Producer as Artist?

Last quarter, I examined authorship in popular music. One things I was arguing against was the way the producer starts to be viewed as the true "author" of a song. In a 1993 scholarly article, Barbara Bradby wrote, " The new textual practices of bricolage, intertextuality and 'stealing' tend to be subsumed back into the old notion of authorship through the ideology of the creativity of 'the producer.'" This is still very true today, perhaps more so with producers like Timbaland becoming famous and subsequently recording their own music. In the course of my project, I developed a viewpoint in which the performer / vocalist was the main "author" of a song, if there can be said to be an author. I am not convinced that this is true to how I listen to music, however.

A few weeks ago, the song "Forever" by Chris Brown jumped into the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 songs. I didn't pay any attention because I'm not particularly a fan of his. However, today I heard that it was produced by Polow Da Don, and right away looked it up on youtube then downloaded it. I absolutely love the song.

I was only interested in the song because of the producer. Polow Da Don was the producer of what is possibly my favorite song, Glamorous by Fergie, as well as a bunch of other songs I love. All of those songs but one are by artists I already loved before they put out a song produced by Polow. However, through these songs, I now like Polow too, enough to check out a song he produced by an artist I don't particularly care for.

It still bothers me when a song is considered to belong more to its producer than its performer, but I should acknowledge that the producer is an important part of the song. Pop music is a collaborative medium. As with featured artists, when a performer collaborates with a producer I like, it makes the song that much more interesting.

On the subjects of producers, in addition to Polow, I am very fond of Danja, particularly the songs he produces by himself (i.e. not co-produced with Timbaland). He produced some of my favorite songs on "Blackout" (Britney's recent CD), as well as couple other favorite songs of mine.