I wish those guys would all shoot themselves." I'm sick of `Mary Had a Little Lamb' with a heavy-handed drum machine going. As for me, I'm just going to keep writing songs with melody and lyrics." Stephen Bishop: "I remember my dad saying, `Y'know, ever since Bing Crosby, music hasn't been the same.' I would say, `Ouch!' I like Alanis Morissette and a lot of other writers, but generally the melodic content is just not as rich and fulfilling as it was in earlier pop songs."ĭiane Warren: "I'm a total melody person, (and that's) one thing that seems to be missing from the charts - but the stuff you can get from checking this new music out, production values and so forth, are important. So by almost anyone's estimation, the artistic level of songwriting has not exactly ascended in the last three decades, a point Webb underscores by quoting several colleagues: "Like a Virgin" may have been a big moneymaker for Madonna, for instance, but don't expect Tori Amos to be covering it any time soon. Whether one applauds or detests this development, it's obviously bad news for anyone who writes sublime songs but sings poorly, as most "pure songwriters" do (to use Webb's term).īecause performers who write their own music tend to tailor it to their own voices, personalities and esthetic idiosyncrasies, they're not generally penning classics that will be reinterpreted by others through the ages. The rise of rap in the '80s and '90s underscored the point, with the new stars reciting autobiographical, urban poetry rather than singing expertly written melody.
At roughly the same time, trends in pop music started to lean increasingly toward aggressive dance rhythms and away from sublime melody. He also offers phone numbers for toll-free crisis hotlines and emergency financial aid.īut the unprecedented popularity of The Beatles, beginning in the mid-'60s, unofficially marked the ascendance of the singer-songwriter, with bands and solo acts writing and performing their own material.
After providing tips on how to build a chord and choose a rhyming dictionary, for instance, Webb documents mental breakdowns, bouts of depression and cases of suicide among friends and colleagues. Though he clearly conceived the book as a kind of primer for budding songwriters, its thrust could persuade aspiring tunesmiths to consider opening a vein.
Yet in a widely anticipated and surprisingly dark new tome, "Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting" (Hyperion), Webb all but despairs for the fate of his chosen profession. He remains a revered name in the pantheon of pop songwriters of the past 30 years, the high craft of his music and lyrics routinely earning him mention in the same breath as Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Burt Bacharach, Sting, Carly Simon and comparably esteemed writers. Jimmy Webb once was that newly arrived phenom, at 21 the owner of the first of several Grammys and a composer-lyricist who would write a remarkable string of hits, including "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Up, Up and Away," "Wichita Lineman," "MacArthur Park," "Galveston," "Highwayman" and others.
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