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...if they do make it as marvelous pop song writers then i stand to be corrected...
OK, trying not to be so antagonistic...
Arrggh... WHY? Why do you stand to be corrected if they show songwriting nous? This is the question. Let's leave Gambit to blether on without the aid of punctuation or proper syntax. Engagement is good. We like engagement, and do not wish to be seen to disincentivise like motherfuckers.
This 'singer/songwriter as God' schtick pretty much started with the Beatles. It should have ended with them. Flyboy's already thrown out Elvis and Motown as probably two of the biggest examples of why this is the case. How many of the hits he sang on did Elvis write? Why should we care? How about country, folk and blues, older genres with a rich history of live and recorded versions of other peoples material, the oral tradition therein?
FYI, the reason some of you are getting 'indie snob'/'dadrocker' comparisons isn't because you dislike Girls Aloud - it's because of the reasons that you have stated that you dislike Girls Aloud, which are indistinguishable from the arguments put forward by 'indie snobs'/'dadrockers' the world over. All music is a product. Every time one of your heroes plays a gig, releases a single or has a photo taken of hirself, they're marketing that product. The only difference between them and Girls Alous is a question of scale, and also likely their deluded opinion that they are different in a major, qualitative way from Girls Aloud. They aren't, they just have a sufficient veneer of 'credibility', which in itself is a facet of the way they, and artists like them, have been marketed over the decades since the Fabs. Every time you trot out the tired old 'songwriter is God' argument, you're repeating a forty-year-old marketing strategy and toeing the party line of a hundred record company executives who realised that if the product combined songwriter/musician/singer, maybe even producer and album cover artist too, why not, they would have to pay a lot less people. In the States, singers etc have been referred to as 'recording artists' for decades, from Sinatra and the rest of the rat pack, via Elvis, the Motown stable, through to the pop divas etc of today. They record and front material to be sold to the general public.
There is an argument to be made concerning the concept of authenticity and whether it has value in a discussion on an aspect of 21st century pop culture (and Girls Aloud, as a manufactured pop group voted into being by the public by consumption via mediated experience and kept afloat by the continued support of the public, in marked contrast to their erstwhile rivals One True Voice, definitely qualify as one of the more interesting aspects of 21st century pop culture) but you aren't making it one example is hip hop, and the untouchable credibility of the lyrical MC who raps over music largely based around samples of music previously written and recorded by other people - that's a dissertation on authenticity waiting to happen).
Why does it matter whether Girls Aloud show themselves to be decent songwriters? Fucksake, Robbie Williams writes at least half of the songs he releases (all melodies, all lyrics, a lot of riffs and arrangements), but he don't get tickled with the credibility feather... (oh, we on that again...  ) |
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