One Thing Real – Dan Bern
Matt Yglesias is unhappy that a Diet Coke ad is not properly representing the division of labor in the production of pop music. Yes really.
Apparently the ad depicts Taylor Swift writing the lyrics to a song, when in fact someone else wrote it; she merely performs it. Except, in fact, she is credited as a co-writer on the song. But nevertheless, he wants to insist, he’s got a larger point here. Which is: “there’s a kind of odd convention arising out of rock music that the ideal is to be making a recording of yourself playing a song you wrote yourself.”
Look, people do sometimes place too much priority on authenticity. There is plenty of room in our musical culture for people who ‘merely’ perform or for people who ‘merely’ produce. Or for people who write songs but don’t perform. Some of the finest music in rock and roll comes from studio musicians playing for a buck. Some of the best songs of the 60s were made by Phil Spector from behind the controls, or written by Goffin/King but sung by other people. Modern pop music is often generated via two distinct groups of people (pop stars and producers) linking together in various ways.
And that’s all fine. There’s lots of good music in there.
But it’s not a coincidence that a LOT of the very best music of the modern era comes from people who take charge of the entire chain of custody in their music.
The imaginative element of music, which is what really matters to us, has very little to do with pure virtuosity. Anyone can record a cover, and sometimes the cover will be (technically) far better produced than the original. But on the whole, the ‘best’ version of a song is usually the one recorded by the original artist, and that’s because there’s an organic component to the whole process.
Even more, if you are going to follow an artist for a long time, it’s because their entire artistic output gels together. It’s about their ability to consistently produce high-quality work that comes from a particular place, that speaks to a certain personality. If Okkervil River releases a new album, I know that Will Sheff wrote some brilliant lyrics, and I know that I’ll be hearing him sing. And that’s what I want. It’s not a ‘problem’ that Sheff doesn’t have the most technically pure voice. I don’t WANT a perfect rendition. I want the beautiful cracks of “Westfall” or the soaring and jagged peaks of “The War Criminal…” Isaac Brock has a lisp. Dylan is Dylan. Michael Stipe has a range of about seven notes, but R.E.M. writes songs for that voice. And so on.
All of which is to say: while great music certainly CAN be made via the division of labor, it still makes plenty of sense to valorize the artist or band who can start from nothing and turn it into a complete song. It’s not the only way to make music, but it’s certainly one very important way.
Everything you say here is true. But one thing you omit is that a performer adds interpretation, not just virtuosity. And interpretation demands imagination. Perhaps we don’t see it as much in modern music, but that’s how classical music has worked for centuries — what makes a classical music performance special isn’t the performer’s technical capabilities (which anyone can eventually learn), but rather their ability to interpret the music in a way that reveals something beautiful yet, in some cases, previously undiscovered by thousands of other performers and possibly even the composer. All of which goes to say that our current music focuses much more on composition than performance — and the aspect of imagination that comes from interpretation. Imagine if, rather than compose their own music, a bunch of your favorite artists instead dedicated their talents to interpreting music from the past. Not sure I’d prefer that world, but it kind of demonstrates that performance of songs that others write does not entail the loss of the imaginative element — it just as easily should enhance it.
Yeah, that’s all fair.
The Johnny Cash American Recordings kind of do that. And more broadly: folk and jazz both have important versions of the interpretive tradition.
Even in ‘rock,’ the occasional cover just blows me away because it does something that’s totally true to the original but also is totally new. It’s just that most covers don’t do that, and are therefore totally boring.
But if the motivations changed so that covers weren’t just a little one-off thing that you occasionally do, but something that put serious work and thought into…it could be pretty interesting.