Saul Revell

name/less: an ode to ghost-writing

sauL reveLL

While ghost-writing is hardly new to the music industry, its prevalence over the past few decades has swelled to an unprecedented degree. Rather than it being rare for popular artists to employ professional songwriters, it’s become the norm. One concern that naturally arises when confronted with this trend is that it somehow undermines music’s place in culture as a form of artistic self-expression. How can an artist’s music be said to be something special and creative if they haven’t created it themselves, but rather employed someone to do it for them? The core of this concern is that people’s attitudes to music are rooted in their perception of what music is and that these attitudes and this perception are what gives music the prowess it has in persuading an audience. This relationship between artists, music, and audiences relies on the perceived nature of what being an artist that releases music is. This perception in turn relies on the fact that artists previously wrote their own music far more often than not. By undermining this system, we risk undermining the value that music is able to bring us.

Another related issue is that ghost-writing alters the nature of what an “artist” is. Rather than artists being both creators and players of music, they’re now more akin to brands. This is, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, what’s wrong with music being treated in the same manner as other modern commodities? An initial response to this is that music simply isn’t the same as other modern commodities and the fact that it has been so commodified doesn’t change this. One feature of music which sets it apart and that ought to be explored is the perception of music by its audience. Appreciators of music do not (and should not) have the same attitude towards music as they do towards material

goods. There is no sense in which, for instance, Amazon customers expect that Jeff Bezos spends his time binding books together to be shipped, but there is, however, a sense in which music is perceived as being personal to the artist that releases it. While this perception is false in many cases, it is this perception that drives fans to consume music. It’s the belief that music creates some kind of connection between the writer and the listener, and more than that it’s the perception of an artist based on the music they’ve released that makes fans identify with them and follow them. So, the question of whether ghost-writing is acceptable can be, in part, reduced to the question of whether there is something important or valuable about the way that people feel about and interact with the artists that they listen to. Moreover, is there something valuable about whether or not such feelings or interactions have a basis in truth?

This, I think, is the sticking point. The importance of whether people’s relationships with art and artists are genuine, or whether it’s simply a conveniently lucrative fabrication. One way to highlight this importance is to explore our earlier comparison between music and other commodities. If we consider the way that people interact with products they consume, we can see that the more transactional the industry behind those products becomes, the less personal and more shallow people’s attitudes become to those products. It’s a simple fact of economics that one way to devalue anything, whether that be a product or even a currency is to saturate the market with that thing. The more easily produced and the more readily available something is, the less it is valued by its consumers. Popular music – as it is so often being produced today – is very much an oversaturated commodity. Artists are under pressure to release more and more work, which only increases their reliance on ghost-writing.

The only remaining question is whether there is something troubling about such a transactional approach to music, whether treating music as we treat other products is inappropriate. One reason to consider that this might be the case is that music is simply unlike these other products and commodities that we treat so disdainfully, both in its very nature and in its means of creation, but most importantly in its ability to move us, to connect us, and to shape us.