Talk:List of songwriters

Um, is this page necessary or useful? -Tubby

Well, there's a list of popular music performers as well. On the other hand, some perform the songs written by others. My question is where to draw the line: Charles Aznavour? W.C. Handy? Udo Jürgens? Paul Lincke?? KF 20:24 Nov 30, 2002 (UTC)

Furthermore, because this list is "not limited to popular music", one could include a heck of a lot of classical composers. But then I think most of the "list of..." pages are basically useless (not that me thinking that is a reason to get rid of it, of course). --Camembert

My thinking was that it's as necessary and useful as "List of actors" or "List of archaeologists". Moreover, the entry for "songwriter" doesn't contain any information beyond the self-evident, ie. "someone who writes songs". If there is anyone in the world who needs to refer to that article, then I suspect they will require practical examples. And the criteria are not set in tablets of stone - anyone can amend them. --Deb

I quite agree - as I say, I don't personally use the lists pages, but people do clearly find them useful and interesting, or they wouldn't keep being created. In this case, however, given that songwriter has very little content, how would you feel about moving the list there, rather than giving it a separate page? A similar thing is currently done at composer, and I think it works fine. --Camembert

Sorry. I thought there was a convention that the list had to be on a separate page. But if there isn't, I'm happy to see it moved. --Deb

I understood that was the general plan too. I figured it prevents us from thinking a page such as songwriter is a good article because it has, say, one paragraph and a huge list: it forces us to write actual content! -- Tarquin 20:49 Nov 30, 2002 (UTC)

Hmn, well, if you say so. I don't buy it myself though - one paragraph and a huge list (actually, "paragraph" is a bit generous in this case) clearly isn't a good article, and anybody who thinks it is just isn't thinking straight. But it's surely better than one paragraph and no list at all, isn't it? My perception was that lists such as this generally started life on the page of some article, and then got broken off when said article got too long. So if, for example, we had a wonderful article at songwriter, and this list was also very long, then we'd break the list off. But that doesn't apply here. Either way, it's nothing to lose sleep over. I'll let it drop. --Camembert

Agreed on all counts. Your analysis of when to split of lists is better :-) -- Tarquin

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Can someone explain why William Shakespeare is on the list? Tokerboy

I guess it's because song lyrics appear in many of his plays (one of the plays, I forget which, has quite a number of songs, though whether they're all original or whether some are folk songs, I don't know). However, he didn't write music for them (although plenty of composers since have provided music). I don't think he should really be on the list, anyway, as it was a very fringe activity for him. --Camembert

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I think that there should be some sort of place here for identifying notable songwriting teams, such as Lennon-McCartney, King-Goffin, Holland-Dozier-Holland, John-Taupin, etc. I'm not exactly sure how to fit that into the current format, which identifies only single songwriters, but clearly certain teams of songwriters were significant in and of themselves as teams. soulpatch

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I've been "bold" again and moved out the singer-songwriters to a list of their own in order to keep this one to a manageable size. However, I freely admit that I've never heard of a lot of these people, especially the American entries, so I would hope others will leap in and do the appropriate thing with any that I've left in the wrong category. Deb 22:53 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with that... Most of what's left should then be moved too, as most of them were also performers -- while most songwriters didn't perform until recently, the list is definitely chronologically biased. "Singer-songwriter" refers to a specific genre -- is Tupac Shakur a singer-songwriter? Yes, but it would certainly be strange to see him listed as one. I'll think about my opinion more, but it seems like an unnecessary obfuscation. Tokerboy

Sorry. I've never heard of Tupac Shakur. However, it seems like this list, which lots of people originally said was unnecessary and useless, has attracted quite a few contributors after all, so much so that it's got pretty enormous. While weeding it, I found a few duplicates - for example, both John Lennon and Paul McCartney were down under USA as well as under UK! I thought, if we shook it out a bit, it might make it easier to read. Do you think the arrangement by country is valid? And is there any reason why people shouldn't appear in both lists if appropriate? Or are you saying that "singer-songwriter", being, as you put it, a specific genre, should only include people like Neil Young, Joan Baez, etc.? I'm quite happy to go along with that. Deb 19:29 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)

Aah (Tupac is a gangsta rapper, BTW) Maybe it's a cultural difference, but to me, as an American, "singer-songwriter" always and only refers to James Taylor, Carly Simon, John Denver and such folky-people from the early 70s (maybe Baez and Young included), and occasionally the late 80s folky-women like Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan.

If I found a "list of songwriters" somewhere, I would expect the list to be complete and by necessity, long. A list of singer-songwriters would also be useful but should only list the two genres above that are called "singer-songwriters". Of course, you're British (IIRC), so maybe this is a cultural difference... In the US, "singer-songwriter" is very specific in a totally illogical way -- some very memorable singers and songwriters don't make the cut, including Lennon and McCartney, Bob Marley, etc. My impression is that separating out the singer-songwriters would be like taking trombonists off a list of musicians; it's not wrong, but I don't see the point. I do think we should have both lists, and anybody that is on the list of singer-songwriters should be on this list as well, but not vice versa. Maybe, in order to make it more readable, it should be organized in some different way. Maybe by broad genres like electronic music, classical music, folk music, jazz.... that might be more logical than nationality, though there would certainly be disputes. Of course, there will still be disputes eventually over nationality -- for example, MC Solaar is a Senegalese-born rapper living in France and rapping in French.

I realize the above is rambling and confusing. Sometimes I can't think things through unless I write as I go, so feel free to ignore it. My conclusion is that List of singer-songwriters should include the two genres I mentioned above, and List of songwriters should include anybody famous that writes music and/or lyrics. And we should consider re-organizing by genre, or maybe time-frame, instead of nationality. Tokerboy 19:49 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)

Not confusing at all. I think I actually agree. There's not such a huge difference between British and American views on what constitutes a singer-songwriter, really (in fact, I didn't realise you were American) -- I was stretching the boundaries a lot with some of the ones I moved out. Our British singer-songwriters would be people like Tanita Tikaram, Donovan, Elton John, maybe Sting -- in other words, all solo artists, usually able to accompany themselves on guitar, piano, or whatever.

The idea of organising the songwriters by genre also appeals to me, and then maybe singer-songwriters could be one of those genres. However, I still think the list will get unmanageably large. We've got this problem, now, where some people's browsers rebel against attempts to edit articles of more than a given size, and I think it's worth while at least to try and find ways round it. Deb 23:09 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)

Something that worked well at List of famous Canadians to end a similar much more sordid debacle (luckily DW isn't involved here) is to limit each genre to say, ten or twelve of the most influential songwriters in each. Of course, it's not perfect and will require much discussion here, but could help keep the list to a manageable size. The main difference, of course, is that it's pretty easy and uncontroversial to divide people into fields like literature, music or whatever, but dividing musicians is much more difficult. Where would Elton John be, for example? I guess pop music, but that doesn't really sit right with me. I'll marinate on this for a while and see what comes up. Tokerboy

I'm gonna start playing at List of songwriters/temp. Feel free to play with me. (anyone)Tokerboy