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At the same time Joni Mitchell was making it up the charts there was Motown and the Brill Building (famously employing Carole King whose songs were often sung b
by acheron 3y ago
At the same time Joni Mitchell was making it up the charts there was Motown and the Brill Building (famously employing Carole King whose songs were often sung by men, n.b. to the “article” authors) and the Monkees and so on. And the Tin Pan Alley stuff before that. “Songwriting like a factory” predates recorded music. There’s nothing “modern” about it.
- fwungy 3y agoCarole King isn't a technically outstanding singer, but her voice is compelling. She's a bit of an outlier, and someone whose songs have been regularly covered by men. But how many men could cover a Kate Bush song without it being ridiculous? Tin Pan Alley was still more individually driven than what we have today where a tune is passed around between as many as 10-20 producer/songwriters who add some technical candy to the mix. Many of these songs lack bridges or even choruses, and are highly assisted by technology. T-Pain made it big because he mastered Auto-Tune very early, for example.