I wish I had talent for it.
I want to ask you another personal question.
Do you work, have a career?
I've had three jobs over a number of years. I've never really had any huge ambitions. I'm currently not working and I'm trying to figure out whether I should go back to school or look for a job.
3. They leave songwriting to the songwriters
I'm not saying artists shouldn't write their own songs. What I am saying is just because someone can sing but doesn't write their own songs doesn't mean they are "talentless." Likewise, there are people who can't sing but who are phenomenal songwriters.
We seem to like the cliché story of a heartbroken girl picking up a guitar and singing along with her feelings, and writing every part of the song herself. A lot of Americans feel like if the composition and lyricism is not "authentic" and directly created by the one artist that performs it, it isn’t "real."
The singer-songwriter idea isn’t bad in itself, but the practical application of it leads to a slew of sloppy, underwritten songs that lack a killer hook. Everyone has their role in creating music, and a lot of the time, the singer’s role should not be the songwriter’s role. Quite frankly, most phenomenal singers are not good songwriters unless they have put in the countless hours of practice to both areas.
Remember how in economics specialization of labor leads to increased productivity? It is the same way in the music business. Everyone has their role, some people are much better at certain things than they are at others. This, of course, doesn’t mean a person can’t be talented in more than one area – rather, just that we must practice each individual skill we would like to specialize in. My main point is just that we cannot compensate for poor songwriting with phenomenal singing skill.
But I digress. I've heard a ton of amazing J-pop songs, and I was amazed to learn they were all written by one person. His name is Mitsuo Terada and he's one of the most prolific songwriters I've ever seen. He's been doing this for 20 years and he's written song and single one after another for dozens of different groups. He's written all of the singles for groups that were active for a whole decade. I'm not joking. He's like a songwriting machine. His range is incredible and a lot of his songs sound completely different from the other.
Plus one of his influences is the Beatles and that's an automatic plus for me.