Wounded Land is a songwriter who writes songs

I recently finished producing an EP for an up-and-coming young singer. She is also a songwriter, but when we sat down to do pre-production, I realized that she had lyrics, a vocal melody, and a vague sense for what tempo and key the songs should be in. That's it. I wrote everything else, did all the arrangements, wrote the charts, etc. Needless to say, I am getting co-writing credits on those songs. I think at first she was surprised that I was insisting on it, because she genuinely believed that she had written the music.

Now, I would consider it that she had witten the song and you'd arranged it. But that's why this stuff is so subjective and, as you say, must be agreed upon prior to release.

I'm sure you did a ton of work on it, so I don't want it to sound like I'm diminishing your efforts at all.

Like you said, she had lyrics and a vocal melody. That's the song. You may have done arrangements and charts, but, in my opinion, that would not constitute a co-write. It would be similar to Lennon/McCartney/Martin, in a way, wouldn't it? (love this discussion..)

No, I don't think so! An unharmonized melody with no greater musical context is part of a song.

I didn't just harmonize her melody. I literally crafted every single thing about the song except the vocal melody and the lyrics: every drum, bass, guitar, keyboard, and percussion part, down to the smallest detail. I've been in situations before in which I was accompanying a singer and I suggested changing a chord or two; that's a different situation.

Think of it the other way around: a band writes an entire song, then a singer comes in over the top with a melody and a lyric. Did the singer write that song? Hell no. He wrote part of it.

I respectfully disagree, but you made a major contribution to the recorded interpretation of the song. If you had a real agreement that she felt she wanted to share credits with you then that’s fine. She could have taken her lyrics and music to another producer and arranger.

I haven’t seen anyone address a question I posted upthread: If a band writes a song, and then a singer comes in and drops a melody line and lyrics over the top, who wrote the song?

It depends, if the "song" is just a bunch of chords before the singer gets there then I would say the band had not written anything. It would be no different if the band was jamming on 12 bar blues, what did they write ?

Okay, fair enough. But what about something like this:



This is a song from my latest album. I wrote the music. After I was done, my friend Mike came in and wrote the vocal melody and the lyrics. Are you telling me that he wrote this song? I would say that we both wrote the song.

I got through about a min. Unless there was something thing major at the end, I don't think you deserve any credit. Because your guitar wasn't playing any kind of melody. There wasn't anything distinct about the backing.

Okay, I see that we have reached an impasse. If you can honestly listen to that track and say that there's nothing distinct about the music, or that the guitars aren't playing any kind of melody, then I think that we live in very different musical universes.

I did honestly listen to your track for about a min. Does it really go somewhere vastly different than the first min ? I hate to break it to you but putting a few guitar chords over some drum sounds is not songwriting. Basically what you did in art terms is you gave the guy a few colored pencils and a piece of paper and told him to draw what he wants and then you took partial credit for the art.