstable as a person
5)spent a majority of the time mired in drug abuse
6)displayed a clear pattern of self-promotion where he knowingly promoted an inaccurate version of events.

https://beatlebioreview.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/analyzing-individual-source-credibility-example-two-john-lennon/#more-1992

Did Prussian Blue write their own songs?

Chrissie is still a formidable songwriter. When two of her three bandmates died, she doubled down as effectively a solo act while having two kids. A woman fronting a rock and roll band well is tough enough. Chrissie did it with an infant on the tour bus and another in her belly.

She’s a quarrelsome bitch under any circumstances, but that’s an achievement.

She’s really atypical for a chick, though. She got gang-raped by a bunch of bikers in Cleveland in 1972 and pretty much shrugged it off and got on with her life. She later admitted it was her own fault for hanging out with them, which drive the feminists nuts.

One tough broad, to be sure. I always liked her. When she was younger she had that so-ugly-she’s-almost-kinda-cute look.

See. Hefner did make a contribution to our culture.

(And you read the articles!)

Yeah. As someone who has sung in an amateur oratorio society, I have to admit that, unfortunately, it’s pretty gay. Professional singers at least have to struggle and master a craft to succeed, so it’s less gay. Amateur choral singers who are straight and masculine tend to be single loner types in my experience.

Right. The Sweet Adelines is a big thing.

https://sweetadelines.com/

I think Kimball wanted more money.

Same with Joan Jett. She wants to be the only babe in the group.

Supplying two names of female songwriters doesn’t answer the question.

You’ll get some older married men in church choirs, choral societies and the like (along with the gays).

I met my wife in a young professionals choir that rehearses in bars then goes out after. Decent number of young straight men there looking for what young straight men are, some also very talented performers. Lots of young straight women, but lots of confused young straight women as well.

You wanted a tough, gritty but pretty gal.

Step your own game up, then help your favorite that turns up learn to be tough, gritty, and pretty.

That’s what I did. Chicks dig being led.

Should have been entitled: Women don’t score together

Muse is a good example of British guys being more group-oriented. Their front man Matt Bellamy is probably the most talented combo of lead singer and lead guitarist in rock now, and he’s in Muse rather than Matt Bellamy and the X.

Not sure if Etta James did any songwriting, but at 5 feet tall and up to 400lbs, she was as crazy as any 3 other singers you could name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etta_James

Lots of women want to be singers. Not as many want to be singer-songwriters or Jimmy Page-style studio production nerds.

You don’t get cheers and applause for scribbling lines across a piece of paper or working the mixing board in a studio, so . . . .

When she was younger she had that so-ugly-she’s-almost-kinda-cute look.

The female Kieth Richards.

Deep down, women don’t actually really like each other very much, despite the so-called ‘sisterhood’ and the bloc ‘feminist’ Democrat vote.

To male rationality, women are forever contrarians. Suffice to say, the implication seems to be that woman’s highest loyalty is to her children and family, in that order.
It is always instructive to see how quickly the acquisition of a new man by a female splits up the ‘highest’ giggliest little girly group.

It is always instructive to see how quickly the acquisition of a new man by a female splits up the ‘highest’ giggliest little girly group.

In my younger days, I was quite taken aback by how brazenly women would go about swiping someone else’s boyfriend, even if he was dating a “friend.”

They could rationalize the hell out of this — if someone called them on it at all — and were perfectly happy to ditch a friendship, or piss off the entire giggly group, if that meant getting the guy they were after.

Evolutionary pressure in action.

The thing about a lot of Joni songs is that only she could really sing them. Something like “The Arrangement” or “Rainy Night House”. She wrote for herself, and it was a bonus when other people picked up her songs.

The answer to Steve’s question seems to be “very few and far between”, with the corollary that “men and women are different”.

Dr X – I remember NME describing Chrissie Hynde as “a snotty, arrogant turn-on”.

Ehe

http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1980.jlpb.beatles.html
http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/dbjypb.int2.html
http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/dbjypb.int3.html

Joni is underrated as an acoustic guitar player. Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck were listening.

Go-G0’s and Bangles hit the charts few times in the 80s, but ‘Our lips are sealed’ was half-written by a guy and Bangles hits were mostly by men.

More recently, Sia’s Chandelier is demento but great song. Sia has talent.

Cranberries had the superb Dolores but only the woman.

Kate Bush was a major British figure but what an insufferable flake.

Maybe the reason is that fewer women are into making-making in general.

So, for every 20 guys who try to be song-writers, there is maybe 1 for the girls.
Since there are more men trying to write music, there is greater chance they will bump into one another. On contrast, it is less likely for a woman to bump into a woman in songwriting.

And maybe there is an athletic element to music. Like team sports. So, guys are more willing to play and less sensitive about suggesting a ‘wrong’ note. So, maybe this leads to more creative spark. Maybe women are less willing to be critical or combative in making music with each other. Also, maybe male emotions are more extrovert whereas female emotions are more introvert, favoring solo.

Cady Groves wrote some killer songs and her LIFE OF A PIRATE is a simple masterpiece.

I think it was Roy Beaumeister (or it may have been Steven Pinker) who noted that in Victorian times most middle-class (and a lot of working class) families had a piano in the house, which daughters were encouraged to play* – but those millions of musically educated women didn’t produce many great composers or songwriters.

* in the UK this tradition went on into the late 20thC – my grandparents had a piano in “the parlour” although they had no bathroom and the WC was out in “the back yard”. My mother and her sisters learned to play. A piano was still a common fixture of the UK home in the 1960s.

Meh, what are women-in-music? .5%? They can only do so much damage. For real wreckage, look to the introduction of women in large numbers to education, to Congress, in Law, the military and the at-large workforce. Catty, vengeful, scheming, they get little work done, foul the atmosphere, slow down real work. Mostly they just want to come in late, go home early, the fellas will finish up. But they demand the EZ-work positions of course and the tyranny they spread like peanut butter over the entire society via women is there for all to feel. And we fellas are supposed to shut up and take up slack.

You think the disaster in all areas the past forty years was a coincidence? As for horrible, overplayed, monotonous tunes of chicks the last forty years? Who cares? It’s the overall that’s worthy of consideration. Songwriters? Find me some collaborative female efforts in policy, what pair of broads were ever legislation-writers, that wrote engineering papers, did great works of science. Oh, the men have to hang a woman’s signature to it for political effect, but women have little to do with any of that.

Women pretend to do stuff, we men pretend to agree–or else. Cam Newton comes to mind. He gave appropriate snicker to the notion that this chick sportswriter knows shit about football and they did what they could to him. Not much, however, he’s Black.

Kate Bush has turned into a recluse, possibly because she is hideously obese

The satirical Gaza Girls reportedly write together. Their stuff is different than Garfunkel and Oates, you will find.

https://vimeo.com/106171741

Cady Groves wrote some killer songs and her LIFE OF A PIRATE is a simple masterpiece.

You need to get out more, son. Groves writes and sings silly bedroom girly shit, and it’s not even original. What the hell is wrong with you?

Example of just one old template she lifts from, and this girl did it better, even tho it still sucks. These girls are interchangeable:

You found it! The great female songwriting team! I bought the Electric Prunes’ 1967 single “Get Me To The World On Time” (written by Annette Tucker and Jill Jones) and I liked the flip side even better; the Tucker/Mantz “Are You Loving Me More (But Enjoying It Less)?”. It was suggested by an old Camel cigarette slogan: “If you’re smoking more now but enjoying it less…change to Camels”.

Another favorite flip side: “Made My Bed (Gonna Lie In It)” by the Easybeats (B-side of “Friday On My Mind”).

Evolutionary pressure in action.

Nah, it’s female stupidity and vanity in action. If you as a woman, “win” a guy previously loyal to another woman on the slightest of pretenses, how long do suppose he’ll stick around with you? Let’s say he walks away after making you pregnant. Some of those old friendships that you just ditched might have been helpful.

As evolutionary strategy, it’s counter productive. You need a guy who is slow to lose or change loyalty if you expect help when the cranky, annoying child comes along and demands food and attention for more than decade.

That’s why the players section of the alt-right is, in this theory, is very unhelpful. It’s pretty clear that they’ve never either raised a child or gave much though to process. From a woman’s point of view, acquiring sperm is relatively easy. It’s keeping the child alive and gathering the resources/protection for their protection that’s the tricky bit.

Deep down, women don’t actually really like each other very much, despite the so-called ‘sisterhood’ and the bloc ‘feminist’ Democrat vote.

That’s women on the left. They don’t like anything much. They smile because they’re supposed to, not because they feel it.

I like to think I’ve got some female friendships worth the having.

To male rationality, women are forever contrarians.

I’m not so sure about that. 😉

It is always instructive to see how quickly the acquisition of a new man by a female splits up the ‘highest’ giggliest little girly group.

Hanging around with a different class of females is helpful.

The first two Pretenders records are amazingly good. And her songwriting is interestingly womanly, I find: her lyrical concerns are often very sex-specific, but in a good way.

Kirsty MacColl: the “Fairytale of New York” chick, run over by a speedboat. Horrible, and not as uncommon as it sounds. A Spanish friend’s nephew was killed by a jet ski.

That’s what I thought you meant. I was hoping against hope that you actually had something useful to say but alas, nothing but the same, ridiculous old PUA crap.

The point is that when women have little to add to a partnership, no amount of leading and game is going to change that. You certainly can’t just pick some girl out of a crowd and condition her into a thoroughbred capable of handling the stresses that come from functioning at the highest levels of discipline. If you try it, she’ll just get fed up and leave. She will not tolerate the criticism, and if you lower yourself to comply with her abilities, you won’t produce the work anyway. Most women are a losing proposition.

And before you think that you’ve got it all figured out, you might want to wait 30 or 40 years and see how your life looks in retrospect.

Call no man happy until he is dead.

The one where she sings,”Help me I think I’m fallin’ /in love too fast/ ya got me thinking’ bout my future/ and worryin’ about my past”,that an example?
I always thought she just liked to sing in that kind of weird way. It has a feminine appeal to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracuda_(song)

Ann Wilson revealed in interviews that the song was about Heart’s anger towards Mushroom Records’ attempted publicity stunt involving her and her sister Nancy Wilson in a made-up incestuous affair. The song particularly focuses on Ann’s rage towards a man who came up to her after a concert asking how her “lover” was. She initially thought he was talking about her boyfriend, band manager Michael Fisher. After he revealed he was talking about her sister Nancy, Ann became angry and went back to her hotel room to write the original lyrics of the song.[1] Producer Mike Flicker added that Mushroom was so obtuse in the contract negotiations that Heart decided to discard the album they were working on, Magazine – which the label still released in an unfinished form – and instead sign with the newly formed Portrait Records to make another record, Little Queen. As Flicker put it, “‘Barracuda’ was created conceptually out of a lot of this record business bullshit. Barracuda could be anyone from the local promotion man to the president of a record company. That is the barracuda. It was born out of that whole experience.”[2]

So many commentators try to either ignore the fact that the post deals with female/female writing partnerships by bringing up single female songwriters, like Joni Mitchell. It doesn’t disprove the premise. Also, the mere handful of female/female collaborators proves the rule. The truth is, female musical composers are a rarity. I would ask anyone to name a MAJOR female composer, but I know someone would name a insignificantly minor female composer. And this is not to say that women can not be musical virtuosos. In fact, I believe if you just examined the numbers of female vs. male pianists, you would find that more girls actually study piano when they are younger. It’s like dance. It’s one of the preferred female “activities”. It was even more noticeable in the 19th century, before TV and female “liberation”.

I believe that there are few real female composers for the same reason that there are few real female comedians. And the comedians that are female are often lesbian. Testosterone is necessary for creation. Females don’t create. They incubate.

The best description of Chrissie Hynde I ever read went something like this. She’s not a female rock musician, rather she’s a rock musician who happens to be female.

There aren’t a lot of people about whom one can say that.

America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s Country sued Kimball (the creator):

https://whywearesuingchristopherkimball.com

Wendy & Lisa, of Prince and the Revolution fame, have been a team for a long time. Not very well known, but they’ve done a few songs that I’ve liked and have had some success doing themes for TV shows.

When I said amateur choral singing was pretty gay, I meant gay in the broader sense of not typifying a straight pursuit, not literally full of gays. Those older straight men tend to seem rather emasculated or “post-sexual” in many cases, don’t they?

Interesting group you went to.

There were a few female or female-led bands in the eighties and nineties that seemed to be going for a Lennon/McCartney co-leader dynamic – Throwing Muses, Veruca Salt, Sleater-Kinney – but if you look up their albums on Wikipedia, in the former two the frontwomen kept their songwriting credits separate and in the latter the songs were credited to the entire band (a common-ish practice these days that I think began with U2 and REM).

Women are well-represented in the category of interpretive artists, under-represented in the category of creative artists.

Taylor Swift and Colbie Caillet have written songs together. (Ken Caillet, Colbie’s father, co-produced the epic Fleetwood Mac album, Rumors.) Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson have written songs as a team.

Both partnerships are off-and-on, however, and I’m not certain whether either wrote an entire album of songs, together.

Carole Bayer Sager has written songs with Carole King, Melissa Manchester, Debbie Gibson, Sheena Easton, Diane Warren, Toni Wine, Joyce Irby, Corrinne May, Marion Elise Ravn, and Marit Elisabeth Larsen. The last two are a Norwegian singing-songwriting team going by M2M.

This list is just from her top 100 songs:
http://carolebayersager.com/discography/top-100-songs/

(And that doesn’t include Alice Cooper and Peter Allen, also on her list!)

The Broadway-Hollywood-Tin Pan Alley matrix produced three great lady lyricists: Dorothy Fields, Betty Comden, and Carolyn Leigh. All were Jewish New Yorkers. All three worked with Cy Coleman at one time or another. (His own triple crown, or hat trick. His male lyricists never amounted to much.)

By the way, Comden and Adolph Green weren’t a songwriting team, they were a lyrics-writing team. They were married to other people and lived three thousand miles apart, but managed to collaborate on setting words for composers like Coleman, Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne, and Morton Gould.

They also wrote screenplays together, like Singing in the Rain and Auntie Mame.

The UK band Lush, with their songwriting team of Emma Anderson and Miki Berenyi, had a string of solid albums around 1988 – 1994.

The first two Pretenders records are amazingly good.

Half right. The first record is simply terrific; the second one, with the exception of “Talk of the Town”, is unlistenable. Maybe you were thinking of the third one, “Learning to Flinch”?

Neko Case knocked a trio of great early albums out of the park, ending with he masterpiece “Blacklisted” in 2004.

Yeah, but when she writes, she either writes alone, or with men, with Case/Lang/Veirs being the only exception I’m aware of.

By the way, why don’t you view The Tigers Have Spoken and Fox Confessor Brings the Flood as equal to her earlier work?

Also note that top-flight female composers are quite rare, which is interesting because women are not bad at music, often better than men at the performance part.

Composing just takes a combination of traits on which bell curves men dominate either at the right tail, or all across.

Women are definitely better at words than are men, but as I noted above, only three of the top lyricists of the golden age are women.

Women who have composed what have become standards often have written their own words: Ann Ronnell, Bernice Petkere, Ruth Lowe, and, in the rock era, Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell.

Carole King, like Elton John, Mel Torme, and many Brazilian singers, is honest with herself and rightly prefers to leave the words to others. An inteviewer once asked her why it too her so long to do it herself, with “Tapestry”. She said when you’re working with someone as good as Gerry Goffin, why would you even bother?

Besides Carole King, the only female composer who comes to mind writing with a male lyricist is Doris Fisher (“Put the Blame on Mame”), the daughter of Fred (“Chicago”, “Peg O’ My Heart”, “If the Man in the Moon Were a Coon”).

Lasting parent-child successes in the songwriting field have been quite rare in America. Mary Rodgers is known for “Once Upon a Mattress”, but it produced no standards, and she disappeared. Brazilians Dorival (“And Roses and Roses”) and Dori (“Like a Lover”) Caymmi, father and son, got lucky with decent English lyrics about the same time and pulled off a coup few American families have.

Elastica? Some of their songs were shameless rip-offs of 70s punk bands like Wire and Sham69, but they were a damn good live band.

At the time, there was a lot of speculation that the lead singer was a transsexual, but it turned out she was just Jewish with big features and a bit mannish.

“Where Are the Female Songwriting Teams?”

They probably never existed, but it deserves a movie along the lines of “Hidden Figures”. Whenever any given group underperforms, just make up a convenient narrative.

Cheryl Crow is a talent-free nutcase, her “songwriting” trailerpark white ebonics : “all I wanna” :anti-music garbage.

Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army Vet, and pro jazz musician.

Back to Broadway (well, Off-Broadway), there’s the team of Nancy Ford (music) and Gretchen Cryer (lyrics) who had a hit with “I’m Getting My Act Together And Taking It On The Road” in 1978. Gretchen Cryer is actor Jon Cryer’s mother, while Nancy Ford doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry. According to Gretchen’s Wikipedia entry, the two are the only female composer-lyricist team in New York theater.

Until Segovia, guitars were the province of middle and upper class women in parlors and Gypsies and bums in bars.

Deleted due to duplication

The most popular Heart songs were written by others, but the Wilsons did write Magic Man, which was their first top-10 song.

Jerome Kern’s, he studied music in Heidelberg, marvelous “All the things you are” is the most widely played/performed tune in all of the jazz world, from Russia to Brazil. His “Long ago and far away” a timeless gem.

Such gold as “Out of nowhere” will never be equaled in todays Madonna/Prince/Crow trashy world.

As far as songwriting in general goes : Male or female it is a dead art form, and with the passing of Harold Arlen, he was, as far as I know the last of the Tin-pan-alley folks to cross the jordan, went the final contributor to the “Great American Songbook”.
Dorothy Fields with her “The way you look tonight” was on the same level as Mercer, Carmichael, etc.

Damn I love those old musicals, heavenly magic that they were.

Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army Vet, and pro jazz musician, plus vocals.

PS on a different note : I recently viewed the Chet Baker Bio : “Born to be blue” and was pleasently surprised by the actual singing of Ethan Hawke.

Johnny Carson wrote the lyrics to “Johnny’s Theme” so he could get half of the royalties. This was big when NBC owned The Tonight Show.

Keep in mind, the lyrics were never actually used on The Tonight Show. In a similar vein, Mike Altman wrote the lyrics to “Suicide is Painless”, which are used in the movie M*A*S*H but not the TV show. Nevertheless, Altman got half the royalties. Ironically, Altman ended up getting paid more for writing the lyrics to the theme from M*A*S*H than his father got for directing it.

My impression is that male barbershop quartet and chorus members are more numerous than Sweet Adelines. And I expect they are not generally gay.

But I expect other commentators might be more authoritative than my only slight acquaintance justifies.

Those older straight men tend to seem rather emasculated or “post-sexual” in many cases, don’t they?

No, not most of them. Chamber of commerce/corporate types, doctors, lawyers, etc…

Some do barber-shop, some got into through church choir, some are professional musicians (instrumentalists who sing for fun). High school choirs have been popular long enough now that you’re starting to get young guys.

Cincinnati’s always been big on choral music, but I got into it in Charleston/Parkersburg WV which each have outstanding choral societies.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/entertainment/2017/10/05/science-what-music-hall-sound-like/700572001/

Justine Frischmann, it was. They were very Blondie-ish and even cobbed their band logo from the stylized Blondie one on ETTB.

“That’s why their solo material was nowhere near as good”

The creative lives of popstars are notoriously short. Six years or whatever is a pretty good run. So it might not have much to do with how they worked together. Or maybe it was George Martin who kept them in check. I dunno.

I wonder why that is, and sometimes maybe it’s that they tend to be “of their time.” Pop music is enslaved to fashion. The Beatles knew how perfectly to exploit sounds that were fashionable when the group was together. Lads raised on early rock set loose to grow beards and “experiment” with Wall of Sound-type production techniques, that was their thing. There are all sorts of different subgenres and styles on Beatles albums, but there was a core sound to them, and that wasn’t going to remain popular forever.

When times change, they don’t get the new sounds as well, and don’t know how to exploit them. They’ve been rewarded their entire careers for writing things that don’t move people anymore. They become unfashionable.

Just a theory

I say popstars instead of pop music composers because the ones who are selected on the basis of pure writing ability as opposed to, say, people picked for the live show they put on, for being media personalities, or for how well they market themselves, have different rules.

As I recall, in that movie Barrymore was driven by her emotions and Hugh Grant had to talk to her as if she were a child to keep things on track.

Of course, they were on a tight scheme and had like a single night to write and record a demo of a song. Nevertheless, maybe that captures the essence of the man-woman creative dynamic.

You can pick up a random girl and turn her into a secretary, though.

Wife-secretaries are important for aspiring Great Men.

Modern “partner” couples may be a big reason for the decline of Western Art.

“Females don’t create. They incubate”

That’s why the most famous female classical musicians, like Clara Schumann and Nadia Boulanger, are known for being inspirers and teachers of Great Men, in addition to being virtuosos, instead of composers. Composition is masculine.

I just want to say, though it’s beside the point, Ro[d]gers and Hart beats the hell out of Ro[d]gers and Hammerstein.

Check out Connie Evingson’s first album. She makes Rodgers and Hammerstein sound like Rodgers and Hart. Quite impressive.

Pop lyricists get way too much credit, in my opinion.

Words tied to music will never sound right without that music. Still, it’s an art in both senses of the word, like painting, and like medicine. Philip Furia did for the lyrics what Alec Wilder did for the tunes:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/87298.The_Poets_of_Tin_Pan_Alley

On the other hand, try imagining most Nashville hits done as instrumentals. You’d probably be the first to do so!

I don’t know where the full-band credit thing started in earnest. But I think it’s about morale. Bands that toil for years in obscurity also use it as a sort of pension system. Who knows how long amy band will keep going, how many tours they’ll go on or albums they’ll cut. Spread some dough around so that none of you get stuck breaking your back at McDonald’s when you’re 30 because you wasted your 20s in an inauspicious pursuit. That way you can hold onto people with outside ambition and not be left with none but burnouts.

Also, it’s insurance against the grunts resenting the stars, if the stars also happen to be the principal songwriters. If it’s the other way around, then it’s insurance against the stars resenting the creatives.

Cincinnati’s always been big on choral music…

…und warum überrascht mich das nicht?

“which is interesting because women are not bad at music, often better than men at the performance part”

Most great composers were also virtuosic, if not as instrumentalists then at least as conductors. So performance and composition goes together somehow. I’m guessing there’s some stock of “general musical know-how” in all of us, and some have more of it than others. Some of us are geniuses.

Many women have genius in their fingers, so to speak. But very few of them have the abstract, intellectual genius required for composition. That’s a distinctly male talent.

The first two are basically the same album and I can’t believe anyone would call Pretenders II unlistenable.

Learning to Crawl is pretty good, being ideas developed with the original band carried out by the new crew. It marks the transition for the Pretenders trademark from being ” a band” to “whatever bunch of guys Chrissie has at the moment”.

From there on out, the quality of Pretenders records varies from really good to lousy on a consistent basis. Live, it’s always been a good show. Chambers is a fine drummer (although not as dominant as Clem Burke is with Blondie), the sidemen are always good, and Chrissie takes complete control of her stage. Her guitaring has always been in the tradition of Elvis and Johnny Cash, as much for ornamentation as anything else.

Be prepared for considerable insults to carnivores generally and a fair bit of swearing.

…Springsteen. A theme in Prince’s work is whether he should do it all himself or let his band express themselves.

Hah. I always thought Springsteen’s second album was his best, because on it he would shut up for long stretches and let his band let it all out.

He and Steve van Zandt (who, despite the Dutch surnames, are a 75% Italian partnership) were writing some nice songs for Southside Johnny, who sings better than either of them. Too bad that never took off. In the olden days, that set-up would have been the recommended one.

Dave Clark was criticized (criticised?) for merely paying his Five a salary, when other rock-and-roll bands were more egalitarian partnerships, businesswise. But Springsteen has always done the same, and he’s still the working class hero. Hmmm…

Come to think of it, when the DC5 was finally admitted to the R&R Hall of Fame, the loudest cheers came from Bruce and Steve.

Would they have to be instrumentals, or could I just imagine the voices singing nonsense words? Because I can do that. Those songs are written to show off the human voice, but not to express meaning through words.

I’m not familiar with anyone who reads pop lyrics as regular poetry, without reference to the songs, including I assume the Nobel Committee. One time a literature professor in college did a day on Bob Dylan, but I’m guessing he wouldn’t have were he not a fan of the music.

I am familiar with people who don’t pay much attention to lyrics in pop songs, and sing along without understanding or even knowing what words are being used. That’s everyone.

the songs were credited to the entire band (a common-ish practice these days that I think began with U2 and REM).

I don’t know where the full-band credit thing started in earnest. But I think it’s about morale.

The other Animals were sore when Alan Price put his name under “House of the Rising Sun” and copped the composer royalties, which, with public domain songs, go to the arranger. They thought, rightly, that the whole band should have gotten them.

Then again, how much of it did Price keep anyway, in the days of “one-for-you-nineteen-for-me”, as Beatle George put it?

I’d heard that the (relatively) rich boy Eric Burdon was a vocal socialist and would get into arguments, sometimes right before getting on stage, with poor, wrong-side-of-the-tracks bandmates Price and Hilton Valentine who, if not Tories, were somewhere to the right of Burdon.

“I would ask anyone to name a MAJOR female composer”

You have to go back a long way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen

Comden and Green were regularly asked if they were married. Their usual reply was, “Yes, but not to each other.”

Bands that toil for years in obscurity also use it as a sort of pension system.

Note that Mike Nesmith did not deign to do reunion tours with the other Monkees, choosing to stay home as a video pioneer. He was the only true songwriter in the group, but more likely his freedom was due more to mom’s Liquid Paper royalties than to his own.

I think it was Gene Clark of the Byrds who, as primary songwriter, was circumspect about the fact that he was making a lot more money than his mates.

Good strategy. As Paul Fussell explained, that’s why the true upper class drive Buicks, not Cadillacs. Garrison Keillor adds that in a small town, the farmer can drive the best car on the lot, but the dealer himself can’t. One’s money comes from the city, the other’s from the farmers.

The whole “working class” thing about Springsteen is patently ridiculous. He would not last a half shift in a steel mill.

My real working class relatives-steel mill, lime plant, brick plant, locomotive shop, airline mechanics-never paid the least nevermind to Brooooooce. The old guard preferred Lawrence Welk, Frank Sinatra, Vikki Carr, polkas, and old line country. The younger ones hard rock bands like Zep, Judas Priest, Black Sab or shit kicker outlaw country like Hank Jr, Willie and Waylon.

(Now, the old guard have all since died off and the younger ones from 55 to 70.)

East Coast cops and firefighters did like him, but by the time you got to Chicago, the audience was mostly North Siders, Cub fans and white collar or academics.

For hundreds of thousands of years, men have needed to accomplish stuff in order to successfully reproduce; women have not. (Unless you count hooking up with the right man as an accomplishment.)

It would be surprising if this disparity did not have a big impact on male and female behaviors and proclivities.

Even today, it’s pretty unusual to see groups of women spending a lot of effort trying to accomplish something novel and significant from scratch. And when you do, they are usually just copying men in order to make a point. Either that or there is a man in the background guiding and funding them.

At the time, there was a lot of speculation that the lead singer was a transsexual, but it turned out she was just Jewish with big features and a bit mannish.

Now that’s the most “anti-Semitic” thing I’ve ever read on Unz.com, and that takes some doing.

Not saying that it’s wrong, though… who the hell is Elastica?

Petrichor, hat’s off. Tucker-Mantz I thought of immediately. The story of how “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)” came to be a popular song done by The Electric Prunes seems to me an astounding example of how culture is mediated by contingency, such as friendships and happenstance, and corporate interests (broadly construed), such as legal relations. Leon Russell’s home studio where those “backwards” sounds were sort of discovered, and so on.

I corresponded with Prunes drummer Preston Ritter maybe a decade ago. A fine man, a good human being, and like a lot of very talented people in popular music, wasn’t quite able to cash in on his contribution.

Annette Tucker, from what I’ve read, is to this day a very talented and very level-headed woman who’s done well in a very tough business. She deserves serious props for making the world a little better.

Neat fact: Ruthann Friedman, famous for writing the Association’s “Windy”, was born on D-Day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthann_Friedman

…and Windy has stormy eyes, that flash at the sound of lies

That’ll kill you in the music business.

But Springsteen has always done the same, and he’s still the working class hero.

It’s amazing that people forget that Bruce fired the E Street Band in 1989. Only when his career went into the tank did he rehire them.

23,000 Sweet Adeline’s worldwide. I had the opposite impression from you, I assumed the male quarters were a small fraction of the female choruses. I don’t even know the names used by the largest men’s groups.

A popular beat combo from the 90s.

Sinatra and Presley were not musical composers or songwriters, or even arrangers, they were singers and actors (bad actor in Presley’s case).

There were some female British bandleaders, for example Christine Perfect of blues band Chicken Shack shacked up with and quickly married Eric Clapton’s old bandmate John McVie and after a spell as a housewife merged into her hubby’s new band which was called Fleetwood Mac and was rather successful.

Lulu, another more mainstream British singer married a Bee Gee, and Liverpudlian Cilla Black, an early friend of the Beatles later became hostess of successful TV shows like Blind Date.

Sandie Shaw, whose gimmick was singing barefoot, had many hit songs written by Chris Andrews, and Marianne Faithfull was a close friend of Mick Jagger who was not at all faithful; she succumbed to “personal issues” later in the 70’s.

Petula Clark started her career in World War II and was successful singing in both English and French in the 50’s before teaming up with songwriter Tony Hatch in the 60’s. She is alleged to have sold 68 million records, though personally I would not even have dreamt of buying one.

Dusty Springfield made one of the greatest country albums of all time, Dusty in Memphis, presumably a comment about the dry weather in Tennessee that made her voice hoarse, also singing about the son of a preacher man (a description that could have fitted David Frost) and Sheena Easton had a massive hit with Morning Train (Nine To Five) , a triumphant anthem for heroic suburban commuters who went to work and then came home again, all in one day. She also won a Grammy with a song in Spanish called “Me Gustas Tal Como Eres” (“I Like You Just the Way You Are”).

Well, there’s this thing called Wikipedia. It’s on this bigger thing called the Internet.

However, Elastica’s obscurity in the US is something common to Britpop bands of the eighties and nineties in general. A lot of Americans have never heard of a lot of very popular British acts. Remenber Catatonia?

Hell, a lot of Americans can’t tell you who Debbie Harry is. That isn’t true of a lot of Brits.
And many of those same Americans will tell you a lot about Madonna if you ask, and half of it will even be right.

Petula was and may still be a truly great pop singer. That she was able to breathe life into songs like “Downtown” can be seen as the accomplishment it is when you hear Frank Sinatra’s version.

Good talk.

http://www.britishkodalyacademy.org/kodaly_approach_archive_who-is-a-good-music-teacher_betty_power.htm

“Kodály pointed out to the conservatory students that Schumann’s advice was just as relevant then, more than a hundred years later, and that there was still were many improvements needed to meet the high standards of Robert Schumann. Today’s description of “Who Is A Good Musician?” has become the mission statement for Kodály students and teachers today:

1) A well-trained ear; 2) A well-trained mind; 3) A well-trained heart; 4) A well-trained hand. All four must develop together, in constant equilibrium. As soon as one lags behind or rushes ahead, there is something wrong.”

Eric Burton’s father was an electrician. In those days that was a union job, and the unionists were very leftest.

I ended up on the other end with the one who picked me – she’s very successful professionally, but much more successful since she gained my support. I’m more editor/advisor than secretary but I also do a lot of slack up-picking.

I always considered Bob Seger to be the working man’s Bruce Springsteen.

Sinatra and Presley were not musical composers or songwriters, or even arrangers, they were singers and actors (bad actor in Presley’s case).

At acting as well as singing, I suspect Elvis may have had more raw biological talent than Frank Sinatra. (At singing, I’m dead nuts certain of it.)

Blame the Col.

Resentment was on the mind of Eddie Van Halen, with the added knowledge that the “other half” included his brother. What would Thanksgiving (if Dutch immigrants celebrate it) be like if he hogged all the credit/royalties?

I think Eddie was primarily responsible for the music and David Lee Roth the lyrics (the Sammy Hagar era I wouldn’t know about), but all four members got equal writing credit.

Elastica isn’t a household name, but the song Connection, at least, was well-known stateside in its day.

I’ve noticed that in writing, the talent level in a collaboration gets dragged to the level of the lesser talent. No greater talent can wave a magic wand and make an untalented person talented.

We all want the same thing: to successfully reproduce.

“Humping the ho” is likely a less successful means of reproduction, for non-subsaharans, than is pair bonding. If a man needs help from other men to “pair bond,” he’s likely to find himsef raising other men’s children.

Actually, some of those full-band credits really are full-band credits. The lead guitarist and lead singer quite often don’t play the drums and couldn’t write that part if they wanted to. Bass players often are quite capable of coming up with their own basslines, because those are often simple parts. In rock and roll, songwriters like J Mascis who really can and have written all the parts are unusual.

At acting as well as singing, I suspect Elvis may have had more raw biological talent than Frank Sinatra.

I can’t go along with that. Although he never learned to read music, Sinatra was a consummate musician, live performer, and recording artist who made the definitive version of many popular songs, and was still performing at the age of 70.

Sinatra won an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity, and starred in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and received critical acclaim for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). He appeared in various musicals such as On the Town (1949), Guys and Dolls (1955), High Society (1956), and Pal Joey (1957).

Also by reputation Sinatra outclassed Elvis in natural male endowment. One of his ex wives described him as a small man attached to a large penis.

It’s “Dusty in Memphis”, not Nashville.

Little country about it.

I don’t know. I am not interested in pop music. You could ask Mark Steyn.

That should be the default course of action for whenever anyone has a question on any topic, frankly.

People who can write good rhyming poetry are rare even amongst men. Funny and satirical as well!

W.S. Gilbert was the first time that the man who wrote the libretto (and it was always men in classical music) got equal recognition as the composer. Well deserved I’d say.

He started the distinctive “English comedy.”

Only classic music enthusiasts know who wrote librettos for, say, Mozart.

Frank was by far the more important and more skilled artist, but that was a combination of moderate to good natural talent and a lot of work, combined with the ability to get the very best people to work with/for him. He worked very hard on learning to be a band singer, which was not that easy a thing to do.

Elvis had one thing and one thing only, pure, raw biological talent. He never developed anything, not his singing nor his acting. The Colonel didn’t want that. The Colonel in fact actively discouraged that.

Elvis did have very good musicians-in the beginning Scotty Moore and Bill Black early on and the legendary TCB Band in his post-movie concert career (they mostly went on to also work with Emmylou Harris as her Hot Band, and they really were!) but in his movie era he had to sing some of the most putrid movie music in cinematic history. Elvis certainly never had inhouse songwriting talent like Frank had in Chester”Jimmy Van Heusen” Babcock and Sammy Cahn.

As far as Frank’s statutory peckerage……he was bigger than average, but apparently some of that was visually aided by how skinny the rest of him was. I spoke with a former Las Vegas “hostess” who claimed she had been intimate with him. Said he was big but not so big he was painful , but big enough around oral had to be thought out a bit, which, she said, was not even in the top ten of famous big ones she’d dealt with.

Elvis was said (by others) to be average but had great enthusiasm and technique. It is unknown how the two compared, at least, I have never read any plausible accounts by any women likely to be telling the truth about having both to comapre.

“The difference is that (at least until recently) there weren’t a lot of all-woman bands. In the ’60′s, there were plenty: yet they were “girl group” types,”

I would not call “girl groups” “bands.” In my mind, if you are a collection of singers, you are not a band; a band means that at least some members of the group play instruments.

The best book I’ve ever read on pop music is Steyn’s “When Broadway Baby’s say Goodnight”. And I read a lot of music books.

From your link:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluffer

A fluffer is a person employed to keep a male adult film star erect on the set.[1] These duties, which do not necessarily involve touching the actors, are considered part of the makeup department. After setting up the desired angle, the director asks the actors to hold position and calls for the fluffer to “fluff” the actors for the shot. Fluffing could also entail sexual acts such as fellatio or non-penetrative sex.[2]

According to some pornographic actors, such as Aurora Snow,[3] James Deen[4] and Keiran Lee,[5] fluffers do not actually exist, saying that the role might have existed in the past, yet was displaced in 1998 with the increase of Viagra;
{snip}

The 2001 film The Fluffer is about a film buff with a crush on a porn star who is straight, for whom he would end up working as a fluffer in gay porn.[9] A four-minute short comedy film also titled The Fluffer was released in 2003.

On the other hand, try imagining most Nashville hits done as instrumentals. You’d probably be the first to do so!

Among instrumental combos, two names stand out above all others: the Ventures, an American band formed originally in Tacoma, and the Shadows, an English outfit also known for backing Cliff Richard.

Without getting into which was better -they were both first rate-the Ventures did a wider variety of albums, certainly. No kind of music escaped their gaze.

An awful lot of guitarslingers started out playing Ventures music, and the band is enormously popular in Japan.

Really.

From Adolph Green’s obituary:

Ms. Comden and Mr. Green worked in one or the other’s home on a daily basis, even if they had no show in mind, not even an idea for an idea for a show. That perseverance paid off at times, such as when, years ago, they decided they should write some lyrics satirizing how Reader’s Digest might compress a great work of literature.
(Reader’s Digest, a song, came out in 1959.)

From Betty Comden’s obituary:

The title of one of their own songs, from “Bells Are Ringing,” summed up their joint career: it was truly a “Perfect Relationship” in which they met daily, most often Ms. Comden’s living room, either to work on a show, to trade ideas or even just talk about the weather.

“We stare at each other,” Ms. Comden said in a 1977 interview with The New York Times. “We meet, whether or not we have a project, just to keep up a continuity of working. There are long periods when nothing happens, and it’s just boring and disheartening. But we have a theory that nothing’s wasted, even those long days of staring at one another.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/25/theater/adolph-green-playwright-and-lyricist-who-teamed-with-comden-dies-at-87.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/theater/00comdencnd.html

“quite often don’t play the drums and couldn’t write that part if they wanted to.”

Yes, I imagine a majority of rockers can’t read music, let alone write it. Not for their own instrument, let alone other people’s.

But generally speaking, I don’t think filling in your own part as a member of the band is considered composition. Usually the writer is the one who comes up the main idea, not every note. Otherwise, writing credit as a rule should go with entire bands in the absence of sheet music.

But every band does it their own way. Is there a composer’s union setting down rules for credit like there is with writers’ unions?

Speaking of drummers, I remember watching an amusing clip of Stephen Tyler berating Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer. Because Tyler used to be a drummer (still is when he wants to be, I guess), he knew exactly what he wanted. Kramer wasn’t giving it to him, and he was dictating to him in scat.

The only classical librettist who’s a household name is Wagner, but that’s obviously because of his music, not his words.

He was a prodigious writer and people actually read him in his own time, I think. We generally consider him a blowhard now. I have no idea whether his poetry is worth a darn.

I spoke with a former Las Vegas “hostess” who claimed she had been intimate with him.

How come I don’t get into casual conversations like this? Actually, I’d probably prefer not to.

The two best explanations running through this thread are that women are less likely to be song writers (hence a low chance of two talented women finding each other) and female song writers being more masculine and disagreeable than the average woman. Many female song writers, such as KD Lang, are obvious lesbians, while others, like highly regarded UK folk singer Sandy Denny, were clearly uncomfortable trying to appear feminine and agreeable in front of the camera. Even Aimee Mann who is very self-effacing and had the face of a china doll when she was younger, is kinda masculine in her clothing and interests.

Also there are almost no female song writers in masculine popular music fields like heavy metal and progressive rock. The British prog rock band Renaissance had a female poet who wrote some of their lyrics (and a dynamic female vocalist with operatic training) but that’s about it.

Ooops, forgot Patti Smith also wrote songs for Blue Oyster Cult.

The question – Steve Sailer’s question is very interesting. And of course, some of the interesting answers to this question do reflect this very fact.

All in all – as so often: This blog is quite something.

” Only classic music enthusiasts know who wrote librettos for, say, Mozart”

Well myself, a Jazz playing, music in general enthusiast, does in fact know that L Del Ponte had been Amadeus Mozart’s Penman, and that he, Del Ponte, moved to NY and generated an opera company, thus being Mozart’s indirect connection to America.

Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army vet, and pro jazz musician.

PS having studied classical flute performance, and having worked the two Mozart flute concertos, in G and D up to performance niveau, obviously puts me into the category of both classical and jazz enthusiast.

“Morning Train” is known as “9 to 5” in the UK. It had to change here because of Dolly Parton.

Correction : Da Ponte, not Del Ponte.

AJM

Apparently the Daily Mail got into a casual conversation with an anonymous hooker who had been intimate with Stephen Paddock and said that he was paranoid, loved conspiracy theories about 9/11, boasted that he was ‘born bad’ and acted out rape fantasies with her after he had big gambling wins. She also says that she got $6000 per date from him and had several encounters with him.

Pity you cannot trust a single word of such people. And I am sure the Daily Mail did not see her tax returns or her receipt book!

Incidentally, and I know it is totally off topic here, one has to question reports of reports from family members that Paddock used prostitutes provided free of charge by casinos. Nearly all, maybe all, the casinos are now run by big corporations and if they are comping free prostitutes, that is probably a major scandal all on its own. However I doubt this is true; probably another of Paddock’s lies that deceived those closest to him.

I would provide a link to the story, but the Daily Mail seems to have quickly removed the story from its Web site within minutes, so maybe it is true after all.

There’s a funny female songwriting duo named Garfunkel & Oates. They do what amounts to musical standup comedy with a feminist slant (which isn’t funny).

Here’s one of their songs “Pregnant Women Are Smug.”

And the lyrics:

Pregnant women are smug
Everyone knows it, nobody says it,
Because they’re pregnant

F-ing son of a gun
You think you’re so deep now
You give me the creeps now
Now that you’re pregnant

I can’t count all the ways how
You speak in clichés now

I can’t wait to hear someone say
Don’t care if it’s brain dead
Don’t care if it’s limbless
If it has a penis

Pregnant women are smug
Everyone knows it, nobody says it,
Because they’re pregnant

This zen world you’re enjoying
Makes you really annoying

Bitch, I don’t really care
I was being polite now
Since you have no life now
That you’re pregnant

You say you’re walking on air
You think that you’re glowing
But you had been ho-ing
And now you’re pregnant

You’re just giving birth now
You’re not mother earth now

Pregnant women are smug
Everyone knows it, nobody says it,
Because they’re pregnant

F-ing son of a gun
You think you’re so deep now
You give me the creeps now
Now that you’re pregnant

Said he was big but not so big he was painful , but big enough around oral had to be thought out a bit, which, she said, was not even in the top ten of famous big ones she’d dealt with.

Oh, these hookers have big mouths and are so full of hyperbole and self aggrandizement. She probably also turned down Harvey Weinstein’s offer of a film role. Speaking of which…

Daily Mail reveals that Frank once told Donald Trump to f*** 0ff. The deal for Frank to appear at the opening of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino fell through, and Sinatra f***ed off to Las Vegas.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4959504/Sinatra-told-Trump-f-stiffing-him.html

Yes, Frank Sinatra was a testament to the value of hard work and good old Italian know-how.

Steve
Paul McCartney wrote book about entire catalogue, Many Years From Now.
Only disagreement: he claims to have written In My Life.
Seems like more Lennon to me.

Springsteen’s workingman’s songs are to appeal to the proles to buy his records. They never sounded right. Judging by his biographies, he was successful from the start and every penny he has ever made was in show business.

I knew a girl in college who claimed to be a groupie. She had all these tales I never quite believed. Then later I heard that Led Zeppelin did tear up the Blackhawks locker room. I wished I had asked more about Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.

I have never given female songwriters any thought until this thread, but the idea that the ones who work without men have a propensity to be masculine or homosexual seems to have merit. It has been found that male hyperpolyglots are more likely to be homosexual. Taylor Swift is feminine but there have been rumors about her true romantic interests.

The first black female song writer that came to mind was Tracy Chapman. Valerie Simpson wrote with her husband Nick Ashford who was a make-up wearing bisexual. Patrice Rushen is apparently heterosexual and was quite feminine in her younger years but she is pretty niche, R&B and jazz. However, her 1982 hit “Forget Me Nots” was the theme song for the 1997 movie Men in Black.

I hired some sweet Adelines to come sing Happy Birthday to my daughter on her second birthday. One night four kinda large women showed up in sequined vests and sang for about 15 minutes. They were pretty good, but my daughter did not know WTF was happening and spent the whole time safely in her mother’s lap.

You’d be hard to find many females at the head of any human endeavor. Males seem to dominate on both sides the IQ Bell Curve. But the lack of women composers/songwriters is somewhat surprising. The field is a meritocracy, everyone wants good songs and good music. Women are especially interested in music and it takes no heavy lifting or academic training.

I wonder why Comden needed a male partner to write a screenplay or song lyrics. I’d suspect it might have been because she was the less talented half.

Deleted due to duplication.

“female songwriters being more masculine and disagreeable than the average woman”

Women are more social than men, less inclined to be loners. But I wouldn’t exactly say agreeability is the necessary ingredient. Unless all those stories of infighting, squabbling, and domination-submission in famous songwriting teams are overblown.

Anyway, there’s a fundamental contradiction in your point. Women songwriters are less likely to team together because they tend to be more masculine than the average woman? Huh? Men are even more masculine, naturally, and they team up all the time.

Still there and best from UK Daily Mail so far

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4959970/Vegas-prostitute-says-Stephen-Paddock-enjoyed-violent-sex.html
‘I was born bad’: Las Vegas prostitute who romped with mass killer Stephen Paddock says he enjoyed violent rape fantasies as she reveals he boasted he had always been evil
Stephen Paddock known to have hired prostitutes on regular visits to Las Vegas
One has spoken out about their ‘violent’ sex sessions and Paddock’s ‘dark side’
She said the gunman as ‘obsessive’, ‘paranoid’ and loved conspiracy theories
Police are still hunting for a call-girl Paddock solicited days before massacre
By Chris Pleasance for MailOnline
PUBLISHED: 07:20 EDT, 8 October 2017 | UPDATED: 12:10 EDT, 8 October 2017

A Las Vegas prostitute who was hired by murderer Stephen Paddock has spoken out about their ‘violent’ sex sessions and how he bragged about having ‘bad blood’.
The woman, who spoke anonymously, said she would spent hours drinking and gambling in Sin City with Paddock, who she described as ‘paranoid’ and ‘obsessive’.
If he hit a winning streak, he would take her back to his room for ‘really aggressive and violent sex’ including living out rape fantasies, she said.

Paddock also boasted about his bank-robber father, saying that ‘the bad streak is in my blood’ and ‘I was born bad’, according to texts seen by the Sun on Sunday.
The 27-year-old woman said Paddock, 64, would often rant about conspiracy theories including how 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government.
The escort, who said Paddock paid her $6,000-a-time for their meetings, also had texts in which he described tying her up ‘while you scream for help’.

The 27-year-old, who was not named, described Paddock as ‘paranoid’, ‘obsessive’, and said he ranted about conspiracy theories including 9/11 being ‘an inside job’

She spoke out after family members revealed that Paddock often consorted with prostitutes who were laid on by hotels while he paid regular visits to the city.
Officials close to the investigation into the shooting revealed that Paddock may have hired an escort in the days before the massacre.
A receipt from Paddock’s hotel room showed two people ordered room service in the days before the attack.

Too much of a generalization I think. It’s probably mental module specific. In visual art and composing music men dominated and continue to dominate despite lessening of any social barriers to involvement, but in fiction and poetry women have some impressive achievements in the last 200 years or so (Dickinson, Austen, Marianne Moore, Woolf, to name but four,who can equal anything the men had to offer in their eras).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4959970/Vegas-prostitute-says-Stephen-Paddock-enjoyed-violent-sex.html

It seems every woman of any accomplishment is rumored to have sapphic interests these days. Occasionally it turns out to be true, but all I know about Taylor Swift is that she has a propensity to date (and presumably have relations with) men and then write catty songs about them when the relationship ends. Her most famous liaison I know of was with John Mayer, who certainly has had a lot of famous female love interests, and is said to have a big peen.

Supplying two names of female songwriters doesn’t answer the question.

No, but it does bring the possibilities to mind. Not that I’d want to hear nanny goat Stevie duet with anyone but a billy… But Joni and, say, Carole King or Laura Nyro, sure. It may bomb (the Cole Porter-Judy Garland and Ella Fitzgerald-Antonio Carlos Jobim ventures sure did, despite the high levels of talent; those were dreadful mismatches thereof), but you’ve got to take chances to make advances. That may be what holds female composers back– their own sanity!

A male Brazilian instance would be Milton Nascimento and Gilberto Gil, both born the same year as Paul McCartney, recording together for the first time at the turn of the century. Each wrote at least one tune for the other to set words to.

Did the Wilson sisters maybe write songs together for Heart? I think so.

Onomastic trivia: Ann and Nancy are two forms of the same name. I wonder if their parents were aware of this. That’s like naming your sons James and Jimmy.

Actually, my great-grandfather named one son Charles, his own name, and another Carl. (He had a ton of sons.) Charles went by a diminutive of his middle name. Great-grandpa also had brothers named Adalbert and Albert, also the same name, but Adalbert had died before Albert was born, and necronyms were common in those days, when almost every family lost a child or two along the way.

I’m sure there are sisters named Melissa and Deborah somewhere. They mean “honeybee” in different languages. Alice, Adelaide, and Heidi came down from the Teutonic Adalheid, so they’re sisters, too.

Well, there’s this thing called Wikipedia. It’s on this bigger thing called the Internet.

Yeah, but I was already here, and was looking for a reason to bother to click.

Still haven’t got one…

Elastica isn’t a household name, but the song Connection, at least, was well-known stateside in its day.

I was surprised to learn (after seeing a mention in Zippy the Pinhead) that Status Quo, which haven’t had a US hit since 1968, are still “a thing” at home in the UK.

The Californian brothers who make up Sparks are pretty much only known in the UK. The Flamin’ Groovies disappeared in the US and the UK, but carried on in France for years. Nashville church girl-turned-porn star-turned singer Andrea True toured Europe for decades after she was forgotten at home. She said European fans were much more loyal over the years.

And who can forget those Slim Whitman ads? Or Dean Reed?

Occasionally it turns out to be true, but all I know about Taylor Swift is that she has a propensity to date (and presumably have relations with) men and then write catty songs about them when the relationship ends.

On the other hand, it’s widely suspected those relationships ended because she wouldn’t have relations. Not that I’d blame her.

A lady reporter asked Juliana Hatfield, age 24, how her own sex life connected with her songs. She said she couldn’t answer that because she was still a virgin. Unlike with Britney Spears and Taylor Swift, that was probably not a selling point with her own audience.

I am familiar with people who don’t pay much attention to lyrics in pop songs, and sing along without understanding or even knowing what words are being used. That’s everyone.

Yeah, for people born after Pearl Harbor. But there was a time when lyric writing was a craft. Cf. Johnny Mercer, for a start.

If memory serves, Status Quo opened the Live Aid concert in 1985. I was at the Philadelphia show and saw Tom Petty perform. So the circle remains unbroken.

Creative men aren’t necessarily more masculine in terms of personality. Many creative males have relatively easy going, submissive personalities, but most creative women in male-dominated fields have relatively dominant personalities. An easy going, liberal male and a dominant female are more likely to cooperate than two dominant women hen pecking each other.

Also, history is written by the winners. For every successful songwriting duo, there are probably lots of promising duos that failed due to personality clashes. Hence, agreeableness may well be a significant issue if you have two people who are low on agreeableness clashing with each other.

The rituals of a famous organization to induct newcomers have as “the bad guys” three characters named Jubelo, Jubela and Jubelum.

Like that, but a more egregious example came to me. It’s a good song, don’t get me wrong. It’s more like a poem with some good singing and dulcimer music in the background:

“California” by Joni Mitchell BTW, this song makes California seem like a paradise, which in fact IT WAS. Who in 2 thousand-teens California could even UNDERSTAND this song? A damn shame to ruin the most wonderful place the world had ever had on it.

Hey, I like this one, and I had no idea of the name and who it was by. Thanks. It would help if they’d have named it “What’s going on?” NOT “What’s up?, seeing as that’s what they sing. Of course, you’ve got REM where the names on the earlier songs don’t matter at all, because none of us, including the band members, really know what Michael Stipe was singing. “Murmur” is a good example. It’s just pure gibberish, but it rocks! That’s all that matters.

“The son itself is radius done is day
The reason it could pomo show dim ray
Put them put them put that up to wall
Cactus into country dee dim all.”
Train station …
sigh a say heyyyy

Calling out in transit
Calling out in transit
Radio Free Europe, radio free ….”

It doesn’t matter what this guy’s singing, this song rocks and should be turned up to Volume 11, or until the glassware starts shaking and then back it off a skosh.

You’re a musician yourself. Being enthusiastic about different types of music isn’t rare.

Yes, I dimly recall reading that da Ponte did travel to the US, but I don’t know much about him.

The Magic Flute libretto was by a German guy who didn’t know Italian. It was now the era of librettos being written in the national language.

I’m certainly not a professional. But I can’t think of anyone (assuming a fairly well known opera) writing before Gilbert who got equal billing.

Status Quo’s only US hit was the vaguely-psychedelic “Pictures of Matchstick Men” in 1968; shortly afte, they changed their style to boogie-rock jam band, and were wildly successful in the UK but not in the US.

I’ve never cared for Wagner’s music and I don’t know much about him.

Maybe I should give him another chance, he seems to have lots of fans.

The words to the choral part of Beethoven’s 9th were by a German poet. The words are really sappy (“all men will be brothers”). It’s the EU’s official anthem. I seem to recall reading that the poet later in life thought they were sappy too.

Young people often go through such phases. The EU, with politicians old enough to know better, is stuck in the sappy phase.

W S Gilbert had no hint of sappiness at all.

Regarding Beethoven, I can’t express it any better than Anthony Burgess: “The Ninth. The glorious Ninth.”

(The Ode to Joy is from a poem by Schiller, and I am not in disagreement with your assessment; Schiller also wrote “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain” so he could do better. But it doesn’t really matter; in the context of the Ninth, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and is one of the most glorious works of music to emerge from western civilization.)

…shortly afte, they changed their style to boogie-rock jam band, and were wildly successful in the UK but not in the US.

Because we had plenty of boogie-rock jam bands of our own. They tend to sound alike.

The teenager who wrote and sang “Matchstick Men”, Francis Rossi (the scion of an ice cream empire), recently replied to criticism that Status Quo was a “three-chord” band. He rattled off all these classical examples of three-chord works.

At least “Matchstick” was different. Don’t know how many chords it has, but the riff it’s built on uses one string.