Songwriting Teams

The following songwriting teams have been the most significant in the 20th AND 21st centuries. It's worth studying how they met, how they work and how they became who they are today. There is a lot to learn from them. Moreover, almost 100% of the songs on the charts have been written by two or more people. This shows that if some songwriters put together their talents, magical songs can be born.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney

They are one of the best-known and most successful songwriting teams in history. Between 1962 and 1969, they wrote and published approximately 180 jointly credited songs, the majority of which were recorded by The Beatles. Both Lennon and McCartney wrote words and music; often, however, their songs were the work of one of the two writers. Their songs have been covered on a numberless occasions. According to the Guinness World Records, Yesterday has been recorded by more artists, than any other song in history.

Lennon's and McCartney's first musical influences were the Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. They learned several of their songs and got better at their craft by imitating their idols' sounds. First they wrote songs at McCartney's home, at Lennon's aunt's house, or at the Liverpool Institute. They often invited friends such as George Harrison, to listen to performances of their new songs.

Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney often wrote independently (and many Beatles songs are primarily the work of one or the other), they usually didn't complete songs without some input from each other. In many cases, one of them would sketch an idea or a song fragment and take it to the other to finish or improve. On some other occasions, they brought together two incomplete songs or song ideas (that they had worked on individually) and combined it into a complete song. Lennon called it "Writing eyeball-to-eyeball", and "Playing into each other's noses".
This method included elements of competitiveness and mutual inspiration as well as straightforward collaboration and creative merging of musical ideas. It is often considered to be a key reason for The Beatles' innovation and popular success.

As time went on, the songs increasingly became the work of Lennon's or McCartney's, often with the other contributing only a few words or an alternate chord. In 1980, Lennon said about their songwriting team: "he [McCartney] provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes."

Elton John and Bernie Taupin

Bernie Taupin is an English lyricist, poet, and singer, best known for his long-term collaboration with Elton John. Bernie has written the lyrics for the majority of Elton's songs, making his lyrics some of the best known in pop-rock's history. The two have collaborated on more than 30 albums so far.

In 1967 Taupin answered an advertisement searching for new talent. The ad was placed in the New Musical Express by Liberty Records A&R man Ray Williams. Elton John answered the same advert and although neither Bernie nor Elton passed the audition for Liberty Records, Ray Williams recognized their talents, put them in touch with each other, and the rest is history.

Taupin's lyrics include such tunes asRocket Man, Levon, Crocodile Rock,Honky Cat, Tiny Dancer, Candle In the Wind, Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, Bennie and the Jets,Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Don't Let the Sound Go Down on Me, The Bitch is Back, Daniel, Your Song, The One,Simple Life, The Last Song andBelieve. In September 1997, Taupin rewrote the lyrics of Candle in the Wind in tribute to the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

The 1991 film documentary Two Rooms described the the songwriting team's writing style. It involves Taupin writing the lyrics on his own and John then putting them to music, with no further interaction between the two. This however changed considerably over the years. The process is still basically the same, but the two of them interact on songs far more today. Bernie Taupin sometimes joins Elton John in the studio as the songs are written and occasionally during recording sessions.

The songwriting team had their first Broadway musical open in March 2006 with Lestat: The Musical. Bernie Taupin wrote lyrics for 10 songs for Elton John's 2006 album The Captain & The Kid and appeared on the cover with him for the first time marking their 40th anniversary of working together.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
The songwriting team that consists of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote the majority of the catalogue of their band, The Rolling Stones. They have also produced and co-produced numerous Rolling Stones albums under the pseudonym The Glimmer Twins.

Jagger and Richards credit manager Andrew Loog Oldham as the catalyst for the start of their collaboration. Although most Jagger/Richards numbers have been collaborations, some of the songs credited to the famous partnership have been most often solo songwriting from either Jagger (Sympathy for the Devil,Brown Sugar), or Richards (Happy,Little T&A). This is similar to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team. In addition, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards also adhered to a tradition of joint credits even on songs that were written by just one of them. Mick Jagger said that "I think in the end it all balances out."Most often Jagger wrote most of the lyrics while Richards focused on the music. Mick Jagger also stated that this technique was more prevalent in the early 1960s, while in their later collaborations their roles have overlapped more, with both songwriters contributing both lyrics and music.


Stargate
Stargate is a Grammy-winning Norwegian record producing and songwriting team. It's composed of Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel Storleer Eriksen. They write in the R&B, pop and hip hop genres. Stargate was established in Norway.


Stargate broke into the American music scene in 2006, with the release of the Billboard Hot 100 number-one single, So Sick, produced and co-written by the team and performed by singer Ne-Yo. They also produced and co-wrote with Beyoncé Knowles her worldwide hit singleIrreplaceable, which also topped the Billboard Hot 100 - for ten consecutive weeks.


Stargate began in 1997 as a song-writing trio, consisting of Tor Erik Hermansen, Mikkel Storleer Eriksen, and Hallgeir Rustan, in Norway. When they first met, Hermansen was a talent scout for the Norwegian branch of the record label Warner Music Group, Eriksen owned a studio, and Rustan was a mechanical engineer before becoming involved in music.


The songwriting team's first successes were in Great Britain. The Stargate team has produced many Top 10 hits in the United Kingdom for acts, for example Blue, Miss-Teeq, and Atomic Kitten. They also worked with Javine, Shola Ama, Five, Samantha Mumba in Europe.The team wanted to be successful on the American market. They remixed American hip-hop and R&B songs, adding layers of melody to suit the European radio audience. Soon they felt that the team could be more successful if they relocated to the United States. But only Hermansen and Eriksen were willing to do that. That's how the trio became a duo.


In 2005 in New York, Stargate started to work with singer-songwriter Ne-Yo at Sony Music Studios. Ne-Yo had been working on his debut album, In My Own Words, and he decided to collaborate with the team. Soon they wrote So Sick, which topped the Bilboard Hot 100. Later they also collaborated on the hit single Unfaithful for Rihanna's 2006 album, A Girl Like Me. In the same year, Stargate again collaborated with Ne-Yo for the single Irreplaceable, recorded by Beyoncé Knowles. The single topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for ten consecutive weeks in 2007. Also in 2006, Stargate wrote American Lionel Richie his first R&B hit, I Call It Love. In 2007, Beautiful Liar, a Beyoncé Knowles/Shakira duet became another hit for Stargate.


The songwriting team received Grammy nominations for five separate songs in six categories for the 2008 Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year for Irreplaceable, Best R&B Song for Hate That I Love You and Best Dance Record for Don't Stop the Music. Stargate received nominations in more than 10 categories for the 2009 Grammy Awards.They won their first Grammy in 2009 in the Best R&B Song category for Miss Independent, performed by Ne-Yo.


Other Notable Songwriting Teams
• The Motown team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland: Holland–Dozier–Holland is a songwriting and production team. The trio wrote, arranged and produced many songs that helped define the Motown sound in the 1960s.


• Rodgers and Hammerstein:Richard Rodgets and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo. They created several popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s. Rodgers composed the music and Hammerstein wrote the lyrics. Their most successful shows included Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The Kind and I and The Sound of Music. They received thirty-four Tony Awards, fifteen Academy Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and two Grammys.

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