You’re Only Singing When You’re Blowing Bubbles

The song ‘Guantanamera’ achieved popularity rapidly and it has spread far and wide. On a more modest scale, the same thing is happening with some thoughts I raised about the numerous versions of the song that are sung by football fans. In September I pointed towards an article written by Katia Chornik for the Spanish BBC website that drew upon comments that I made in an email conversation thread and which also formed a blog entry. Yesterday, Katia had another article published about the song. This one appears in the Economist and it too features some of my thoughts.

            My basic thesis about why some songs become and remain football chants remains the same: ‘Songs must have a great tune that has captured the public’s imagination and that they lend themselves to public singing. What is also important is how songs lend themselves to lyrics. The ones that achieve traction tend to be adaptable to short phrases’.

            However, what is true about adaptive football chants – the songs that are used by fans of numerous teams – is less true about club theme songs. These can have more extensive and less pliable lyrics. Think of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, which is sung by Liverpool fans fairly straight. The team that I support, West Bromwich Albion, has a slightly adapted version of Psalm 23 as its theme. Legend has it that it was adopted at a Sunday fixture in the 1970s (when games played on a Sunday were not the norm) and a hymn sheet was found on the terraces. West Brom fans always sing the words in the same way and they are not taken up and adapted by fans of other teams.

            Earlier this year I came across another inviolate theme song. West Brom were playing away at the Olympic Stadium in London. As I walked around the ground I found some curiously downbeat words inscribed on the entry doors. First up was the phrase ‘Fortune’s always hiding’. The next doors had ‘Then like my dreams they fade and die’. After reading this, I felt confident that my team would beat the home side, West Ham. It was only with the next words’ ‘They fly so high, nearly reach the sky’ that I realized I was reading ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’, the club’s theme, backwards. That said, the song isn’t any more positive the right way around. When heard at matches, however, its lilting communal refrain disguises the pessimism of the verse. Moreover, as it is a song that has not been adopted by other clubs, most outsiders only know the title lines anyway, which can appear to be about childish wonder rather than perishable dreams. Still, it says something about the realism of West Ham that they don’t shy away from its true sentiment.

            The club’s fans have been singing ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ since the 1920s. It was first adopted in honour of their player Billy J. ‘Bubbles’ Murray, who bore a resemblance to the famous Pears’ Soap advert of the time. The World Cup started yesterday. How many dreams will have faded and died by the end?

Baby, You're a Firework

Everyone loves fireworks. On Saturday night I went to the huge display at Alexandra Palace, an annual event that is prompted by the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’ attack on British parliament, albeit that Fawkes and politics are curiously absent from the celebrations these days. There were thousands of people there. It was one of those rare occasions where you see a true cross-section of London’s population: all ages, all sexes, all sexualities, all nationalities, all races and all faiths. There’s a problem with fireworks displays, though. The first explosions are always astonishing, but how do you sustain attention over a 20-minute set? It can all start to seem a bit tedious and wasteful. At worst you feel like Aimee Mann in her song '4th of July', which commemorates America's fireworks night: ‘Today's the fourth of July / Another June has gone by / And when they light up our town I just think / What a waste of gunpowder and sky’. You know that there will be a climax at some point, but climaxing is about the only thing that fireworks know how to do.

            There is an answer to this fireworks conundrum. Why not try dancing to them? Dancing is always interesting. It can be enhanced, further still, by visual effects. The Alexandra Palace festival was sound-tracked by DJ Yoda. He was brilliant, weaving together short bursts of music from a large array of genres. He was also thoroughly modern with his faith in the past. Yoda knows the musical state of play. After 15 years of downloading services and a decade of Spotify, there is an audience that knows a huge amount of music and is open to all types. You can play anything from any era as long as it’s good and it’s right. And so we had songs drawn from the 1950s to the present day, and from styles as diverse as hip-hop, folk music, trance, post-punk, jazz-funk, soul, movie soundtracks and mainstream pop. We danced to Deodato’s version of Also Sprach Zarathustra and we danced to the Beastie Boys’ ‘Intergalactic’. The biggest hits of the night were a remix of the Weavers’ ‘Wimoweh’ from 1952 (a song, it seems, that we have all grown up with) and a brilliant segue of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ (from 1983) into Rihanna’s 2011 hit ‘We Found Love’ (the trance clichés of this track are irresistible). Of course the whole thing ended with Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’. Except it didn’t. There was an encore sequenced to ‘Feelin’ Good’, Nina Simone’s classic from 1964. These are great times to be a DJ. And they are great times for explosive dance.  

Mapping Beyoncé's 'Hold Up'

When I first heard Beyoncé’s Lemonade I thought we were entering a new age of sophistication when it comes to sampling. Not only are the sampled tracks musically appropriate, they are thematically appropriate too. On this album of infidelity and heartbreak we hear excerpts of ‘Can’t Get Used to Losing You’ by Andy Williams, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' pleading ‘Maps’, and Isaac Hayes’ version of ‘Walk on By’, in which we find another protagonist who ‘can’t get over losing you’. There’s a whole lot of signifying going on.

            It would seem that the use of samples is more contingent, however. Take ‘Hold Up’, which incorporates the sample from Williams and the interpolation from ‘Maps’. This song has a complicated genesis and was not originally intended for Beyoncé. In fact, it began as nothing more than a Tweet, which was sent in 2011 by Ezra Koenig, the singer of Vampire Weekend. He paraphrased ‘Maps’, writing to his followers, ‘hold up . . . they don’t love u like i love u’.

            Three years later, Koenig was invited by the producer Diplo to contribute hooks to some loops. One of these loops featured the introduction to ‘Can’t Get Used to Losing You’. The recording was of interest to Diplo for its kitsch ska rhythm, rather than for its lyrical content. Koenig thought back to his Tweet. He introduced a new melody to his reworking of ‘Maps’. He also added a supplementary, Biblical refrain: ‘can’t you see there’s no other god above you, what a wicked way to treat the man who loves you’. Beyoncé heard this version. Koenig’s lyrics were changed to ‘no other man above you, what a wicked way to treat the girl I love you’. He has stated that ‘from there a lot of other people got involved in writing the verses, things changed, but essentially the hook stayed the same’. Even so, he was still not sure if it would make Beyoncé’s album or if he would use it instead as a Vampire Weekend song.

            It did appear on Lemonade. In the process ‘Hold Up’ was transformed. Koenig has stated, ‘The idea that those words now are contextualised by this album, by the video, by her as a performer and curator, I like it  . . . 99% of the world will always hear those words and associate it with Beyoncé now. And that makes sense . . . I wrote this hook - of course I feel some sense of ownership over what I did - but it doesn’t feel like my song, she really did bring a deeper resonance and meaning to it’. She brings new significance to the Williams sample as well. So maybe the use of those sources is not so contingent after all.

            Although Koenig now views ‘Hold Up’ as Beyoncé’s song, this is not the story told by the songwriting credits. She has had to split the royalties with 11 other writers, including Koenig and Diplo. Moreover, it has been claimed that the contemporary songwriters get minor shares in the work, while the authors of the sample and the interpolation get the majority income. From this perspective, Beyoncé is not creating a new work; she is instead giving us her version of two old ones.

            The generous shares for Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus, the writers of ‘Can’t Get Used to Losing You’, are understandable. Diplo’s loop of this recording is used for the duration of ‘Hold Up’; it is the musical bedrock of the entire track. Their credits also follow standard sampling practice: if a recording is used prominently, its songwriters will be rewarded handsomely.

            The use of ‘Maps’ is different, however. Although Beyoncé credits it as an interpolation, it is arguable that this really is the case. There is no use of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ melody or of the feel of the track. The only thing taken is the paraphrased lyrics. These were written by the band’s singer, Karen O, but due to American joint authorship rules each member of the group receives royalties for their re-use in ‘Hold Up’. But why do they receive anything at all? ‘Hold Up’ takes eight fairly commonplace words.

One reason is that their origin can be traced. Koenig’s Tweet and his openness about the genesis of ‘Hold Up’ have made it clear that the words were taken from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' song. A second is that American writers are becoming increasing litigious in this area, as the various accusations against the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’ attest. Ultimately, in crediting ‘Maps’, Beyoncé and her team have taken heed of the old adage that where there’s a hit there’s a writ.

There is one final quirk of copyright law. If ‘Maps’ has been called ‘They Don’t Love You Like I Love You’, the re-use of these words would probably have escaped without charge. It is not possible to copyright titles. Hence, Calvin Harris and the Disciples’ ‘How Deep is Your Love?’ does not credit the Bee Gees, and Justin Timberlake’s ‘Cry Me a River’ does not credit the Julie London song. It is also the case that ‘Hold Up’ does not credit previous songs that have used the same title. In addition, future songs called ‘Hold Up’ will not have to credit Beyoncé’s either. That’s as long as their usage is restricted to these words. If they sample Beyoncé’s recording, however, they will have to credit ‘Hold Up’ and all the other works it includes. We will end up with a recording with vast songwriting credits. Post-structuralists will be happy too. There will be multiple resonances. Listeners will variously recall Beyoncé, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Andy Williams, Mort Shuman, Doc Pomus, Ezra Koenig, Diplo and more. Bring on the endless play of signifiers!

Believe It, Chant It, Wear It

I visited Hull at the weekend. It is a great place and is highly deserving of its role as UK City of Culture 2017. Hull has a strong artistic history, it has an interesting contemporary network of artists and musicians, and it deserves a leg up.

            Being there reminded me of a recent email conversation thread amongst the members of IASPM. The subject was football chants, in particular the many reuses of ‘Guantanemera’. The opening participant wanted to know how this song came to the attention of football fans.

            The answer appears to be relatively straightforward. British fans probably adopted and adapted the song after hearing the 1966 hit recording by the Sandpipers. There have been many great variations on the theme. The most famous is probably ‘you’re only singing when you’re winning’, but my favourite mentioned by the respondents was a version sung by Spurs fans when Man City visited White Hart Lane in 2009. Liam Gallagher was in a corporate box. He stood up and made gestures at the home supporters. In response, they sang ‘you’re just a shit Chas and Dave’. Gallagher was unusually gracious. He applauded the Spurs fans and sat down.

            My own contribution to the thread was to raise another point. Rather than considering how do songs become football chants, what we perhaps need to ask is why do some songs remain football chants. Football fans are always utilising hit records, but only a few of these will enter the canon of great chanting songs that are used by fans of all teams. A musicologist would be better placed than me to explain why, but it is clear that the successes need to have great tunes that have captured the public’s imagination and that they lend themselves to public singing. It also appears to work best if they have short phrases that can be sung in loops. Lyric settings are important too. The tunes that last tend to be adaptable to short phrases (usually fewer than 10 words, chanted over and over – no rhymes allowed!). They are also adaptable to different phrases: it is key that different fans can use different sets of words.

‘Guantanamera’ fulfils each of these criteria, taking its place alongside such hardy perennials as ‘Tom Hark’, ‘The Conga’, ‘Go West’, ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag’ and the chimes of Big Ben. The repetitiveness of its original lyrics also serves as a guideline for the chanted adaptations. 

And there is another reason for its success. The most memorable and impassioned singing at football matches usually comes from away fans. This is particularly the case when a small team is playing away to a big team, and comes into even greater focus when the away team is losing. The home team can be ahead in terms of the score line, but the away team can claim victory in terms of the passion and volume of the fans’ singing. ‘Guantanamera’, in its ‘you’re only singing when you’re winning’ incarnation, is perhaps the key song for this scenario.

Hull City have their own twist on this. The team is currently languishing in the relegation zone of the Premier League; they are underdogs even when they play at home. Their fans have come up with the most self-deprecating of ‘Guantanamera’ rewrites. This season they have been chanting ‘you’re only here for the culture’. It works particularly well when they are playing elite London teams. The phrase has become so popular that you can buy it on a t-shirt. What is more, it’s being sold by the official Hull City of Culture website, rather than by the football team. Culture eats football eats pop.

From Where to Despair?

Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Hot Chocolate's 'It Started With a Kiss' have much in common. Hamlet is brilliant and yet there is something wrong with it. T.S. Eliot put his finger on it: ‘Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear’. For Eliot any emotion in a work of art must have an ‘objective correlative’, i.e. if a character is feeling something strongly, the reasons for that feeling must be found in the work of art itself. He outlines ‘a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion’.

            And so to Hot Chocolate. ‘It Started With a Kiss’ starts out simply enough. Errol Brown sings the verses in his sweetest voice. We are taken back to his youth; he is stealing kisses with a girl in the back row of a classroom. The two of them promise to marry, but she is only eight years old and he has just turned nine. In a later verse they reach the ages of sixteen and seventeen respectively. The tune is still sweet, even though Brown realises that he can no longer hold on to her love. The choruses take us from these childhood memories right up until the present day. The music is lilting, numbing us to the slight foreboding in the lyrics. ‘It started with a kiss’, Brown trills; ‘I never thought it would come to this’.

            Nothing prepares us for what follows. ‘YOU DON’T REMEMBER ME, DO YOU! YOU DON’T REMEMBER ME, DO YOU! YOU DON’T REMEMBER ME, DO YOU! The tune jolts suddenly and there is utter despair. Brown is so in excess of the facts that you worry about his state of mind. You hope to dear god that no one has left a bare bodkin lying around.

            There is a difference between Hamlet and ‘It Started With a Kiss’, though. What spoils Shakespeare’s play makes the Hot Chocolate song. In fact, one of the great pleasures of popular music is when an objective does not correlate. It is the strange gaps in songs that give the listener room to enter in.

I’ve been there, Errol. I’ve been there.

London, I Love You

Despite the tragedies of Brexit, London remains wonderfully diverse. On Saturday night I travelled from my home in Wood Green to the depths of the south. Wood Green is like London was 25 years ago. It is knee-deep in litter. It has the kind of roughness that Lori McKenna celebrates in her song ‘BuyThis Town’. (McKenna’s song is one I always misremember. In my head the lyrics go: ‘maybe one day, I’ll have enough, to buy this town and keep it rough’.)

            From Wood Green I went to Brixton, a gentrified area that Wood Green could perhaps mimic 25 years from now. And from Brixton I went to Dulwich, which is like the village green preservation society. There is no litter at all.

            While there, I was among friends harking back to a song that used to obsess us, Donaeo’s ‘African Warrior’. This song is hilarious and brilliant and profound, perhaps the best combination of qualities that pop music can gather. It is one that I remember correctly: ‘I’m an African warrior, rolling with my stick in my hand’. On so many levels, I should not relate to this. But I do. It should not sound right in Dulwich, but it does. And that is why I love this town. 

Europe ... end ... less

Every now and again I DJ at the National Portrait Gallery in London. There is only one song that I always play: Kraftwerk’s ‘Europe Endless’. Each time I play it the song takes on a different hue. I have played it in support of the Greek fight against the austerity programme, and last year I played at as the refugee crisis reached one of its peaks. It is a song that resonates with people. The melody is uplifting and it contains all the promise of a European union. The song is nine minutes long, but aside from the repeated title there are only a dozen or so words. They nevertheless say all you need to know about Europe’s grandeur and its facade: ‘parks, hotels and palaces, promenades and avenues, real life and postcard views, elegance and decadence’. Usually someone will come up to me and say ‘what is this?’, or they will probe me with their Shazam. The last time I played 'Europe Endless' things were different, however. It was only two weeks ago. For once, the song was ignored. People talked all over it and it couldn’t get itself heard. I guess this was a sign.

The Sonic Reducer

As the universe expands, so do genres. They splinter and they grow. Or at least that’s one way of telling their story. Genres also reduce. The pioneers in any given field usually draw upon a variety of influences while their followers’ focus on their most stereotypical features. We can witness this in heavy metal. Black Sabbath had strong blues, folk and beat music influences, but these elements were strained out by their successors. In punk too, the second and third waves of bands were generally content to draw upon the Ramones ‘buzz-saw’ blueprint while ignoring the Ramones’ wider influences, such as girl groups at the Osmonds. Something similar is happening with EDM. Disco, electro, gospel and Krautrock each fed into the house music of the 1980s, but modern dance music seems to look no further than Faithless and Sash!  A similar reduction is present in lyric writing. The Beatles drew on the Goon Show and Lewis Carroll; the Smiths incorporated Oscar Wilde and Shelagh Delany. Their successors merely draw on Lennon and Morrissey.

            I’m not alone in feeling this way. In his recent book Electric Shock, Peter Doggett also makes complaints about heavy metal. He has bands such as Metallica in mind when stating that ‘Where old metal swaggered, new metal lumbered, lurched, ground its opponents beneath its tank tracks – remorseless, crushing, nihilistic’; adding that ‘In its refusal to employ syncopation or any other traits associated with African-American genres, it signalled its alienation from decades of popular music’.

            This mention of decades should make us pause for thought. Sometimes it can feel as though bands such as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin were reaching back to ancient precursors. They had mythical figures such as Robert Johnson in their fingertips. But what is the gap between Johnson’s recordings and the first records by these bands? It is about 30 years.

The gap between new metal and old metal stretches at least as far as this. The 40^th anniversary celebrations of punk are being prepared. Alarmingly, house music is now at least 30 years old. Why does the gap between old metal and the acoustic blues seem longer than this? One answer is that it spans a greater cultural, technological and musical divide. Could it be that there was simply more going on in the 30-year period between 1936 and 1966 than there has been between 1986 and today? Another answer is that the sonic reducer has always been in place, but we’re more likely to see it in operation when we consider the successors to the music that we grew up with, than we are when we address the precursors to our first great musical loves. I have no doubt that old metal, early punk and Chicago house were each accused of simplification, reduction and betrayal in their time. The musical universe has always advanced by reduction. 

Copyright is Odd

For a long time I’ve had an interest in the value accorded to lyrics and to lyricists. As part of my investigations, I have done some work on joint- and co-authorship rules. Different countries have different policies regarding the coming together of words and music in the form of a song. Some regard lyrics and composition as forming an act of joint authorship, while others consider them to be separate. The UK has changed from the latter to the former. In 2013 an amendment was made to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, recognising works of co-authorship.

            These decisions can matter. Co-authorship has meant that the term of copyright for lyrics or music has been lengthened for some songs. Joint authorship can safeguard a lyricist’s share of copyright when an instrumental or foreign language version is made of their song.

            On Wednesday I gave a talk about this subject at Birkbeck, contributing to a workshop on Copyright and Business Models in Music Publishing. It was a good event, attended by people from the industry alongside academics. One of my conclusions was that the UK’s new co-authorship rules have had little effect on the practices of contemporary songwriters, but that this is interesting in itself, as it is evidence of the fact that artists can find ways to circumvent copyright law. In summary, I stated that ‘music copyright is odd’. Stephanie Dales, who was representing the Intellectual Property Office at the event, picked up on this in her own talk. She said that she would alter one word, though. Her conclusion from working in the field of IP law is that all copyright is odd.

            You can access my paper here. 

Past Affordances

Morey and McIntyre are right (see 'Copyright Constraints and Royalty Affordances'): there are affordances within the copyright system. If we are equating affordances with leakiness, however, then the present is more leaky than the past. This is the case, at least, when it comes to working out songwriting splits. Current practice has expanded the definition of songwriting so that more contributors are receiving compositional shares. Authorship has expanded beyond lyricists and melodic composers: drummers, bassists, programmers and producers are now more regularly included in the splits.

            The past is different. Here it’s harder to give credit where credit might be due. In ‘The Creative Studio Practice’ Morey and McIntyre quote a number of artists who use samples regularly. What becomes clear from these artists’ comments is that when they search for samples they are not primarily focused on lyrics, melody and harmony – the traditional areas where songwriting ownership has been centred. They are instead more interested in musical arrangements. And within these arrangements, it is the work of the rhythm section that interests them the most. One of the artists talks of finding ‘a drum loop that’s amazing’; another mentions ‘tiny little loops of a little bass run or bongo loop or something like that’; a third talks of sampling musicians who ‘were fucking properly good’.

            As I have argued before, songwriting copyright has not always been fair to rhythm sections. In doing so I cited the same examples that Morey and McIntyre use: the ‘Funky Drummer’ and the ‘Amen’ break. This isn’t coincidental either: these are the classic cases of drumming injustice. When these recordings are sampled it is the drum breaks of Clyde Stubblefield and Gregory Coleman that people are after. Unfortunately for these drummers their rhythmic invention did not receive compositional credits. Consequently, they have not earned royalties when their breaks have been sampled. Morey and McIntyre argue that this is wrong and that the wrong people are being paid. They point out that the credited writers of these tracks ‘have little or no authorial input in the sections of music being used’.

While it’s great that contemporary artists are thinking more carefully about songwriting shares, and it’s also great that the copyright system is flexible enough to allow them to be ‘highly pragmatic when it comes to dividing the spoils of [their] creativity’, it’s hard to be wholly sanguine. This is because the system loses this flexibility when it comes the past. The credits on old songs seldom change. In fact, I can’t think of any old records whose credits have been changed in light of the fact that a break has been sampled. The judges in copyright cases are unlikely to give the drummer some. Instead, when it comes to old recordings, it is the writers of lyrics, melodies and harmonies who are finding affordances when it comes to sampling practice. They are the ones who are able to make claims for copyright infringement, even if it is the groove or the timbre of the recording that the samplers are after.

There are other areas in which the copyright system remains watertight.  Arrangers and producers are never going to receive compositional credits for cover versions. Consequently, Gregory Coleman will never get a songwriting credit for the Amen break and nor will the other members of his band: the Winstons’ record is a cover version of Jester Hairston’s ‘Amen’.

We cannot turn to songwriting credits alone to help sampled artists gain a better reward. However, there are possible other methods of redress. If we look again to Zac’s three compositional layers – the song, the musical arrangement, and the track – it can be argued that current copyright law does in fact reward the ‘authors’ of each of these components. In the European Union, it is not only songwriters who receive royalties each time a song is broadcast or purchased; the performers of the song (the ‘arrangers’ in Zac’s terminology) are also rewarded, as are the owners of the sound recording (the ‘track’).

In the UK the performance royalty that relates to sound recordings is collected and distributed by PPL. This organisation divides the income 50:50 between the owners of the sound recording and the performers who appear on the track. Within the performer share there are methods for proportioning income between ‘featured’ musicians (those who have been signed by the record company) and ‘non-featured’ musicians (such as session musicians and backing singers). The featured artists generally receive 65% of the performer royalties.

PPL also have methods for distributing performer royalties when tracks include samples. Their rules state that ‘all Performers on the Sampled Recording are included in the performer line-up of the Subsequent Sound Recording irrespective of which part of the Sampled Recording has been included in the Subsequent Sound Recording’. This means that all the performers who are credited on the record that has been sampled will also be credited as being due for performer royalties on the record that includes the sample. Regarding the sampled artists, the musicians who are classified as non-featured on the original recording will be similarly classified as non-featured on the recording that includes the sample. Featured musicians on the sampled recording will, on the other hand, now be classified as ‘non-featured’ on the recording that includes the sample.

PPL’s sampling rules are generally in thrall to songwriting copyright: they are focused on the overall song, rather than the section that has been sampled. They do, however, include a clause that allows a sampled musician to be listed as an ‘Other Featured Performer’. This is on the condition that: (i) it is agreed by the record company who is releasing the recording that features the sample, as well as by the artists who appear on this new recording; (ii) ‘if this is determined by PPL to be reasonable in all the circumstances on the basis of that Featured Performer’s contribution to the Subsequent Sound Recording’. And so, it is possible for Clyde Stubblefield and Gregory Coleman to be rewarded when their drum breaks are sampled and they might just be considered to be featured performers. There remain problems, however. One is that the income received will still usually only be a minor share of the performance royalties; another is that the performer royalty in sound recordings is not as well protected outside of the European Union (this particularly applies to the US).

Ideally, therefore, sampled artists would not just be rewarded via the performer share of sound recording copyright; they would be rewarded for the use of the ‘track’ as well. When artists use samples there are two uses of copyright that need to be cleared: the copyright in the song and the copyright in the sound recording. Record companies usually own the copyright in the sound recording. As I’ve written elsewhere, this has been dubiously justified on the grounds that: a) they have paid for it; and b) 90% of signed artists fail to break even. A fairer system would see more artists owning more sound recording copyrights. This would provide another means for performers to gain income for their sampled work.

There are further reforms that could take place. At present songwriting and sound recording copyrights are cleared in different ways. The songwriters usually receive an authorial share of the song, and are thus rewarded each time it is purchased, played or performed. Sound recording copyright is usually bought out with a one-off fee. In the majority of cases this ends up costing more than the songwriting copyright, but only because such a large proportion of records fail to break even: the cost of the sound recording clearance is fixed no matter how well the record performs. When it comes to the minority of records that do make a profit, however, the sampled songwriters can end up making far more money than the owners of the sampled sound recording. This is because the income rises proportionally with the size of the hit. A fairer and sometimes more rewarding system would see sound recording copyright awarded by usage rather than a one-off fee. 

There’s another way in which sound recording copyright could be brought into line with songwriting copyright: it ought to be possible for it to be split between different owners. Shares could be allocated to the owners of the sound recordings that are being sampled and to the owner of the new sound recording that has been created. If more artists had ownership of sound recording copyright, it would help to bring economic parity between songwriters and performers. It could therefore replace the need to give every contributor to a recording a songwriting share. A transformation in this area would also help past performers. While it’s unlikely that the songwriting credits of old songs will be changed in light of the way they have been sampled, there are occasional glimmers of hope that sound recording policy will be reformed. 

Words and Music: That's the Joint

In the last blog entry I wrote about the declining status of status of lyricists and the declining share of songwriting income they might happen to receive. Here, I’m going to look at another reason for the death of the 'author', one that might be occasioned by the nuances of copyright law, or it might be occasioned by the fact that musicians aren’t very good at filling in forms.

British copyright law has viewed music and lyrics in two ways. It increasingly took a Bono-ite line, regarding music and lyrics as being one, but not the same. In its origins, however, the law was Spice Girls-eque. It viewed the lyrical and musical elements of a song as being two that become one. Within the past 12 months, that Spice Girls point of view has come back into focus. Music and lyrics can now dream of being together (almost) forever. 

The first British legislation to fundamentally address recorded music was the Copyright Act of 1911. It advises that ‘a musical work shall be deemed to include any words so closely associated therewith as to form part of the same work’. The 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act reversed this policy. Here, ‘“musical work” was described as being a work consisting of music, exclusive of any words or action intended to be sung, spoken or performed with the music’. Under this legislation, lyrics had to lead a separate life. They were deemed to be ‘literary works’ rather than ‘musical works’. This had an effect when songwriters filed their songs with PRS for Music and declared whether they were authors (the writers of the lyrics) or composers (the writers of the music). In the UK if you were identified solely as a lyricist you could not be awarded joint authorship of a song with the musical composer(s). This is because joint authorship was defined on the basis that ‘the contribution of each author is not distinct from that of the other author or authors’. Literary and musical works were deemed to be distinct. PRS for Music regarded the two practices in this way. In the advice that they handed out about copyright law, they stated that ‘where two or more persons do collaborate but it is possible to determine the separate parts attributable to each author it will not be a work of joint authorship’.

It has nevertheless been the case that most PRS members have failed to classify themselves as either a composer or author. They have instead presented themselves as a hybrid kind: the composer-author. There are a number of reasons why the members have chosen this designation. One is because there are few songwriters who only write lyrics. It is often the case that the lyricist is the singer. In the process of working on their songs with musicians, many singers are involved in composing the top-line melody along with the words. Conversely, the musicians will sometimes chip in with lyrical ideas. A second reason is because some songwriters and/or their publishers fail to understand the distinction between composer and author and thus claim to be both. Alternatively some songwriters and publishers fail to complete this section of the PRS works form, in which case they will be listed as composer-authors by default. A final reason why songwriters and their publishers have chosen the composer-author designation is because joint authorship has real effects. It means that the ownership of the work cannot be divided in any way. Therefore, if an act does an instrumental cover version of a song that has lyrics, the lyricist will still get paid. Similarly, if there is a foreign language version of a song, the original lyricist maintains a share. Copyright lasts until 70 years after the death of the last ‘joint’ author. Consequently, it has been financially advisable for all contributors to a song identify themselves as composer-authors, at least if they’re thinking with their dependents in mind.

American songwriters receive similar benefits, but in their own country there has been a different legal framework. US copyright law has not deemed lyrics and music to be distinct. The 1976 Copyright Act groups them together under the category of ‘works of the performing arts’. Joint authorship has also been classified in a different manner. In America a ‘joint work’ is a 'work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole'. The vast majority of songs are automatically classified as joint works. It is believed that it is the plan of most lyricists and composers to weld their contributions together in a unified work of art. This law even applies when lyricists and composers are divorced by time and space. If they intend their work to come together as part of a whole, it doesn’t matter where they were when they composed their own part. It is only when there is a lack of consent in the merger that lyrics and music are treated as separate within American copyright law.

There are countries within the European Union who have a similar outlook. They see that, conceptually, a song with words is created as a joint enterprise. This is also the view taken by the EU's legislators. In the same 2011 directive that extended the duration of sound recording copyright from 50 to 70 years, it was deemed that the majority of songs are the result of joint musical and lyrical enterprises. The document states that Article 1 of EU Directive 2006/116/EC should be amended to read: 'The term of protection of a musical composition with words shall expire 70 years after the death of the last of the following persons to survive, whether or not those persons are designated as co-authors: the author of the lyrics and the composer of the musical composition, provided that both contributions were specifically created for the respective musical composition with words'. The UK implemented this directive on 1 November 2013.

Despite these changes and the differences between British, European and American law, the registration of songs looks much the same: most modern songs are classified as being written by composer-authors. As such, we know that there is a lyrical input in there somewhere, but the precise origin of this input is hard to locate. Everybody, it seems, is a lyricist now. They are all composers too.