She'd added an eye-rolling emoji — the L.A. Times reports — and then softened the snark with "This isn’t meant as shade, I’m just curious."
The L.A. Times casually displays bias:
Bey’s empowering track “Alien Superstar” has 24 songwriters on it....
It uses the cute pet name "Bey" and designates the song as "empowering."
Here are the lyrics. You tell me if it's empowering: "I'm too classy for this world, forever, I'm that girl/Feed you diamonds and pearls, ooh, baby/I'm too classy to be touched, I paid them all in dust/I'm stingy with my love, ooh, baby."
If that sounds too much like "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred, that actually partly explains why there are so many writers on the song: Right Said Fred artists Richard, Peter and John Fairbrass are among the 24 writers listed on "Alien Superstar."
Anyway, Warren encountered backlash, including a really sophisticated riposte from The-Dream (listen to his music here on Spotify):
“You mean how’s does our (Black) culture have so many writers... well it started because we couldn’t afford certain things starting out, so we started sampling and it became an Artform, a major part of the Black Culture (hip hop) in America. Had that era not happen who knows. U good?”
Warren responded:
“I didn’t mean that as an attack or as disrespect. I didn’t know this, thank U for making me aware of it. No need to be mean about it.”
I think that last sentence is criticizing anyone who's inclined to be mean to her, not confessing that she'd been mean. But:
Still, fans still felt that Warren meant her tweets “as an attack” and argued that she was playing the victim with her responses. Others were quick to punch below the belt and compare her signature dark-haired look to that of convicted socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
It took 6 hours, but Warren finally coughed up the apology:
"Ok, I meant no disrespect to @Beyonce, who I’ve worked with and admire. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding."
Too bad she didn't have something interesting to say about individual expression versus committee work, and she just withdrew like that. I think The-Dream's point might have really scared her. It could blow up into a racism problem.
I had to look up Diane Warren to remember what glorious things she's written. It's just about my least favorite kind of music. Bombastic and insincere. Notably, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing." The list of her songs is so insanely long, but I can't find anything I care about on it.
Who is this person, Diane Warren? Wikipedia says:
Warren has never married, and does not think of herself as a person of commitment. In interviews, she has said that she believes that her lack of a romantic life makes her more peculiar as a songwriter. She was in a relationship with songwriter and record producer Guy Roche that ended in 1992 and claims she has not had another relationship since, commenting "I've never been in love like in my songs. I'm not like normal people. I'm no good at relationships. I draw drama to me — it's the Jew in me."
Yikes.
Warren considers herself to be cynical regarding romance, but she does not let this affect her songwriting and prefers to write alone than co-writing, commenting "When I write with other people, the experience is different. You have to compromise, which I have problems with. I'd rather listen to my own mind."
Well, so she does have strong opinions about writing solo. Too bad she couldn't bring that to the discussion on Twitter. She got swarmed and resorted to the assertion that she didn't even intend an attack.
And this is a great example of the terrible impoverishment of public discourse on Twitter. It's not that people fight too much. It's that they fight in a way that systematically prevents deep, substantive disagreement and working through to new levels of comprehension and valuable opinion. It's good for saying you've got hair like Ghislaine Maxwell and you might be a racist and okay, I was never anyone worth listening to in the first place.
Warren does not usually allow anyone into her Hollywood Hills office, which she describes as a "cluttered, airless room." In 2012, Warren said that nothing in her office had been cleaned or moved for 17 years because she is superstitious; she prefers to think of that room as her "secret world."
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Can we reiterate the original question/criticism? How does a song have 24 songwriters on it, and those lyrics are what they came up with?
What the hell has race got to do with it?
(oh, but everything is racial, I keep forgetting)
Boy, the world we live in today...
How can there be 24 people who think any of this makes any sense, or matters in the least?
Twitter, swarms, allegations of diversity, and song.
Warren was ressponsible for the wretched "Faith of the Heart", originally written for the wretched Robin Williams film PATCH ADAMS and later used as the title track for the opening of the wretched STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE TV series, the only Star Trek show to be cancelled after just four wretched seasons.
They're crediting the songwriters of the songs they sampled.
"The L.A. Times casually displays bias:
Bey’s empowering track “Alien Superstar” has 24 songwriters on it....
It uses the cute pet name "Bey" and designates the song as "empowering.""
Here's the issue with the entire post and mainstream/celebrity news genre: Moods and biases and bullying pass as facts and morality. Casual bias is both not conscious and rewarded by gangs of bullying associates. This story might as well be from "The View." Musicians are generally driven by mood and emotion, but today simple and raw emotional stuff gets analyzed as moral outrage.
Where was the left in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s? Stoned and rebelling against the establishment? What's left becomes right wing, what's right becomes left wing. Yin Yang.
“You mean how’s does our (Black) culture have so many writers... well it started because we couldn’t afford certain things starting out..."
Bzzzzt...error...error...default...
I just love the mix of articles you find to post on. I take it for granted so many days. It's pretty remarkable.
Anyway...where do I start?
Warren said, "I draw drama to me — it's the Jew in me." WTF? Speak for yourself, bruh. I would say it's more likely it's the 'JAP' in her. Druish Princess
And, I may have accepted that at the start of the Hip-Hop movement, it took a village to put together some tunes, but, damn...it's been years now and not much has changed in Hip-Hop. (OK, bring on the hate). It still sounds the same to me. And don't get me wrong. I find my feet moving to the beat at some of it, but the lyrics? Really? That takes 24 people? That's hilarious. I did go to Apple Music to listen to The Dream. Meh. Could have been anyone else in the genre to me.
Popular music today is so lame, so without a future longevity to it, that it's not even worth the discussion. You think anyone is going to go around whistling "Alien Superstar" in a few years? It's like a bad flu. You live with it, but you know it'll be over at some point and you're just waiting for that point. Seriously, we've gone from the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Aretha, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Sly Stone...to The Dream?. Ugh.
Warren was right to question the 24 people who helped write that. I wonder how many people Beyonce has hired to clothe her?
I think that we've reached the point where blacks and whites will have two different societies. Each will be no more than an occasional visitor in the other's world. In this instance Diane Warren was a visitor in black society and ended up unwelcome. In the future there will be the occasional black visitor in the white culture and that person, depending on their behavior, will either be welcome or unwelcome.
The concept of a biracial American society is over. Hispanics will end up assimilating into the white culture and adding to it, just as Italians, Irish and other groups have done in the past. You can already see that in the increase of Hispanic support for the R's. Within a generation, black culture and society will exist in a small self constructed ghetto kept alive by token handouts. There will be very few people who will want to visit them there. It is not a very welcoming place.
Imagine having that level of succe$$ and fame...and still feeling obliged to apologize after being bullied in the digital realm by people you've never met.
The passion of "Bey" cultists is in inverse proportion to her talent, at least her songwriting talent.
PS. I belatedly looked up the list of songs Diane Warren has written.
She doesn't have to apologize to anyone.
"How can there be 24 writers on a [Beyoncé] song?"
"Song-writing" is an advanced from of grifting.
"It uses the cute pet name "Bey" and designates the song as "empowering.""
Right. Bey is beyond criticism. Mark Judge had a piece on it.
"Here are the lyrics. You tell me if it's empowering: "I'm too classy for this world, forever, I'm that girl/Feed you diamonds and pearls, ooh, baby/I'm too classy to be touched, I paid them all in dust/I'm stingy with my love, ooh, baby.""
Yes, it's empowering. This is what women's agency looks and sounds like today.
It took 6 hours, but Warren finally coughed up the apology:
"I think The-Dream's point might have really scared her. It could blow up into a racism problem."
Anything could. Be aware.
"I draw drama to me — it's the Jew in me."
Just to illustrate that pseudo-progs actually do believe in ethnic essentialism.
"And this is a great example of the terrible impoverishment of public discourse on Twitter. It's not that people fight too much. It's that they fight in a way that systematically prevents deep, substantive disagreement and working through to new levels of comprehension and valuable opinion."
Appreciate Althouse's sentiment, but: this is a great example of the nice liberal misreading of social media. Public discourse hasn't been "impoverished," since it wasn't all that rich and all that public when liberal hegemony held sway in the old MSM; it's just that a wider swath of the public now gets to discourse, on prog terms. People don't fight too much: they fight just as much as they need to to win in the culture war and enhance their own status. Deep disagreement and working through are liberal fetishes that need to be eradicated. The only valuable opinion is the correct opinion.
It's more like 24 assemblers, isn't it? Not much "writing" going on there...
“You mean how’s does our (Black) culture have so many writers... well it started because we couldn’t afford certain things starting out, so we started sampling and it became an Artform, a major part of the Black Culture (hip hop) in America. Had that era not happen who knows. U good?”
Less '(Black) culture' please.
"Insincere" opens up a massive can of worms. Midcentury literary critics railed endlessly against "sincerity" as a criterion of art. The dispute may best be summed up in the quote attributed to George Burns (and others): “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made.”
But everything eventually becomes a genre of its own. You can hate Vegas lounge singers or Europop or techno or disco, but eventually it becomes an artform of its own and evolves a set of aesthetic criteria. "Badness" and "insincerity" may actually make a performance good in the terms of its own subgenre.
Here is the dirty secret on song credits.
Writers can make a lot of money.
Someone like Beyonce can make a song a hit, even a crappy song.
So she will agree to sing a song from a writer (obscure or otherwise) if she gets a writing credit.
In most cases she will not have written a single word. Or maybe changes 'Ooh baby' to 'Ahh baby.'
Bam! Writing credit and more money rolling into her pockets.
The obscure writer has now written a Beyonce song.
The more established writers won't play that game because they don't have to.
How can there be 24 writers on a song?
Duh.
Lawyers.
I belatedly looked up the list of songs Diane Warren has written.
She doesn't have to apologize to anyone.
She knows very well it was credits for samples but this is the game, you generate a little controversy you get a lot of attention. People will play her songs, she makes money.
24 songwriters that write crap. Who listens to this crap?? What a joke.
Bey is okay with a cheating, thug of a husband. She isn't empowering anybody.
The concept of a biracial American society is over. Hispanics will end up assimilating into the white culture and adding to it, just as Italians, Irish and other groups have done in the past.
So Italians and Irish people started out with non white culture but then assimilated their non white selves into white culture? Deep.
"Hispanics will end up assimilating into the white culture"
Shhh, that's what "Hispanic" already is. It's in the name. Spanish isn't a native American language.
Oh, you mean English speaking culture?
With the progress of left-wing ideology in corporations, there is boardroom consensus in lyricism. That said, be wary of the democratic/dictatorial duality. Reconcile.
“You mean how’s does our (Black) culture have so many writers... well it started because we couldn’t afford certain things starting out, so we started sampling and it became an Artform, a major part of the Black Culture (hip hop) in America. Had that era not happen who knows. U good?”
Sampling software and a laptop are cheaper than buying a guitar at a pawn shop? Huh. I take it Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and RL Burnside could not be reached for comment.
I'm not saying that you can't do some cool things with sampling, but I'm not buying the black community turned to sampling as a last resort for music making when there were guys building homemade guitars to play the blues in the Jim Crow era south.
Heywood- Yes, for many people here in the early 1900's, southern Europeans and Irish Catholics were non-white. A lot of it was anti Catholic but there was a skin tone part of it. Have you never read books or articles from back then that talked about the "swarthy" immigrants polluting our heritage?
Culturally, white people were exclusively native WASPs.
Paddy O- No, I mean white culture. Like it or not, dead white men built this country. They created the idea behind it and built it. You know, like when black kids who are too smart in school get beaten up because they are "acting white". It's not language. Its culture- Italians didn't speak English when they arrived. Neither did the Vietnamese more recently. If you feel better call it traditional American culture instead of white.
Culturally, white people were exclusively native WASPs.
Paddy O- No, I mean white culture. Like it or not, dead white men built this country. They created the idea behind it and built it.
Well, when you're right you're right, democracy is defiantly an Anglo Saxon Protestant invention and all that cotton and tobacco didn't pick itself now did it?
'Yes, for many people here in the early 1900's, southern Europeans and Irish Catholics were non-white. A lot of it was anti Catholic but there was a skin tone part of it.'
This is correct. When my 100% Italian father married my Irish/French ancestry mother in the '50s, he joked that it was an 'interracial marriage.'
When my Italian grandfather came here in the early teens, he was many things; dago, wop, eye-tie, greaseball, etc. What he wasn't was 'white.'
If you look at immigration documents, skin complexion is listed...light, dark, etc.
Just the beginning of what democrats do today...divide everyone up and put them in little boxes.
The Germans of the '30s and '40s would be envious.
If you feel better call it traditional American culture instead of white.
Ah yes American, who can forget Amerigo Vespucci that noteworthy Anglo Saxon Protestant for whom these continents are named. Without Amerigo there would be no A in USA.
group creativity con: without a strong lead, there's little chance the team will consider large moves in the creative space (though screenplays are sometimes rewritten, that's more of a serial taking turns endeavor). you'll get a bunch of incrementally + locally unimprovable decisions that can leave you stuck with an inferior result that can't reach the superior one by any possible leap.
group creativity pro: maybe groups can reach some satisfying targets that no individual would choose, i.e. the selfishness of the artist may be effectively suppressed by the ensemble.
perhaps when you see a long list of writing credits, what you really have is a bunch of people taking turns, mostly unlimited. if so, why not cut to the chase and use just an early seed and the last writer?
Are we surprised that a female artist is overly concerned w/ social approval? A little - to be an artist, I thought you had to be willing to make independent choices. Perhaps some are able to do this mostly because they're head-down impulsive and don't consider how different others' minds are from their own. We romanticize artists as acting out of (at least aesthetic) conviction and standing up for it. And shouldn't artists be in favor of the way they work? Don't we want to hear an honest account of their preferences (which are just that)? Twitter mobs seem to enforce against such honesty, and if it turns out that many artists are independent only out of obliviousness, we've lost something.
Sampling is simply another kind of artistic expression. Personally I would prefer to hear music created by people who deeply understand instruments and can perform, even if they choose not to in some tracks, but there's a satisfying (for the audience) relationship of source and remixed audio. It can certainly lead to overly-faddish worship of particular (and sometimes arbitrarily) famous performances (see the "Amen break"[beat]). Samplers copy other samplers' choices.
Rapper: "When you were wiriting partners with Little Jimmy did you write the music and him the lyrics or the other way round?
Hesh: We had our own process
Rapper: So that doo-wacka do lyrics. That came from your experience?
Sopranos https://youtu.be/OazrQKmygGA?t=19
John LGBTQBNY Henry
I didn't know who Diane Warren was until just yesterday. I heard her on "My Fab Four" on the Sirius XM Beatles channel (Beatles fans pick their four favorite songs). I only remember two of her four songs: "Yesterday" and "She's Leaving Home".
Colleen Brown
I like the Alexis Rose version better (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR3Plv8HuNk)
Warren walked right into that one.
The other two songs on Diane Warren's "My Fab Four" on the Beatles channel:
Across the Universe
A Hard Day's Night
I listened on the Sirius XM app.
She did the dirty dancing theme amd startrek emterprise theme
Diane Warren is interesting (and agreeably foul mouthed) in her interviews, but there's none of that in her songs. I guess it's professionalism. I have some affection for her "Unbreak My Heart" because my (much younger) co-workers used to extemporize excellent obscene variations back when it was played on the radio every 40 minutes.
Wasn't "bey" getting her fat ass jizzed on in yesterday's episode?
That's classy and empowering, right?
People may remember the stupid Times Lierary Supplement questionnaire. When they got tired of asking writers if they preferred Proust or Joyce, they asked them if they preferred Bob Dylan or Beyonce. I can't understand why anybody would say "Beyonce" ... when everybody knows the real answer is "neither."
I also don't love her songs, but a lot of them are absolute chart toppers. She must be insanely rich. Might even rival Jay Z money.
Regarding the question of how you end up with 24 writers on one song, there was a very good article in The New Yorker a few years back:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/26/the-song-machine
Long story short: different people write the base line, various melodic hooks, contribute to the lyrics, etc. The songs themselves get written at "writer camps," frequently before the artist herself gets involved in the process. You get a lot of people at the camp, everybody contributes something... voila! 24 authors.
The original was cancelled after three picard and discovery have not yet been cancelled because reasons
24 writers credited because of sampling. Huh. Why aren't the IP lawyers credited? They did the most work on the new song, after all.
"I draw drama to me — it's the Jew in me."
This statement is nonsense. It is impossible for separate genetic tribes to have different characteristics than any other tribe. They are all the same. Jews act no differently than any other group. The great Lewontin told us his unrefutable scientific truth that there is more variation within a group than between groups. So two Jews are certainly more different than a Jew and a Black person.
Jews are no more prevalent in banking, law and universities than any other group.
She's written a lot of songs, but never really knocked it out of the park with any of them. There's a couple that I like, but she's, at her best, bargain brand Jim Steinman.
There's also just no emotional center to most of her songs. They're vicarious, autistic word-jumble tosses at the wall in the hope that they will stick to real life experiences of the listener. They're what you'd expect if you asked a nun to write love songs. Harsh analysis I know. She can cry all the way to the bank about it, I am sure.
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