Mick Jagger & Dave Stewart

Eh... did you just say Busted are good? :shock:

Er, Um, No not that they were good, but they do seem to have the nack of writing some good lyrics. I'm a big blues fan but I can appreciate pop and I will listen to anything so long as its sung well and not just thrown together for the next mortgage payment.

Busted....good lyrics....

You can't be serious?

An example of Busted lyrics:

That's what I go to school for
Even though it is a real bore
You can call me crazy
I know that she craves me
That's what I go to school for
Even though it is a real bore
Girlfriends I've had plenty
None like Miss Mackenzie
That's what I go to school for
That's what I go to school for

So she may be thirty-three
But that doesn't bother me
Her boyfriends working out of town
I find a reason to go round

I climb a tree outside her home
To make sure she is all alone
I see her in her underwear
I can't help but stop and stare

It's a song about having a crush on a teacher... and that's good how?

Shall we just agree to disagree ?

As far as Mick Jagger's concerned, everything he ever wrote was lifted from somebody else: and he's the first to admit it. As for Dave, well he's in the business cycle so it's all aimed at making money.

Same goes for Green Day, Busted and almost anyone on the major labels. I've never even heard of Busted, but Green Day: they may sound good, but they're nothing new under the sun: it's all been done before.

The best songwriters normally don't work for major labels where you have to tone everything down to make it acceptable to the general public who wouldn't recognize talent if it hit them in the face.

so you think decent songwriters don't get signed to major record labels. it seems a little harsh to say that. The strokes make decent songs, the libertines etc. it seems a slight generalisation to me :) .

lyrics i'm talking about aswel as the songs :)

I'm not saying that good songwriters don't get signed, there are plenty of examples of really good ones: Bob Dylan, Greg Lake, Bruce Springsteen and many, many more. What I'm saying is that in today's market you simply can't do anything original anymore. If it's even a little different from what's currently successful, you don't get signed. So a guy like Dave Stewart, who entered the market when you could be different, now has to do either what he's always done or what everybody else does and that puts talent on the sidelines.

Talented songwriters nowadays are either on Indie labels or they keep their talent in check and do what everybody else does.

So a guy like Dave Stewart, who entered the market when you could be different, now has to do either what he's always done or what everybody else does and that puts talent on the sidelines.

Which was exactly my point. Why ? Cant they still lead the field and stay ahead of the pack like Bowie for example who changes his style and music as often as he does his underpants, similarly, Madonna or has all their talent been used up and they just go along with the flow just to keep the money rolling in. Surely not in Jagger's or Stewart's case, royalties alone should see them ok for the forseable future

Overall, it's much more complicated than that. Ever since Sony came into the market and started up buying labels (there used to be over 400 major labels, now there are only 5) the whole system has changed. Every three months there are investors meetings and all that's looked at is the bottom line.

If the label has invested $500,000 in an artist and in the last three months they have made only $300,000 back, then they're in the red and they're cut; it's as simple as that. Regardless of the fact that the album will likely continue to sell, investors are only interested in the fact that they are losing money and they don't want that.

So, now when you want to go in the studio to make an album, you have to submit 10 songs to the label; they pick out the ones they want and send you out to write some more. When you have 10 songs that they approve, then you can go record.

The people at the labels who aprove are not musicians or music gurus, they're accountants. They do simple arithmetic; it's proven that this genre sells so this is what we will support. There is even a software that exists which analyzes your songs and tells you the probability of having a hit. You can't buy it, it's made by a company in Italy, but you can send your material to them and they'll give you an analysis. And that's why you don't have anything original coming out of the major labels anymore.

Of course, there are a few exceptions to this rule:
David Bowie
Peter Gabriel
Paul McCartney
And that's pretty much it. Point is that these guys will do what they want regardless. So if you want them on your roster you have to let them do their stuff. The reason is that for 30 years they have always been doing things their way and selling. Not a single flop among them.

Dave Stewart has not just had hits so he cannot do what he wants. Mick Jagger has been doing exactly the same thing for fourty years.

Well thanks for that A-J, at least that makes some sense of it all

Never a problem; I'm only too glad to help!