Is your favorite musical artist a musician and singer – or simply a performer?

Rightly, or wrongly, I have drawn this line for years.

A true musician writes their own lyrics, writes their own music, plays an instrument, and sings their own songs. Whereas a performer only sings.

Sure we can enjoy a wonderful sounding voice and all – but in my experience, lots of people know how to sing. And if lots of other people can do it, why do people care about simple performers anyway?

For instance, take Bob Dylan and Celine Dion. He can do it all where she seems like just a voice.

But that can’t be right. Celine Dion is breathtaking to hear. And that analogy is like saying Yo-Yo Ma “only plays the cello.”

Does it matter if artists are musicians (as I have described them) or merely performers? Do fans even care?

Or is it part of why we stretch the truth about who is writing the songs we love?

The artists occupy a central place in the songs, but more as vocal personalities than singers. The voices belong to real human beings, for the most part, although in some cases the vocals are so decked out in electronic finery that it doesn’t matter whether a human or a machine made them. On sheer vocal ability, the new artists fall short of the pop divas of the early ’90s—Whitney, Mariah, Celine. And who are these artists? Britney? Kelly? Rihanna? Katy? Kesha? What do they stand for as artists? Their insights into the human condition seem to extend no further than the walls of the vocal booth. And who really writes their songs?

-John Seabrook, The Song Machine

I admit, I had never heard of Brill Building Music until I ran across this passage.

Apparently, Brill Building Music was music that came out of the Brill Building in New York City. There teams of professional songwriters collaborated to write many of the famous music of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.

Built in 1931, you can still visit the Brill Building today at:

1619 Broadway, New York City, NY (on the corner of 49th street)

The point is that pop music is made the same way today as it was back then.

Although today, both songwriters and artists are certainly more quiet about it…

Like the Brill Building songs of my youth, the hits on the radio are once again “manufactured” by songwriting pros. The hit makers aren’t on the same team, but they collaborate and work independently for the same few A-list artists. Collectively, they constitute a virtual Brill Building, the place where record men go when they have to have a hit. The song machine.

-John Seabrook, The Song Machine