In the music industry, the executive producer of an album is often in control of the business side of production, distribution, and promotion. This role can entail obtaining financing, allocating the budget, etc. At times, the executive producer may also provide artistic input such as which songs are placed in the final cut and the order in which the songs are placed.
Beyonce gets her name on the credits because she re-arranges songs, changes the instrumentation, creates harmonies etc. That is all part of the songwriting process.
Everytime, Little Me, My Baby, Me Against The Music, To Love You Gotta Let Go, Showdown, That's Where You Take Me, Lonely, Early Mornin', Touch of My Hand, Shadow etc...
Question is... Did Beyonce thought of the music not just the lyrics? Britney did... "coughs"everytime"coughs"
Beyonce gets her name on the credits because she re-arranges songs, changes the instrumentation, creates harmonies etc. That is all part of the songwriting process.
"Like with “Everytime” I wrote the whole thing from scratch on the piano. Musically there was no track or anything. I was just at my house and I did the whole thing by myself. And then I went and I played it for [Guy Sigsworth] and I just basically told him exactly how I wanted the song to sound. And he was so amazing because there's a lot of producers you tell them things and they don't get it. And you're like oh, that's not the right way. He got it just right. He was amazing. And so that song specifically, you know, I did everything."
Of course. When you hear the demos of the songs that are sent to her and the final result you notice those changes. The people who have worked with her have all acknowledged her talent of transforming songs. E.g. Irreplaceable.
I'll add this in, in case people want receipts:
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But once Beyoncé heard it, she loved it and was sure she could make it her own. "What happens sometimes, is you think about a specific artist and you put them in this box, the song has to be this way or that, and then you're usually confining yourself to the thing they did three years ago," Hermansen said. "But she heard it and did her own vocal arrangements, asked for a few changes to be made and some new drums, and she sang it much higher than the demo."
Vanity Fair finally puts a solo African-American on its cover, and doesn’t do any fact checking.
Beyonce Knowles, who’s full of sass and has a striking voice, actually thinks she’s a songwriter. She says so in the new Vanity Fair.
In fact, Beyonce did not write her big hit "Crazy in Love," or even conceive of it. "Crazy in Love" — its horns, percussion, chief melody and overall "feel" — was written by the late and very great Eugene Record of the Chi-Lites (he died this summer). The group recorded and released it in 1969 as "Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)."
Indeed, the person who sought out the track was hip-hop producer Rich Harrison. He’s the go-to guy when you need to sample something obscure because you can’t write your own music.
He told MTV.com in February 2004 that he’d had the sample for some time, long before Beyonce knew about it.
"Yeah, I had it in the chamber," he told the Web site. "I hadn't really shopped it much, because sometimes you don't want to come out of the bag before it's right."
Harrison then brought Jay-Z in to add a rap. The result was such a success that Harrison would later adapt the horn section from the Chi-Lites' record for similar records he produced for pop singers Amerie and Jennifer Lopez.
The Vanity Fair article, however, makes it seem like Beyonce is a genius songwriter who came up with all this stuff. Knowles says, without her veracity being questioned: "'Crazy in Love' was really hard to write because there was so much going on … I mean, I had written — what? —seven, eight number one songs with Destiny's Child, in a row." Of Jay-Z's added rap: "I knew the song wasn’t complete because the horns were so old school…"
There, she is correct. The horns were old school. They were charted 36 years ago by Record, who also wrote "Have You Seen Her?," "Oh Girl," "Am I The Same Girl?" and many other classic R&B hits. Unfortunately, he’s no longer here to defend himself.
In the Vanity Fair article, Beyonce also claims to have “written” seven No. 1 songs. Again, not exactly. Her name is on them all. But “Independent Woman, Pt. 1” was authored by Samuel J. Barnes and Jean Claude Olivier, tweaked by producer Cory Rooney and added to by …Beyonce. Olivier and Barnes also worked on constructing Jennifer Lopez’s “Jenny from the Block.”
“Say My Name,” a big Destiny’s Child hit, was written by Rodney Jerkins, his brother Freddie and Rodney’s writing partner LeShawn Daniels. The names of the four girls from the group were added again, so they could share in the collection of royalties.
There’s more: "Baby Boy" was based on a hit by reggae star Ini Kamoze called "Here Comes the Hot Stepper." "Naughty Girl" is merely a hefty sample of Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder’s "Love to Love You Baby." "Bills Bills Bills" was written by singer/songwriter Kandi Burruss and producer Kevin Briggs. "Nasty Girl" and "Survivor" were the work of composer/producer Anthony Dent, who had to share credit with not only Beyonce but also her father, Matthew Knowles. "Bootylicious" is simply Stevie Nicks’s "Edge of Seventeen."
Nicks, following Sting’s lead from years ago with Diddy’s sample of "Every Breath You Take," did not allow Destiny’s Child or Beyonce to get any royalties at all. Rock on, Stevie!
In fact, not one of the songs listed under Beyonce’s name on the BMI Web site is written solely by her. They are usually credited to a list of songwriters. The list comprises the actual writers, and then a few people who’ve "tweaked" the song with a rap or by adding samples.
But this is the way it’s done in hip-hop and rap. "Writing" a song has new meaning. It means "licensing" the song from another writer. The word "composer" is not in the hip-hop dictionary.
This can make for a peculiar situation at the Grammy Awards. In 2000, Jerkins and his writing team had to share the Grammy for Best R&B Song for “Say My Name” with the members of Destiny’s Child because their names were on the credits.
In 2003, Beyonce, Harrison and Jay-Z won a couple of Grammys including Best R&B Song for “Crazy in Love.” Record’s name isn’t even listed on the Grammy Web site and he was the writer. Hopefully his widow is getting checks.
Over the weekend I discussed this phenomenon with a famous songwriter concerning rapper Nelly, whose albums — like Kanye West’s — are made up of samples of previous works. I thought they’d find the whole thing deplorable. Not so.
"Really?" they said, realizing the revenue that could be realized. "I’ll send him my whole catalogue for his next one!"
Otherwise, Vanity Fair’s annual music issue, as has been noted elsewhere, is an attempt to make up for not including African-Americans in years of previous issues. The magazine photographed nearly all of the most famous members of the hip-hop and rap community. Most of them fare very well, although Sean “Diddy” Combs probably regrets his portrait.
Have YOU read this? Or did you just do a google search and copy and paste? This guy has been on Beyonce's tail for ages. He doesn't seem to think changing re-arranging or interpolating qualifies as songwriting. He makes statements about Beyonce's name being "added" to the credits when in fact he has no idea because he was not in the studio when the songs were being written.
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Nicks, following Sting’s lead from years ago with Diddy’s sample of "Every Breath You Take," did not allow Destiny’s Child or Beyonce to get any royalties at all. Rock on, Stevie!
He neglected to mention that Beyonce called Steve Nicks herself and asked if she could use the sample.
I could analyse everything he has said but I don't think I should bother seeing as how you haven't even properly read the article or used your brain.
I can think of ways in which all of the major players in the music industry exhibit control, but obviously none has complete control.
I was actually just thinking about Gaga's first album the other day, and while I think she had a fair amount of control even as a new artist, there are some areas where it's obvious the label took the reigns, such as the decision to make her a purely pop artist (I assume she will stray from this since she could basically do anything and get label approval at this point) and the planned collaboration with Colby O'Donis, through which I think they assumed they would he able to launch 2 successful careers with one hot track. I don't see Gaga collaborating with lessors in the future, but certainly if she were to hook up with an unknown on a future single I would expect that the record execs would not have as much imput and for that person to share more in common artistically with Gaga than Colby did. In terms of calling the shots, I think Gaga's probably at a peak because she is riding a wave of success and everything she has done thus far has turned to gold, thus they have no reason to doubt her.
Britney's best work comes out when she has control (see In the Zone and Blackout). I think because she came into the industry at a time when new acts were cultivated and trained by labels (everyone from her era was a product) to be... perfect and she was the foremost example of bubblegum pop perfection, she has been labeled a puppet and more than a decade later still has to fight for her say-so despite the fact that she has some brilliant ideas and is capable of executing them successfully. I also wonder to what extent her personal troubles have tainted her label's ability to trust her. While Circus was a nice return, they could have more intimately involved her, but it is also perhaps the case that Britney, having more pressing issues to tackle at that time, was not as available to be involved. I think Britney has a very creative mind and has always shown a lot of interest in developing the concepts of her videos and tours, as well as the choreography she performs. Her handlers are most likely to trust her opinion in those regards and I think that's where we get the best glimpse of Britney's ability to guide her own career. Ultimately though, she's too big of a force to be completely controlled, as many assume she is.
If there's anyone I wish had more control it's Rihanna, but I'm afraid that because her most personal project flopped and her label needs her to maintain her status as their cash cow/best seller, she will never be given another opportunity to delve into her personal talents and create the sort of heartfelt and stirring music that was on Rated R. I've been pretty vocal about my distaste with the fact that Rihanna was not more personally involved on Loud, but it has become more apparent to me that in this instance there was perhaps nothing she could have done. They were dead set on pushing out another album within a year and they were dead set that it was going to be as tailored to the mainstream audience as possible.
I think people have the tendency to write Ke$ha off as a product of a producer, but I think she has more control over her career than most people will acknowledge. Yes, she is the musical protégé of Dr. Luke, but rather than giving her an image and personality overhaul, Ke$ha and her fun spirit are used more as a canvas for his production talents. She is able to be as raunchy and ridiculous as she pleases, her songs are deeply rooted in her personality and experiences, her style is as trashy as she wants it to be and there really isn't a label that's trying to take that control away from her or turn her into someone else.
Well you can go and try to believe like Beyonce does everything when there are so many instances that she's been caught or songwriters complaining that she gets writing credits even though she doesn't do a ****...
