Today’s Songwriting: Still Writing Them Like They Used To?
Regardless of which artists and writers do what songs, somebody’s gonna say, “They ain’t writin’em like they used to.”
But it’s amazing how much today’s different-style songs are really like they used to be. Maybe not in structure, but surely in having something meaningful to say. We wrote about it, when Taylor Swift won her Grammys and talked of writing about life.
Of course, that’s exactly what they used to do. They wrote about life. Hank Williams did. Hank Cochran did, Willie Nelson did and does. And now new writers are doing it. As David Finkle, writing in Huffington Post points out, “But if ‘they’ aren’t writing ‘em like they used to, that doesn’t mean ‘they’ aren’t writing them with the same quality, the same intelligence, the same understanding, the same unchanging human concerns. Times and tastes may change irrevocably, but talent doesn’t.”*
He goes on to point out a new, up-and-coming songwriting team, Kait Kerrigan and Brian Loudermilk, and says about them, “Curiously, Kerrigan and Lowdermilk aren’t in the musical-comedy biz to see their ditties favored by the Broadway-loving cabaret entertainers. When they talk about the kinds of singers they hear doing their material, they mention chart-toppers like Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus.”
Interesting. Note that the artists mentioned here are leaders in the new Nashville-style of songs, which overlap with pop.
That overlap is what a lot of people who moan over the old stuff being gone refer to. Hey, folks. They were moaning about it when Hank Williams added a simple drum set to his band. If ever anybody was idolized as a champion of Country, it had to be Williams. But nobody in Country Music has had more crossovers into pop than ole Hank himself.
Country music and pop music will survive the changes. It’s the writers and artists who just sit back and moan who’ll have a difficult time with the survival game.
*David Finkle: Tunesmiths Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk: Writing ‘Em Like They Used To.
