| Expensive guitars don’t write better songs |
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City Girls' Yung Miami on the BET Hip Hop Awards, October 2020.
(Getty Images)
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“Expensive guitars don’t write better songs”
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Word Up
CAMEO but for songs, you say? OK! Here are the songs "ADAM GREEN" and "INDIEPOP LIST" from MOMUS' 1999 album STARS FOREVER, which consisted of songs named for patrons who paid $1,000 each for the right to have Momus write and sing a song about them. The waggish Scottish singer/songwriter sold slots on the album to the first 30 bidders, which included fans, fellow artists and an assortment of entities that ran in the same indie-pop circles, like, for example, the email list that sponsored the second song in the previous sentence. There's a lot of talk in the music biz these days about the desirability of direct-to-fan transactions. This was that, two decades ago. The $30,000 in patronage money didn't fund the album, as you might have suspected; instead, it helped pay the legal fees incurred when WENDY CARLOS, the electronic music pioneer, sued Momus for an earlier song he wrote about her, that one unsolicited and unwelcome. Either way, an artist needed money, he had fans willing to pay, he went directly to them, and they got an amazing and unique souvenir. No intermediary or platform needed. If you're an artist, you can do this yourself tomorrow.
A personalized song startup called SONGFINCH is in the news after raising $2 million from investors including the WEEKND, his manager SAL SLAIBY and ATLANTIC RECORDS CEO CRAIG KALLMAN for what's essentially the platform version of that Momus album. For $199, you tell Songfinch what you want your song to be about and what genre and mood it should be; Songfinch promises to deliver a song with two verses and repeated choruses (you can buy an additional verse for a little more money), written to your specifications, within a week. The artist and the service split the money 50/50 and the artist keeps the copyright. So, kinda sorta Cameo for songs. And kinda sorta not. You won't find any B-list celebs on here, which I thought was Cameo's entire attraction. And the songwriters have to work for their money. Even if they're just plugging customized lyrics into a pre-written, pre-recorded template, that's a lot more effort than, say, SARAH PALIN riffing about your girlfriend or boyfriend for 2 or 3 minutes. A hundred bucks seems low for that. So, maybe POSTMATES for songs? One more way for struggling songwriters to jump into the gig economy for (they no doubt hope) a little while?
Co-founder JOHN WILLIAMSON seems to understand the risk of this being a short-lived novelty thing—pet rock songs, if you will—and he's pushing the idea of Songfinch as a service for emotions and memories (HALLMARK for music?), as well as a way for artists/writers to connect with a new kind of audience. The Rolling Stone piece, by ETHAN MILLMAN, that I've linked to here is a good overview of the basic idea. Trapital's DAN RUNCIE sees a long game where the songwriters become personalities who can set their own rates and create a legit new income stream, and in which Songfinch becomes a Cameo acquisition target. I'm a lot more skeptical. But as a famous songwriter-for-hire once said (I hope RANDY NEWMAN got more than 100 bucks for this one), I've been wrong before.
Plus Also Too
SONY MUSIC PUBLISHING has joined its recorded-music cousin, SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, in writing off unrecouped debts for most songwriters it signed before the year 2000... The NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS' 2022 Jazz Masters are singer CASSANDRA WILSON, bassist STANLEY CLARKE, drummer BILLY HART and saxophonist (and NOTORIOUS B.I.G. mentor) DONALD HARRISON JR.... TAYLOR SWIFT won't submit her re-recorded version of FEARLESS for GRAMMY or CMA award consideration, presumably so as not to compete with herself. Her label, REPUBLIC, made clear in announcing the news that the pop star's late-2020 album EVERMORE will be prepared to accept any nominations and awards that might come its way... DAMON DASH swears he isn't violating a court order by putting his one-third ownership in ROC-A-FELLA INC. up for auction via an NFT gallery; on the contrary, he says, he's honoring the order. This chapter in the ongoing dispute between Dash and JAY-Z is a confusing mess I don't pretend to fully grasp, but if I was in the NFT business and I was trying to sell artists on the appeal of token transactions, I'd be begging Dash to reconsider using the format to trade a business partnership with an artist who's adamantly opposed to the transaction.
Rest in Peace
LITHOFAYNE PRIDGON, songwriter, muse to musicians including Jimi Hendrix and Sam Cooke, possible inspiration for Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" and, in the words of musician and critic Greg Tate, "nobody's concubine"... Prolific music video director MARTIN KAHAN, whose oeuvre of rock and country clips included the first videos Kiss made without makeup... Mezzo-soprano JEAN KRAFT... Longtime Metropolitan Opera lighting designer GIL WECHSLER.
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Directed by Morgan Neville, with no deepfake voices :)
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everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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| CEO & Chief Curator |
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