Friday 30 May 2008

Production value

I've noticed something that is becoming a bit of a trend within the music industry, and I cant help but feel that I may be the only one who seems to notice/care about it. That is, that with a lot of new songs coming out that are produced by rather well known people, (e.g Mark Ronson, Timbaland) are being credited to said producer, rather than the band themselves. Something which in my opinion is bizzare. It comes to mind after the ridiculous over-playing of Amy Wankhouse's shocking cover of The Zuton's 'Valerie'. (I seem to be the only person who hates her for some reason, despite the fact she's shite!). While it is clear that it is her singing it, and her backing band performing it, the song is still classed as being by Mark Ronson but only 'featuring' Miss Winehouse. Not taking anything away from producers, im sure it's a challenging job, but come on, surely, even if it was Ronson's idea to do it, it should still be accredited to Amy?? Or would that be too obvious?
Another example of this strange new thing is 'Apologise' by OneRepublic, or should that be 'featuring' OneRepublic. This song, which was entirely written by the band, was only slightly remixed by big name producer Timbaland, with the only difference really being a touch more bass and a more obvious drum beat, along with the kind of annoying 'eeh, eeh, eeh' bit that he does over the top. Despite this minimal change it is still classed as being 'Timbaland featuring OneRepublic. Taking basically all the credit away from the band, despite them being the writers of the song.
My main concern with this is why. Why do the producers take all the credit away from a band who wrote the song originally only because they twiddled some nobs and pushed some buttons? If this is the case, one can only fear what happens in the future. Will there not be any bands anymore? Will everything be released under the producers name, with the dreaded 'featuring' the only credit any band gets? Who says it isn't going to go any further and just be the label that gets any name? Will we be hearing about that new Geffen album featuring Metallica? Or Domino records new album, featuring Arctic Monkeys? I for one hope that surely common sense will prevail soon enough and people will see that the likes of Timbaland and Mark Ronson are NOT the ones who are writing the songs, are NOT the ones performing the songs, and are only producing it, meaning that their names should be on sleeve notes where they belong.

But then again, common sense kind of seems to be lost on the general public when it comes to music. I mean come on, who actually thinks Amy Winehouse has a good voice?!