Singer-songwriter
A singer-songwriter is a musician who writes, composes, and performs their own musical material, including lyrics and melodies. In the United States, this category is built on the folk-acoustic tradition with a guitar,[1] although this role has transmuted through different eras of popular music. Traditionally, these musicians would write and sing songs personal to them. Singer-songwriters often provide the sole musical accompaniment to an entire song. The piano is also an instrument of choice.
Biography
[edit]The label "singer-songwriter" (or "song-writer/singer"[2]) is used by record labels and critics to define popular music artists who write and perform their own material, which is often self-accompanied – generally on acoustic guitar or piano.[3] Such an artist performs the roles of composer, lyricist, vocalist, sometimes instrumentalist, and often self-manager.[4] According to AllMusic, singer-songwriters' lyrics are often personal but veiled by elaborate metaphors and vague imagery, and their creative concern is to place emphasis on the song rather than on their performance of it. Most records by such artists have a similarly straightforward and spare sound that places emphasis on the song itself.[5]
The term may also characterise songwriters in the rock, folk, country, and pop-music genres – including Henry Russell (1812–1900), Aristide Bruant (1851–1925), Hank Williams (1923–1953), and Buddy Holly (1936–1959). The phrase "singer-songwriter", recorded from 1949,[6] came into popular usage from the 1960s onwards[7] to describe songwriters who followed particular stylistic and thematic conventions, particularly lyrical introspection, confessional songwriting, mild musical arrangements, and an understated performing style.[8] According to writer Larry David Smith, because it merged the roles of composer, writer, and singer, the popularity of the singer-songwriter phenomenon reintroduced the Medieval troubadour tradition of "songs with public personalities" after the Tin Pan Alley era in American popular music.[9] Song topics of singer-songwriters from the American folk music revival include political protest, as in the case of Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) and Pete Seeger (1919–2014).[10] According to the
Journal of Popular Music Studies, from the folk revival and onward into its permanence in pop music, the role of a singer-songwriter has involved several dimensions of creative identity:
The first aesthetic layer encourages songwriters to sing and perform their own works and to instill their own stylistic flavors into the song texts. The songwriters are not independent from the works once they are finished; rather, they enter into, activate, and authenticate the song texts through their vocal and musical performances. While the first layer does not always require the singer to be the songwriter, the second sociological layer not only fixates on the relationship between singer and songwriter (in this case, singer-songwriter is often hyphenated instead of using a slash between singer and songwriter), but also solicits more sociological agency aside from singing and songwriting, such as arranging, mixing, producing, collaborating, and media management. In other words, a singer-songwriter thus undergoes a thickening process involving two-layered voices, including performing stylistic persona, amassing other voices, and coordinating other sociological skills. This thickening process demonstrates the fluid, multiple, and heterogeneous voices underneath the singular authorial image, thus complicating the notion of authorship for singer-songwriters.[11]
History
[edit]
The concept of a singer-songwriter can be traced to ancient bardic oral tradition, which has existed in various forms throughout the world. Poems would be performed as chant or song, sometimes accompanied by a harp or other similar instrument. After the invention of printing, songs would be written and performed by ballad sellers. Usually these would be versions of existing tunes and lyrics, which were constantly evolving. This developed into the singer-songwriting traditions of folk culture.
Traveling performers existed throughout Europe. Thus, the folklorist Anatole Le Braz gives a detailed account of one ballad singer, Yann Ar Minouz, who wrote and performed songs traveling through Brittany in the late nineteenth century and selling printed versions.[12]
In large towns it was possible to make a living performing in public venues, and with the invention of phonographic recording, early singer-songwriters like Théodore Botrel, George M. Cohan, and Hank Williams became celebrities; radio further added to their public recognition and appeal. The growth of recorded music and radio also provided singer-songwriters with additional ways to distribute their performances and reach audiences beyond local venues.
During the period from the 1940s through the 1960s, sparked by the American folk music revival, young performers inspired by traditional folk music and groups like the Almanac Singers and the Weavers began writing and performing their own original material and creating their own musical arrangements.[13]
In the early 21st century, the digital audio workstation GarageBand has been utilized by many aspiring singer-songwriters to compose and record music.[14] Singer-songwriters who have composed music professionally with GarageBand include Erykah Badu (for her 2008 album New Amerykah Part One)[15] and Bilal (for his 2010 album Airtight's Revenge).[16]
Traditions in different countries
[edit]North America, United Kingdom, and Ireland
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The term "singer-songwriter" in North America can be traced back to singers who developed works in the blues and folk music style. Early to mid-20th century American singer-songwriters include Lead Belly,[17] Jimmie Rodgers,[18] Blind Lemon Jefferson,[19] T-Bone Walker,[20] Blind Willie McTell,[21] Lightnin' Hopkins,[22] Son House,[23] and Robert Johnson.[24][25] In the 1940s and 1950s country singer-songwriters like Hank Williams became well known,[26] as well as Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger,[27] along with Ronnie Gilbert and Lee Hays and other members of the Weavers who performed their mostly topical works to an ever-growing wider audience.[28] These proto-singer-songwriters were less concerned than today's singer-songwriters with the unadulterated originality of their music and lyrics, and would lift parts from other songs and play covers without hesitation. The tradition of writing topical songs (songs regarding specific issues of the day, such as Lead Belly's "Jim Crow Blues" or Guthrie's "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)") was established by this group of musicians. Singers like Seeger and Guthrie would attend rallies for labor unions, and so wrote many songs concerning the life of the working classes, and social protest; as did other folksingers like Josh White, Cisco Houston, Malvina Reynolds, Earl Robinson, Ewan MacColl, John Jacob Niles, and Doc Watson, while blues singers like Johnson and Hopkins wrote songs about their personal life experiences. This focus on social issues has greatly influenced the singer-songwriter genre. Additionally in the 1930s through the 1950s several jazz and blues singer-songwriters emerged like Hoagy Carmichael, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Harry Gibson, Peggy Lee, and Nina Simone, as well as in the rock n' roll genre from which emerged influential singer-songwriters Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, Sam Cooke, Ritchie Valens, and Paul Anka. In the country music field, singer-songwriters like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Roger Miller, Billy Edd Wheeler, and others emerged from the 1940s through the 1960s, often writing compelling songs about love relationships and other subjects.
The first popular recognition of the singer-songwriter in English-speaking North America and the United Kingdom occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s when a series of blues, folk and country-influenced musicians rose to prominence and popularity. These singer-songwriters included Bob Dylan, Neil Young, John Lennon, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Albert Hammond, Gordon Lightfoot, and Joni Mitchell. Artists who had been primarily songwriters, notably Carole King, Townes Van Zandt, and Neil Diamond, also began releasing work as performers. In contrast to the storytelling approach of most prior country and folk music, these performers typically wrote songs from a highly personal (often first-person), introspective point of view. The adjectives "confessional" and "sensitive" were often used (sometimes derisively) to describe singer-songwriter style.
In the rock band era, members were not technically singer-songwriters as solo acts. However, many were singer-songwriters who created songs with other band members. Examples include Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, Elton John (with Bernie Taupin), Justin Hayward, John Lodge, Robbie Robertson, Ian Anderson, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Peter Frampton, Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Country Joe McDonald, and Barry Melton. Many others like Eric Clapton found success as singer-songwriters in their later careers.
The scene that had developed out of the American folk music revival, pioneered by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger had grown to a major movement in the early 1960s, popularized by Joan Baez and her protégée, Bob Dylan, who had started reaching a mainstream audience with his hit, Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) bringing "protest songs" to a wider audience.[29] There were hints of cross-pollination, but rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with different audiences.[30] An early attempt at fusing elements of folk and rock was highlighted in the Animals "House of the Rising Sun" (1964), a folk song, recorded with rock and roll instrumentation.[31]
By the mid-1960s Bob Dylan took the lead in merging folk and rock, and in July 1965, released "Like a Rolling Stone", with a revolutionary rock sound, steeped in tawdry urban imagery, followed by an electric performance later that month at the Newport Folk Festival. Dylan plugged an entire generation into the milieu of the singer-songwriter. Often writing from an urban point of view, with poetry punctuated by rock rhythms and electric power, Dylan's fusing of folk and rock freed up emerging singer-songwriters to use elements of both traditions to tell their stories. In the mid- to late 1960s, bands and singer-songwriters began to proliferate the underground New York art/music scene. The release of The Velvet Underground & Nico in 1967, featuring singer-songwriter Lou Reed and German singer and collaborator Nico was described as the "most prophetic rock album ever made" by Rolling Stone in 2003.[32][33]
In the late '60s a new wave of female singer-songwriters broke from the confines of pop, using the urban landscape as their canvas for lyrics in the confessional style of poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. These pioneering women, appeared in a feature in Newsweek, July 1969, "The Girls: Letting Go: 'What is common to them – to Joni Mitchell and Lotti Golden, to Laura Nyro, Melanie, and to Elyse Weinberg, are the personalised songs they write, like voyages of self-discovery, brimming with keen observation and startling in the impact of their poetry."[34] In The Guardian, author Laura Barton describes the radical shift in subject matter—they sang about politics, love affairs, the urban landscape, drugs, disappointment, and the life and loneliness of the itinerant performer.[35] Lotti Golden, in her Atlantic debut album Motor-Cycle, chronicled her life in NYC's East Village in the late 1960s counterculture, visiting subjects such as gender identity (The Space Queens-Silky is Sad) and excessive drug use (Gonna Fay's). The women in the 1969 Newsweek article ushered in a new age of the contemporary female singer-songwriter that has informed generations of women singer-songwriters into the 21st century,[35] with poet Warsan Shire as the muse for Beyoncé's 2016 album Lemonade.[36]
By the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the original wave of singer-songwriters had largely been absorbed into a more general pop or soft rock format, but some new artists in the singer-songwriter tradition (including Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, Chris Isaak, Victoria Williams, John Mellencamp, and Warren Zevon) continued to emerge, and in other cases rock and even punk rock artists such as Peter Case, Paul Collins, and Paul Westerberg transitioned to careers as solo singer-songwriters.