Do songwriters have a limited shelf life?
 

Think about it. Lennon, McCartney, Fogerty, Elton, Sting, Gibb brothers, etc. have like a 5 year period where they are white-hot. Do their skills fade or is the public just ready to move on?

Many others, of course, go on for decades. I think it has more to do with writing/music styles changing and musicians not changing with the times. The Grateful Dead, for example haven’t changed anything (even as The Dead) in decades but their loyal fans continue to assemble. Paul Simon, Dolly Parton, and Donovan come to mind as just a few that have been with it for over 40 years each. While not as prolific as before they continue to put out music. As for McCartney - again while he’s slowed as he’s aged and semi-retired - his production of original material certainly continued for decades not 5 years.

Recording artists have a shelf life. It is an established phenomenon that the observable players in the music business typically have a shelf life of about six years. It starts with the recording artists, who are most susceptible to trends. However, it also moves out to producers, engineers, A&R men, marketeers, art directors, and illustrators. Why? The established artists' sales begin to lag around the four or five year mark in their career so they and the record companies seek out newer, hot creative types and support staff to help rescue the artist's careers. It doesn't matter whether the artists and support staff are still creating good material or not: for one reason or another by the time seven years rolls around, the majority of them will be selling real estate or (in the case of the females) having families. The group of people who make it to twenty, thirty, or forty years in the field, is quite small.

At the beginning of my career I had wanted to be a recording engineer for music, but ended up being a sound designer (recording engineer/producer) for film and video. It had bothered me that I hadn't been able to find work in the music field until about the twenty year mark in my career when I happened to discover the above fact. By contrast, I was working in a stable corporate field with vacation and benefits. Last fall when I celebrated my forty year anniversary in the field it really came into focus again. Interestingly, in the last twenty years I have slowly moved back into the field I wanted to work in, music production, but have come into it through the soundtrack field.

Another interesting factoid is that most of the classic rock and pop artists are not earning royalties for their old recordings. Most standard recording contracts in the 1970s paid artists about seven years worth of royalties and then declared them back catalog and turned off the tap. That is why so many artists have either bought their catalogs back from their record companies or re-recorded their top albums, either as new albums or as live albums once they have come out from under the record companies - they simply need a revenue stream, and a well-publicized new version can elbow in on the sales of their back catalog.

Bob

John Prine has entered the chat.

As with many things here, Bob Womack had a fine summary on recording artists and closely allied fields. The recording distribution field has changed so much in the last 5-10 years that as closely observed and accurate his summary is, things could change, It could be even shorter for shelf life. We just don't have track record for the streaming age.

The OP asked about songwriters. Already we are talking about "Singer Songwriters" -- which are a historically a small segment of the recording songwriting industry. Those that are performers ("singer-songwriters"), likely they have a songwriting sell by date aligned with their performing career, since there are few to no examples that come to mind of successful songwriters for others who work behind the scenes after their "their name/picture on the record cover art" career peters out, so more than a tendency (something Bob was talking sagely about). I have less of idea of what percentage of songwriters who are just that, not singer-songwriters have long careers.

And I'd guess you wouldn't have to show 51% of songwriters who had long careers to prove that it's possible, only that there weren't more than one or two exception careers.

Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, and Richard Rogers had long careers. Diane Warren comes to mind. Are their similar 20 year or more on top of the charts country, pop, or R&B songwriters that just don't come to my mind?

Exceptions? Well, Bob Dylan. Folks still dive into his albums to find new songs to record. And his latest album even hit #1 on some charts this decade. I'd say a 60 year career must count as extended shelf life.

Does Paul Simon's 20 years of hit making not count as long enough. Seems like even a Hostess Twinkie wouldn't have that much shelf life.

I can think of artists who never really had high sustained level commercial careers who had long periods of excellence. Leonard Cohen would be one. How many covers of "Suzzane" and "Bird on the Wire" and then covers of "Anthem" "First We Take Manhattan" and then the now ubiquitous "Hallelujah" would it take to say that he exceeded 7 years of songwriting hotness?

Joni Mitchell as a singer-songwriter had a normal 10 year or so commercial career as that, but interest in covers seems to have grown in the past decade, but then I think the OP means new songs, composed recently, not continued or growing interest in a past catalog.

I think Bob's comments about recording artists having a 6 year shelf life speaks to what I was thinking of. The people I mentioned had a period where mostly anything they put out went top 10. I'm wondering what changes. Their talent? Their drive? The fickle listener?

I'm not sure what you mean about Lennon. I thought the Double Fantasy album was some of his best work IMHO.

I dont think they have a shelf life, but I think there are some factors that change during their career that affect their song writing.

Firstly, I think mental durress tends to lend itself to songwriting quite a bit. All the times when I've been most prolific as a songwriter have been times when life has been pretty effed up. I think these conditions are often present in an artist's career early on, but then tend to level out once they have "made it" to some degree. In support of this I think there are a far greater percentage of artists that dont get successfull that continue to put out great music throughout multiple decades than there are top 40 artists.

I think a few albums in, alot of artists just dont have the same urgency as they did early on, the making of an album just becomes buisness rather than an expression of themselves. Too, I think trying to put out albums every year to maintain career momentum tends to eventually result in a quality drop. Rather than putting out albums because they have a bunch of great songs rattling around in their head the albums become forced. In support of this theory, think about how many long term bands that seem to have been in a rut have put out great albums after taking a lengthly hiatus.

And then I think there is just pride, in every profession I think that highly competent people's performance tends to suffer either because they refuse to listen to anyone else, or because they are listening to the wrong people... generally just a bunch of parasites telling them their ideas and decisions are all great. Often people that they originaly partnered with that offered any friction are replaced by people that just do what they are told.

In the oilpatch I remember we had a saying... "Once you know everything you quit learning", and this phrase has stayed relevant with me no matter what I've done or how much experience I've amassed.

But Bacharach and Hal David seemed to not only produce hits that cross over into soul, pop and jazz as well as movie themes. They managed to hit the charts for several decades.

Zeroing in on that then.

There's a well-known factor, sometimes called the "difficult 2nd album syndrome." Someone writes a bunch of songs and club and road-tests them over a period of time, and they seem so appealing that they build cred via live performance -- or a label/agent etc selects them out as having "the stuff" song wise from a developed set of songs. Bam! They hit big. Tour and promote. Now it;s a year or so later, time to record that 2nd record. Songwriting artist replies: "What? I should have not been working on taking advantage of my career explosion! You say I should have 12 songs just like the first album, but still new? Like right now?" This often repeats, the 3rd album is a similar issue, but more so.

Chemical/touring grind/emotional issues. A great many fine songwriters have been waylaid by the stuff they take, along with some of the reasons that take and drink that stuff. Some get a comeback album (or several) after righting themselves. Some never survive, or are walking wounded. I often think of Tim Hardin, who wrote some great songs, but the chemicals and the like got him pretty quick.

"Everyone's got one novel in them." This is said about fiction writers, but a similar factor applies to some songwriters, who have a particular type of tale (often linked to their own biography) that they can craft into a set of good songs. But it's rare for personal experience to inform enough material for a long career. Once one moves on to crafting songs, the game changes, and some don't have game.

Listener's fault? Yes, that happens. Sure, some are fickle and want some new hotness, and the business interests like that (the rookie phenom is always cheaper than the veteran free agent). But our most common sin is wanting the artists to produce songs that "are the same thing, but just different enough to keep our interest." A Neil Young or a Bruce Springsteen that keep a long career going while changing between some different styles and yet don't drop off the radar are like asking our presumed skilled rookie to play catcher, pitch, play shortstop, and play chess, and pole vault.

Drive -- or should we consider need? Since we seem to be concentrating on singer-songwriters, not songwriters who aren't well known as performers, is it really necessary to have 200 or 300 songs written over decades to have a successful career as a performer? Yes, some performers (Dylan, Elvis Costello) like to surprise audiences with deep dives into their catalogs, but audiences want what audiences want. And many successful performing acts know that a couple of songs from the new album are all that the audience really expect to tolerate too. Why work hard on new material, perfecting it, when it has no career utility?

....and then there's John Hiatt.

I just finished reading Have A Little Faith by Michael Elliot, and a forward by Elvis Costello.

Highly recommended reading!

https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asi...GJ94XB6VNAS4YD

Howard Emerson

Songwriters don't have to have a shelf life. While it's true that some do, many do not. Randy Newman is a great example. He's been writing songs for 60 years now, and is as much in demand as ever for his film scores as well as his pop music. Another was Guy Clark, who was turning out country music classics for half a century before he passed. Newman and Clark were never considered stars by most pop music or country music fans, but a look just below the glitzy surface of those two genres reveals the tremendous influence both have had on the music industry for decades, and the many honors and accolades that both have received from their peers.

Songwriting is an art, or a literature. One and the same , just different forms of creativity. Creativity has no age limits. Stardom or performers have a limit, because their-ness is dependent on 'culture'. Culture is , by it's intrinsic nature in our times, flawed. But Art and Literature have many examples of continued and relevant productivity until the last spark leaves the body. The last two years of Picasso come to mind. Or Walt Whitman. However if an artist becomes dependent on the cultural response for their creative feedback loop, they're finished. And that's a big trap for most.

Along with everything else allot hangs on brand and bankability. This is one reason you see artists that have some notability sell songs that are not really that good of song. While a great song by someone with no following as in brand or bankability tread water.

By the way, one of the best ways to acquire longevity in songwriting is to find yourself into one of the songwriting circles in Nashville. it is easier said than done. Membership in one of these circles is a little like becoming a pilots of one of the few remaining WWII fighter planes: you don't ask to fly one of these planes; an owner asks YOU to fly it for him.

But membership in a Nashville writing circle means collaboration with the best and selling to the best. They are the underground of country and pop music. Many of Taylor Swift's country tunes came from the circles. She switched to the European song circles when she went urban.

Bob