June 16, 2014

How many people does it take to write a hit song? If you’re Pharrell, one. If you’re Pitbull or Jason Derulo, probably eight — or more.

Billboard’s recent Hot 100 chart reflects a group of hits mainly showcasing songs written solely by an act and an additional songwriter or those with seven or eight songwriters, such as Pitbull’s “Timber” or Jason Derulo’s “Wiggle.”

What does it take to craft a hit? Who gets the credit? Is a song written by nearly a dozen people less special than a song with only two or three co-writers?

Pharrell, who has the longest-running No. 1 song so far this year with “Happy,” wrote the tune alone.

“You got six, you got 18 people in the room, you don’t need me,” said Pharrell, who has written hits for Britney Spears and Usher. “Who am I to judge? Just because I do it my way doesn’t mean it’s going to be the stat[us] quo [It’s’ more than likely not going to be the stat[us] quo, as we see.”

The songwriters on Katy Perry’s No.1 hits range from four (“E.T.”) to six (“Dark Horse”). Beyonce and Jay Z’s latest smash, “Drunk in Love,” lists eight collaborators, and Eminem and Rihanna’s “The Monster” was crafted by seven people.

That’s in contrast to Lorde’s “Royals” and OneRepublic’s “Counting Stars” — solely written by Ryan Tedder — to any of the successes from Imagine Dragons’ debut album, which credits the four members and occasionally producer Alex da Kid.

“I don’t think that there’ll probably ever be a time, to be honest with you, that we would sit down with like six songwriters and be like, `Write an Imagine Dragons song.’ It just wouldn’t feel right for us,” said bandleader Dan Reynolds, who will be honored Thursday night at the Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony in New York. “I’ve heard about artists who have a song written for them and they embrace it … but for us, it’s not real to what Imagine Dragons is.”

Some of today’s hits with a list of songwriters that scroll on and on include others who don’t physically write lyrics: Writing credit can also be earned by producers who design the beats, artists who sing the song and add their own flavor, engineers who mix the track and others who work specifically on the melody. The publishing percentage for each person listed on the song varies, though.

“You have a programmer that’s in (the studio) and they’re like, `OK, give me a beat Simon.’ Simon gives a beat, well now he is a part of the co-write,’” said Linda Perry, who wrote Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” and hits for Pink.

“It’s a crazy jungle in that area. In that room, I don’t want to be a part of,” she added. “And then you got the guy that’s smoking the blunt that’s paying no attention and then he’s like, `Hey, say, “Chow down mother, chow down mother.” Now that “Chow down mother stoner mother” is now part of the songwriting process, even if he only brought in one word.”

Other times, sampling older songs adds to the lengthy list of credited songwriters. Pitbull and Kesha’s “Timber” lists eight songwriters, but technically the total would be 11 because it borrows from Lee Oskar’s “San Francisco Bay.”

The largest group of writers to win the coveted Grammy for song of the year – a songwriter’s award – is four, including Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Other winners with four songwriters include songs by U2, Coldplay, the Dixie Chicks and fun., where band members count for all or most of the writers.

John Legend, who has dominated the airwaves this year with “All of Me,” said winning the song-of-the-year Grammy is one of his top goals. He wrote the song with Toby Gad, and said within the music business, the long list of songwriters isn’t too shocking.

“But if I were a lay person looking at the credits and I saw six people wrote it, it might turn me off a little bit because you would think it’s writing by committee or it doesn’t feel as personal,” Legend said. “But then when you understand who’s involved and how they are involved, you understand it a little bit more.”

Mariah Carey’s latest album, Me. I Am Mariah… the Elusive Chanteuse, entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 3 with 58,000 sold, her lowest total for a non-holiday album since 1991′s Emotions entered at No. 4 with 156,000, when SoundScan first started tracking sales.

Not even in her darkest days, being hospitalized for emotional exhaustion and erratic behavior in 2001 after signing a $100 million, five-album deal with EMI’s Virgin Records, and starring in the universally panned Glitter, has an album done so poorly. Even the soundtrack to that disaster sold more, debuting at No. 7 with 116,000 copies.

Island Def Jam’s Antonio “L.A.” Reid famously came to Carey’s rescue in 2005, guiding Mariah to her comeback with the multiplatinum The Emancipation of Mimi, which returned her to the top of the charts, proving it’s still possible she can regain her commercial footing.

Still, these days it’s a lot tougher to get traction in the marketplace. So we turned to a trio of veteran, one-time record label executives to ask what they’d do to jump-start the Elusive Chanteuse’s career, and came away with some constructive suggestions.

Ed Eckstine, son of the legendary crooner Billy Eckstine and a former President of Mercury Records, where he guided Vanessa Williams to a successful singing career, approached the dilemma as a music man. He is currently producing a documentary on his father, My Dad was a Singer.

“As Mariah Carey enters her mid-40s, she must adjust to ‘ever-shrinking’ radio opportunities,” he says. “She has to downsize her commercial expectations, but that could allow her to take some chances artistically.”

Eckstine says Mariah should explore taking the Celine Dion route of a Las Vegas or Atlantic City residency, “a big show with bells and whistles, an over-the-top diva-ready extravaganza” might be the answer, where she can perform her hits and not worry about new material.
The veteran record man also suggests Carey might tone down the “va-va-voom” imagery, record an EDM-dance-Europop album or reunite with Clive Davis to provide her with some quality material.

“Dial up Pharrell and tell him to bring Nile Rodgers with him,” he concludes.
Tom Vickers, a former A&R and music publishing executive at A&M, Capitol, Mercury and Almo Irving, thinks the 44-year-old Mariah has a disconnect with what was once her core audience: 14 to 18-year-old girls. “The biggest issue is she’s a mother with two children of her own trying to appeal to teenagers.”

His recommendation? Collaborate with hit songwriter-producers like Dr. Luke, Max Martin or “this year’s model.”

“Don’t compete with women 20 years younger, but come with more mature versions of what they’re doing that could hit a slightly older demographic,” he says. “Unfortunately, Mariah is no longer perceived as a role model by females nor a sex object by men. She’s caught in between, which undercuts her relevance.”

He also counsels Mariah to seek out duet partners that could broaden her audience, such as John Mayer or even an international star like Pitbull, create an “event” record based on a theme (a period songbook, an unplugged album, etc.) or set her sights on international territories where she has shown strength in the past. “It was not a smart career move getting into bitchy cat fights with Nicki Minaj on American Idol,” says Vickers. “She’s bound to suffer in comparison.”

Publicity guru Bob Merlis, who spent most of his career at Warner Bros. Records, where he applied his magic touch to everyone from Madonna to Morrissey, quipped, “She should do a country record and a Howard Stern interview, where she has the time to explain herself that she doesn’t get in those tabloid sound bites.”

What he failed to mention was how a sit down with the King of All Media in the late ’90s surfaced again during her 2001 breakdown. She went on a rant against Stern during an in-store appearance at Tower Records, saying his form of humor greatly upset her, during her period of “erratic behavior,” which included an infamous drop-in on MTV’s TRL, where she handed out ice cream bars and began a modified striptease to the astonishment of host Carson Daly.

Nearly 13 years later, Carey is seemingly content in her personal life, the mother of two and the by all accounts contented wife of the ubiquitous Nick Cannon. Her professional happiness is another story. Perhaps nothing short of a reunion with ex-husband Tommy Mottola can help Mariah regain her career mojo. She’s seemingly tried everything else.