Authenticity and Collaboration in Popular Music
Hey Guys! Hope all is well! Today I’d like to talk about authenticity, and more specifically, how authenticity manifests itself in pop music. I’ve had differing opinions on this as I’ve gotten older, but two events stood out to me when it comes to this topic. They were the 2015 and 2017 Grammy Awards. During the 2015 Grammy Awards, alternative rock singer Beck won album of the year for his great record Morning Phase infamously beating out Beyoncé’s equally strong self-titled album. The 2017 Grammys essentially saw a repeat of that, with Adele’s excellent album 25 beating Beyoncé’s landmark Lemonade. While most of the music community were surprised and disappointed that Beyoncé lost both of those years, a sizable group within the music industry advocated for the wins of Beck and Adele.
I supported Beck’s win in 2015; I thought Morning Phase was more cohesive that Beyoncé’s self-titled album, but I was less enthusiastic about 25’s win over Lemonade. Adele has previously won with the superior 21, and Lemonade was a huge artistic leap for Beyoncé. I started to notice that the narrative around these wins was less about which artists made the better album, but on how the album was constructed. The insinuation was that since Beyoncé used more collaborators then Beck and Adele, she was therefore a less authentic artist and less deserving of major Grammy Awards. And that concept bothers me. Let’s take a closer look.
On Beck’s album Morning Phase, he is credited for over 14 instruments, while on Beyoncé’s self-titled album she is only created as a vocalist. One might assume that Beck is a more talented musician than Beyoncé because he plays more instruments. But on closer examination, you’ll see that many similar instruments are credited more than once for Beck. Piano, organ, and synthesizer are all credited as separate instruments, despite them all being played the same way. The same is done for acoustic and electric guitars. I’ve seen this repeated for several artists, from Bon Iver and Owl City, to D’Angelo and Prince. You can essentially divide the credits of any multi-instrumentalist into 4 categories: piano, guitar, bass and drums. To credit the different types of these instruments gives a misleading notion of what it means to be a “multi-instrumentalist”. I’m not saying that it doesn’t take talent to play various types of piano and guitar, of course it does. But to suggest that Beyoncé is less talented because she is “just a singer” is a gross simplification of the talent it takes to sing and perform as well as she does. As a music student and composer, I’ve written several vocal and instrumental pieces, and I’ve not once thought that the vocalists I’ve worked with were any less talented than the instrumentalists simply because their instrument wasn’t tangible or visible.
And speaking of the voice, Adele has suffered from this authenticity fallacy as well. But when it came to the 2017 Grammys, the narrative shifted again. Famed musician Carlos Santana infamously quipped that Adele won Album of the Year because she was “actually singing”. Adele’s music is mostly acoustic, usually piano and guitar ballads. Beyoncé’s music is usually more electronic and synthesized, but that doesn’t mean it takes less talent to write electric/electronic music than acoustic music. I’ve also heard an argument that Adele is more talented because she doesn’t have multiple backup dancers or make sexually provocative music videos. The bastardization of the expression of female sexuality is a conversation for another day, but I’d argue that it takes more talent to coordinate multiple dancers in a routine than to simply sing accompanied by a piano or guitar. But art should never be ranked or measured that way. It’s not any easier or harder to write a piece for one instrument than to write a piece for 10.
And speaking of songwriting, authenticity in that regard is also problematic. Beck is the sole credited songwriter on all tracks for Morning Phase while Adele has, on average, 2 or 3 credited songwriters on each track on 21 and 25. Beyoncé’s albums can have as many as 5 to 10 songwriters credited to a track. One might look at that casually and think that Beyoncé is a less talented songwriter because she needs more people to create a song. But that assumption misses two crucial points. The first is the issue of crediting samples. When a songwriter samples another artist, the writers of that sample must be credited to avoid legal disputes. If you look at the credits for the song “Hold Up”, 10 of the 15 credited writers were the original writers of the samples used; they weren’t even in the room. If you don’t consider sample credits, artists like Beyoncé really don’t use more songwriters than artists like Adele. The second issue is that of artistic responsibility. If you are creating a song and some aspect of it is not working, another person might contribute a helpful point of view. To refuse to listen to or accept outside ideas because you want to seem more “authentic” does a disservice to making the best art possible.
Furthermore, the idea of the singer-songwriter is fairly new in pop music. Iconic artists like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Barbra Streisand very rarely recorded songs that they had written, yet their involvement in making their albums and their artistic integrity and impact was rarely questioned. Michael Jackson, an artist who didn’t start recording original songs until later in his career, once said to a friend that he was frustrated that Prince received more critical acclaim than he did simply because Prince wrote all his songs and played all his own instruments. As much as I enjoy Prince’s music, whether or not he writes his own songs or plays his own instruments is of no consequence to me.
No one expects classical musicians to exclusively play music they’ve written. Opera and musical theatre composers aren’t expected to star in their own shows, film directors aren’t expected to be actors, and politicians and public figures aren’t expected to write their own speeches. I’ve yet to publicly perform any of the pieces I’ve written, even pieces written for instruments that I play. Collaborating with other musicians is my favorite part of what I do, and I can attest that the best part of anything I’ve written has been the idea of someone I was working with. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today if I worked exclusively in a vacuum.
When I watched Beyoncé’s excellent live film for her Coachella performance, I was blown away by the talent of the musicians, dancers, and backup singers she had on stage. Not once did I question Beyoncé’s involvement in executing her vision. Not once did I question if she wrote out the horn parts or backup vocal lines herself. But when I listen to music by Paul Simon or Bob Dylan, I don’t feel like they need to add any more instruments or singers to make their music any better than it is with just an acoustic guitar. There are so many things that go into making music, so many factors that can make a song or album an instant classic or just a passing phase. But the number of musicians or songwriters an artist chooses to collaborate with should not be one of those factors.
Let me know that you guys think about this, and I’ll see you in the next blogpost!