Take your favourite songs of the year so far -- or the past month, even -- and ask yourself: Who wrote that song? Of course, in some genres of music it's mostly the performer/artist. But ... do you know ? Awareness is everything.
Songwriting associations, like Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) or the Nashville Songwriters Association of Canada (NSAI) keep on making the point that popular music begins with a song. But ... I recently saw a poster promoting a show about "The Music of Glen Campbell" , which is a great concept for a show -- but I couldn't help but notice that Jimmy Webb didn't get mentioned. You know, the guy who actually wrote a good many of those songs. Today's commercial music industry does all that it can to build the profiles of the performing artists, and the general public goes through life often without knowing that a songwriter was at work behind the scenes. So be it.
I once conducted a campaign of correspondence with a music video network, asking them to list songwriter credits at the end of their music videos. They did it too, for a year or so ... before the ownership changed. And I heard, via the grapevine, that the network had designed contracts to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the failure to acknowledge songwriters, among other issues. If an indie video was going to be aired, without credits, there would be no come-back to the network.
Our Source of the Song concert series was originally created to make a small change of emphasis: somebody wrote the songs, and sometimes, you've not heard their names.
So ask yourself, whenever you hear a song that you really love, that really moves you: who wrote that song?
Every day can be National Songwriters Day !
Songwriting associations, like Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) or the Nashville Songwriters Association of Canada (NSAI) keep on making the point that popular music begins with a song. But ... I recently saw a poster promoting a show about "The Music of Glen Campbell" , which is a great concept for a show -- but I couldn't help but notice that Jimmy Webb didn't get mentioned. You know, the guy who actually wrote a good many of those songs. Today's commercial music industry does all that it can to build the profiles of the performing artists, and the general public goes through life often without knowing that a songwriter was at work behind the scenes. So be it.
I once conducted a campaign of correspondence with a music video network, asking them to list songwriter credits at the end of their music videos. They did it too, for a year or so ... before the ownership changed. And I heard, via the grapevine, that the network had designed contracts to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the failure to acknowledge songwriters, among other issues. If an indie video was going to be aired, without credits, there would be no come-back to the network.
Our Source of the Song concert series was originally created to make a small change of emphasis: somebody wrote the songs, and sometimes, you've not heard their names.
So ask yourself, whenever you hear a song that you really love, that really moves you: who wrote that song?
Every day can be National Songwriters Day !