He's the weirdo behind "Temporary Secretary" and the feral basher behind "Helter Skelter." But as important to U2's sound as Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. may be, Bono and the Edge have been the primary songwriting team in the band from day one. "My talent is more than just sexual songs," said the only man who wrote for the Notorious B.I.G. But the same organic give-and-take governed their later albums as well. "I learned through Jackson's ceiling and my floor how to write songs," Glenn Frey recalled of a period when he lived in an apartment one floor above Browne, "elbow grease, time, thought, persistence.". Over the years, his recording-booth ability to conjure intricate verses out of thin air has become legend, but he's a also master of fitting the right lyric to the right musical mood: "I try to feel the emotion of the track and try to feel what the track is talking about, let that dictate the subject matter," he has said. They can feed off a partnership, and that keeps people entertained. He's a king amongst gods. On early compositions like dance-floor-filling ska tune "Simmer Down" and the lilting pop gem "Stand Alone" he displayed mastery of sweet melodies and cleverly turned hooks that showed he could've easily done time on Berry Gordy's assembly line as well. "When I heard him for the first time, it was like he was singing only for himself, and now and then, maybe God," Clapton once said. America first discovered the Bee Gees with the 1977 disco soundtrack Saturday Night Fever. I talk with the artist and find out what they will or won't sing about." The more you listen, the clearer it becomes that Marr isn't exaggerating. He began as the Seventies and Eighties most commercially potent inheritor of the Sixties songwriting tradition, knocking out hit after hit of compact, hard-jangling rock & roll from "I Need to Know" to "Refugee" to "The Waiting." Starting in the early Seventies, Green, working with Hi Records producer Willie Mitchell and guitarist/co-writer Teenie Hodges, created a rich catalog of songs that mixed sacred and profane like no other soul singer of any era. "I went, 'Oh my God, a lot of people are listening to me. "After seven years of trying to make it as a rock star, I decided to do what I always wanted to do write about my own experiences," he said in 1971, around the time of his debut album, Cold Spring Harbor. "Pick something more certain, like chasing the white whale or eradicating the common housefly," Boudleaux once said of songwriting as a profession. In songs like "You're Breaking My Heart" (". greatest-of-all-time-country-goat-billboard-650. Steven C. Smith 's first book, 1991's "A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life . He would actually sing the entire arrangement into a micro-cassette recorder complete with stops and fills. Oddly, Blackwell and Presley never met. And alone among his peers Dylan's creativity was ceaseless 2000's Love and Theft returned him to a snarling sound that rivaled his electric youth, marking a renaissance that continues unabated. T. Bone Burnett calls "Sail Away," "the greatest satire in the history of American music. "I wanted to release music that let people know he was more than just a gangsta rapper," Combs said later. His ballads fly higher than anyone else's, his sex jams started evocatively naughty (1993's "Bump N' Grind") and ended up evocatively surreal (2005's "Sex in the Kitchen" and, of course, the 30-part "Trapped in the Closet"). "The creative process is imagination, memories, nightmares and dismantling certain aspects of this world and putting them back together in the dark," said Waits. - Quora. "Dad stressed the importance of the economics of writing," she has said. "I've tried to sound ironic. His songwriting, like his guitar playing, was at once vivid and phantasmagorical psychedelic some 30 years before the Acid Tests and helped set a course for Bob Dylan (who can be seen holding King of the Delta Blues on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home), the Rolling Stones (who covered "Love in Vain" and "Stop Breaking Down) and Eric Clapton (who covered "Ramblin' on My Mind" and "Cross Road Blues" and then chased Johnson's hell hounds for decades). The two future Eagles were lucky to meet up in L.A. in the early Seventies, but in their hunger for success, they were even more fortunate to have formidable competition. Hynde's lyrics proved even more influential, articulating a complex female toughness that wasn't just a sexy pose, inspiring guitar-slinging women and self-directed pop stars like Madonna, who said, "It gave me courage, inspiration, to see a woman with that kind of confidence in a man's world. Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds rose to fame for his work with Antonio "L.A." Reid on Bobby Brown's Don't Be Cruel, reinforcing taut R&B songwriting with hard hip-hop beats to help create New Jack Swing. His final album as part of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland (1968), was released and . 14. For a six-year stretch beginning with 1967's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," he and composer/producer Norman Whitfield were a mighty songwriting team at Motown. But she's really hit her stride with the pop mastery of Red and 1989, especially on confessional ballads like "Clean" and "All Too Well." His best work ("Ambulance Blues," "Powderfinger," "After the Goldrush") may have come in the Sixties and Seventies, but every single album comes with more than a few amazing moments. George Strait. Berns, who suffered from chronic health problems since childhood, died of a heart attack in 1967 at 38. ", The Who had a one-of-a-kind drummer, a brilliant bassist, a towering singer and their songs featured some pretty impressive guitar playing too. "I try to make the songs as good as I can the way I like it, you know?" It's hard to imagine anyone but Whitney Houston giving shape to "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)," anyone but Mary J. Blige taking a stand with "Not Gon' Cry," anyone but Toni Braxton lending the necessary sultry edge to the many songs he's written for her over the past quarter-century. On songs like "That'll Be the Day," "Rave On," "Everyday," "Oh Boy," "Peggy Sue" and "Not Fade Away," his buoyant, hiccupping vocals and wiry, exuberant guitar playing drove home lyrics that seemed to sum up the hopes, aspirations and fears of the kids buying his records. That technique has helped him develop an unrivaled gift for matching a lyric and a mood with a particular singer, especially a particular female singer. "Let there be songs to fill the air," insists the singer on "Ripple," one of the duo's most indelible numbers. A lifelong friendship with John Lennon who produced Nilsson's Pussy Cats during his Lost Weekend period followed. And so he did. Where other writers of the time strove for sophistication, Berns' songs communicated a fierce romantic hunger and longing. Since the Band ended its run, Robinson has only released albums sporadically; his most recent, 2013's How to Become Clairvoyant, delivered vintage American idioms with a 21st Century feel. No one except Dylan has embraced the endless highway with more artistic success as explained by Nelson in "On the Road Again," a Top 20 Grammy-winning hit in 1980 and his studio career is just as endless, ranging from Texas swing to reggae to standards with strings. Motown was so overstaffed with great in-house songwriters that Gaye spent much of the Sixties singing other people's songs. Marley drank deep from American soul music; he briefly lived in Delaware during the late Sixties, where he worked in a factory. And while he's disappointed more than a few bandmates and fans with his at-times baffling career choices, his songs are always pure Neil. Songs like "Badlands" could make a rousing anthem out of existential crisis, and as he focused his sound and narrative, his music continued to gain power and the mass audience he knew it always deserved: Born in the U.S.A. delivered seven Top 10 singles as many as Michael Jackson's Thriller. The mercurial singer-writer-producer's 25-year track record stands on its own: writing or co-writing 30 Top 20 R&B singles for himself or with the Chicago-based group Public Announcement, chart-topping assistance for Puff Daddy, Sparkle and Kelly Price; and the first song to ever debut at Number One on the Hot 100, Michael Jackson's "You Are Not Alone." Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia, the writing partners at the center of the Grateful Dead, are the psychedelic Rodgers and Hart. The prolific Haggard, who once released eight albums in a three-year period, is an icon of country conservatism thanks to his hippie-baiting classic "Okie From Muskogee." He'd accommodate the line metrically, rhythmically." But it all builds off his songs, which transform funk, soul, pop and rock into a sound all his own. . "It was for me a prophetic utterance. They wrote the music in just six weeks. It sounds like they were written a hundred years ago." There are 10 acts in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to have scored 10 or more No. "A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true," Dylan wrote. and Celine Dion. That, Michael said, was the only way he could write: "If I sat down at a piano, if I sat here and played some chords. "They were searchers Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, James Brown. ", "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine," went the opening line of Smith's 1975 debut, Horses, proclaiming her belief in music as provocation and redemption. "I knew they were pointing the direction where music had to go." Since reuniting the E Street Band in 1999 he has been reconnecting to his earliest sense of inspiration and mission. A string of undeniable classics followed "Night Life," "Funny How Time Slips Away," and "Crazy," immortalized by Patsy Cline and Nelson began his own recording career, to fair results. '", Raised in Louisiana, Lucinda Williams grew up listening to Hank Williams and reading Flannery O'Connor and emerged in the late Eighties as the great Southern songwriter of her generation. Working with pop-savvy producer Sean "Puffy" Combs, Biggie raised his game throughout his brief career from the social realism of "Things Done Changed" to the euphoric rags-to-riches celebration "Juicy" to effortlessly virtuosic performances like "Hypnotize" and "Ten Crack Commandments," both from his 1997 swan song Life After Death. Their songs were hits for other artists, too: Richard Carpenter of the Carpenters, who went to Number One with "Close to You," called Bacharach "one of the most gifted composers who ever drew a breath. He didn't start writing songs in earnest until he'd recorded a few albums, and his songwriting gifts have been overshadowed by his vocal mastery. He is, arguably, as important to his instrument (the blues harmonica) as. . Led Zeppelin. Born in Oklahoma in 1946, Webb is an heir to the Great American Songbook. West has given us the weapons-grade industrial punk of "New Slaves," the forlorn vocoder balladry of 2008's 808s & Heartbreak (which paved the way for the confessional hip-hop of J. Cole and Drake) and, this year, the haunting Paul McCartney collaboration "Only You." "And then a melody starts to happen, and then the lyrics start to happen, and then you've got a song. Only Van can make a Romantic incantation like "if I ventured in the slipstream/Between the viaducts of your dream" roll out as smooth as Tupelo honey. "When young musicians ask me what the most important thing is, I always say it's the song," Petty told Rolling Stone in 2009. "It was 1973 when I wrote it, about a year before I joined Fleetwood Mac. ", Nirvana's skull-crushing noise assault would have meant little if not for the deceptively brilliant pop craft underpinning it. "I don't like to make things too obvious, because it gets stale," Cobain said. Gabbi Shaw. "We see ourselves first and foremost as composers, writing for ourselves and other people," Robin Gibb said. ", Dixon was a fine performer and bass player, but he made his greatest contribution as house songwriter at Chess Records in the 1950s. "To me, Hank Williams is still the best songwriter," Bob Dylan said in 1991. Singer/pianist Antoine "Fats" Domino and producer/bandleader Dave Bartholomew started working together in 1949. "I carried 'Redemption Song' to every meeting I had with a politician, prime minister or president," Bono said. But with 1983's Swordfishtrombones and 1985's Rain Dogs he blossomed into what he called his "sur-rural" period, drawing on old blues, German cabaret and street-corner R&B to create songs populated by dice-throwing one-armed dwarves, men with missing fingers playing strange guitars and phantom truck-drivers named Big Joe. That's how I feel about songs. But Kristofferson did more than succeed them. .I had discovered what all writers discover, whether they're told or not, that you could do anything." Besides, if you have a successful partnership, it's self-sustaining.". His personas shifted, but songs like "Tangled Up in Blue," "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and "Forever Young" continued to define their eras in lasting ways. I'm told I have a lot of feelings." "In 1968 I always used to say that I wanted to make records they would still play on the radio in ten years," Creedence Clearwater Revival architect John Fogerty told Rolling Stone in 1993. "I've always prided myself as a songwriter more than anything else" she once said, adding "nothing is more sacred and more precious to me than when I really can get in that zone where it's just God and me. 3 (1803) A trailblazing, mammoth masterpiece, glorifying the life of a great heroic figure. There's no limit to where she can go from here. I can't get rid of them. Young's creakingly lovely acoustic ballads and torrential rockers draw on the same ageless themes: the myths and realities of American community and freedom, the individual's hard struggle against crushing political and social forces, mortality and violence, chrome dreams, ragged glories and revolution blues. ", Taylor was one of the most successful and influential artists to emerge from the "singer-songwriter" scene of the early Seventies. I'm Comin'" and other classic duets. Yet, his music directly influenced rock touchstones like the Grateful Dead's Workingman's Dead and the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet, and Hag has been influenced right back. ", Nelson was a struggling Music Row pro when Faron Young cut his ode to an empty room, "Hello Walls," in 1961. Often working with Spooner Oldham, Penn was an integral part of the Southern soul sound that flowed out of Muscle Shoals and Memphis, and their songs about the hard price lovers pay for their desires became classics: "Dark End of the Street" for James Carr, "I'm Your Puppet" for James and Bobby Purify, "Cry Like a Baby" for the Box Tops (it was Penn who produced "The Letter" for Alex Chilton's first group). . Who is the king in music? Songs like the 1970 soft-rock classic "Heart of Gold," his only Number One single, have led to an image of the tireless 69-year-old legend as a lonely troubadour, but Young insists that's deceptive. I would sit down. Trying to pin down any Top Ten list is bound to cause disagreement - and so it should - but. More than 250 artists, writers, and industry figures helped us choose a . Years later, a diagnosis of bipolar schizoaffective disorder would help explain his mood swings, recluse years and bizarre relationship with therapist-manager Eugene Landy. Overdubbing his flawless voice, he was his own angelic choir on songs like "1941" and the Beatles medley "You Can't Do That," and he caught the ear of Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, who bought a box of Nilsson records to send to friends. 10. A perfectionist known for spending years on a tune, Cohen's genius for details illuminated the oft-covered "Suzanne" and "Hallelujah." "[Songwriting] is hell on Earth," Jimmy Webb wrote in his book, Tunesmith. A masterful arranger and composer, Brown also invented a new kind of aphoristic lyrical exhortation that became the lingua franca of hip-hop and dance music. It's not a particularly generous mystery, but other people have that experience with matrimony anyway." Kanye isn't afraid to outsource (Chicago rapper Rhymefest co-wrote the lyrics to his first game-changing hit, "Jesus Walks," and the credits to his albums can often read like veritable productions workshops). "We didn't used to write one, we used to write a batch at a time like gumbo. In 1966 alone, Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote and produced 13 Top 10 R&B singles, from the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On" to the Four Tops' "I'll Be There." "He had this little dance he'd do. The result was "A Change Is Gonna Come," a soaring encapsulation of the African-American struggle. Benny and Bjrn had already been a songwriting duo for six years when they teamed up with their girlfriends Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fltskog who were both Swedish pop stars already to form Abba.