Sunday 15 September 2002

I wrote this song for you



Madonna
There's a song swap going on in pop right now that's about to get out of hand. This week Atomic Kitten released their second album, Feels So Good, with a title track co-written by Kylie. In turn, Kylie's new single, Come Into My World, due out in November, could have a B-side called Alone Again penned specially for her by Madonna. Meanwhile, Madge's next hit was supposed to have come courtesy of Daniel Bedingfield, but - possibly having heard his album - she ditched the idea, and he is at work instead on a comeback track for Mariah Carey. Bedingfield said recently that he would like to work with Darius, although the Popstars reject is already hawking some of his own songs around.

"I see myself as much a writer as a singer," says Bedingfield. "I have lots of tracks that didn't go on my album because they were too diverse. I made a list of artists I'd like to write for, including Barry White, Sting and Ms Dynamite."

When pop began its comeback in the mid-Nineties, there was a division between songwriters and singers. All it took to have a big hit was a Svengali manager to put the two together. By far the most successful songwriting/production team was Stargate, a trio of Norwegians who had Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, N*Sync and Backstreet Boys on their books. But last year Stargate decided that they were sick of production-line pop and wanted to be seen as serious songwriters. So they turned themselves into a band (with the addition of a couple of singers).

Thanks partly to Popstars and Pop Idol, singers suddenly want more respect, too. Now that the process of having a hit has been made public, even kids know that there's nothing that special about pop stars; they've just got a good team behind them. Co-writing your own songs won't cut it, however. Fans don't believe that bands ever do more than change a few words. Look at A1. No one cared that they wrote a handful of No 1 hits, but when the boys were asked to send some songs to Michael Jackson, it made them look like a proper group.

There's something about writing for other artists that gives even the flimsiest pop star some gravitas. For a start, it suggests the star has a brain and that he understands music, which most of them don't. It also says that he doesn't spend all his spare time at parties and premieres, trying to get his picture in the papers. In Bedingfield's case, writing for Mariah Carey means tapping into other markets, especially as he's hoping to record his song with her as a duet. Bedingfield has already had a US hit with Gotta Get Thru This; now he needs to prove he's a singer with staying power.

There's the money too - writing a song earns you a lot more than singing it. Madonna, of course, doesn't need the dosh, but she could do with a bit of Kylie's street cred. What's more, with Kylie being touted as her successor in the States, Madonna is smart to keep her rival close at hand. Were Madonna not so wealthy, her gift of a song might be seen as sign of an impending end to her singing career. Lots of pop stars keep the cash rolling in long after they have stopped recording by writing for other artists.

Cathy Dennis will probably be remembered as much for co-writing Kylie's multi-award-winning Can't Get You Out of My Head as for her own chart career, even though she was the top-selling British artist in the US at the start of the Nineties. Dennis was discovered in the mid-Eighties by Popstars creator Simon Fuller, for whom she now works full-time, writing tracks for the likes of Hear'Say and S Club 7. But if Dennis can knock off songs like Can't Get You Out of My Head - which she claims took only an hour to write - why didn't she come up with some killer hits for herself? Sometimes, it seems, being an artist and a songwriter at the same time is tricky.

The much-touted Stargate band is a good example. Having reeled off dozens of global No 1s for other artists, the Norwegians didn't even make the UK Top 30 with their own debut, Easier Said Than Done, released last month. Similarly, when the Atlanta-based producers the Neptunes - who have written hits for Britney, P Diddy, Busta Rhymes and Mary J. Blige - released their own album under the monicker NERD, they scraped into the charts.

The most surprising ex-pop star-turned-songwriter of the year so far must be Linda Perry, formerly the screechy singer in the US rock group 4 Non Blondes. When it was revealed that Pink had asked Perry to write and produce her second album, M!ssundaztood, most people thought it was a mistake. But Perry turned Pink from an R&B babe into a pop-rock chick, and sent her career soaring. So well has M!ssundaztood sold that both Courtney Love and Christina Aguilera have now hired Perry to work on their next records.

We'll have to wait and see if Mariah records Bedingfield's song and if Madonna bows out of the pop game with grace by becoming a full-time writer. Meanwhile, they might want to stick to what they're best at.

(Times Online)



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