Skip to main content

Christine McVie - Bad Journey

Throughout all of the genres explored here, there are musicians who mainly perform their own songs, mainly perform songs written by others, or perform some combination of original and borrowed repertoire. Even in a genre like blues, which is still frequently, and often mistakenly,  construed as a superiorly authentic genre whose performers express their most profound personal emotions through descriptions of their literal autobiographical experience, many musicians frequently perform songs written by others. For instance, Bessie Smith composed many of her own lyrics, but also recorded songs by Percy Grainger, Fletcher Henderson, and many others. Indeed, many of the songs that Taft cites in his study of the blues lyric formula were written by someone other than the performer, but he simply attributes the songs to the performers who made them familiar to audiences.

This same mix of borrowing and originality holds true for early country music, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and again brings up the question of which artists should, in a study like this, receive attribution for the songs under consideration, when the singer and songwriter are different people. Following Taft, my solution here is simply to identify the songs with the musicians who are most prominently featured on the singles, albums, and compilations that I’m working with... Elvis Presley was primarily a performer who recorded songs written by multiple songwriters, and yet many of those songs remain more closely associated with Presley than with the composer, by virtue of both his exceptional interpretations and his access to a wider market than was available to Black musicians whose songs he performed; Willie Dixon, by contrast, was not only a performer but also a prodigious songwriter whose work was performed by a wide range of artists, but his songs nonetheless remain closely associated with Dixon the songwriter.

One of the most direct ways that songs resonate with listeners is, of course, through their lyrics, and these pre-rock singers, and their handlers, correspondingly chose to record and issue the songs, whether original or not, that they hoped would speak to their audience most persuasively, and therefore sell the most records.
Source: Blues Lyric Formulas in Early Country Music, Rhythm and Blues, and Rock and Roll by Nicholas Stoia


Christine McVie - Bad Journey
  • Released: 09/07/2004
  • Produced by: Christine McVie, Ken Caillat, Dan Perfect
  • Released on: In The Meantime album

"In 1998, the Fleetwood Mac was induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2006, McVie was awarded the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors' Gold Badge of Merit."

See previous Song of the Day

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jackson Browne - Kisses Sweeter than Wine

Europe has a rich history of embracing blues and jazz music. In the early 20th century, American jazz musicians began touring Europe, introducing the continent to a new sound that was unlike anything they had ever heard before. Jazz became an instant hit among European audiences, and many European musicians began incorporating jazz elements into their music. Today, jazz festivals are held all over Europe, attracting thousands of fans from all over the world. In addition, many European cities have thriving blues scenes, with local bands and musicians performing regularly. Blues and jazz have also made their way to Asia, where they have found a devoted fan base. Japan, in particular, has a thriving jazz scene, with many Japanese musicians achieving international recognition. In addition, China has also seen a rise in the popularity of jazz music in recent years. Jazz festivals are now held in major Asian cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, attracting jazz lovers from all over ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Veronica Swift - A Little Taste

There has always been an uncomfortable tension between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, a cyclical influence that vacillates between inspiration, appropriation and separation. Popular music has broken off into categories of rock, pop, country, and R&B, each with their own origin stories. But R&B and rock, usually codified as vastly different, Black and white styles, have long been intertwined in ways our historical memory may have us forget.  Despite the innovation that comes from separation, rock and R&B always find their way back to each other. In recent years, rock veterans have turned to the genre’s classics for inspiration. Queens of the Stone Age veered from their typical hard rock with 2017’s Villains, a dance y album inspired by frontman Josh Homme’s love of 1920s jazz and swing, other Black genres that laid the groundwork for the popular music of today. The whitewashing of rock’s history has oversimplified music’s malleability and silenced the voices of Amer...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cannonball Adderley - Willow Weep for Me

The positivity and uplifting effect of the musical product is more likely to mean the musician is cheering themselves and everybody up rather than that the musician is telling us they are happy. This can largely be applied to attitudes to the performance of jazz and other Black cultures in the Western world. Whilst some of the aforementioned jazz pioneers, like Ella Fitzgerald, stayed clean, several had a history of drug abuse... which often resulted in premature deaths. Louis Armstrong, who used the infinitely safer drug marijuana throughout his 69 years... Whilst drug use was not uncommon among musicians in general, this pattern that many of the greats of jazz died young due to addictions speaks of a consistent level of turmoil, and alludes to their common experience of racism as a depressive factor in 20th Century America. Source: A Soft Reminder of Where Jazz Came From by Tom Platts Cannonball Adderley - Willow Weep for Me Released in: September 1955 Genre: Jazz Label: Savoy "...
Post a Comment
Read more