Beyonce: She Didn't Write The Songs
Vanity Fair finally puts a solo African-American on its cover, and doesn’t do any fact checking.
Beyonce Knowles, who’s full of sass and has a striking voice, actually thinks she’s a songwriter. She says so in the new Vanity Fair.
In fact, Beyonce did not write her big hit "Crazy in Love," or even conceive of it. "Crazy in Love" — its horns, percussion, chief melody and overall "feel" — was written by the late and very great
Eugene Record of the
Chi-Lites (he died this summer). The group recorded and released it in 1969 as "Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)."
Indeed, the person who sought out the track was hip-hop producer
Rich Harrison. He’s the go-to guy when you need to sample something obscure because you can’t write your own music.
He told MTV.com in February 2004 that he’d had the sample for some time, long before Beyonce knew about it.
"Yeah, I had it in the chamber," he told the Web site. "I hadn't really shopped it much, because sometimes you don't want to come out of the bag before it's right."
Harrison then brought
Jay-Z in to add a rap. The result was such a success that Harrison would later adapt the horn section from the Chi-Lites' record for similar records he produced for pop singers
Amerie and
Jennifer Lopez.
The Vanity Fair article, however, makes it seem like Beyonce is a genius songwriter who came up with all this stuff. Knowles says, without her veracity being questioned: "'Crazy in Love' was really hard to write because there was so much going on … I mean, I had written — what? —seven, eight number one songs with
Destiny's Child, in a row." Of Jay-Z's added rap: "I knew the song wasn’t complete because the horns were so old school…"
There, she is correct. The horns were old school. They were charted 36 years ago by Record, who also wrote "Have You Seen Her?," "Oh Girl," "Am I The Same Girl?" and many other classic R&B hits. Unfortunately, he’s no longer here to defend himself.
In the Vanity Fair article, Beyonce also claims to have “written” seven No. 1 songs. Again, not exactly. Her name is on them all. But “Independent Woman, Pt. 1” was authored by
Samuel J. Barnes and
Jean Claude Olivier, tweaked by producer
Cory Rooney and added to by …Beyonce. Olivier and Barnes also worked on constructing Jennifer Lopez’s “Jenny from the Block.”
“Say My Name,” a big Destiny’s Child hit, was written by
Rodney Jerkins, his brother
Freddie and Rodney’s writing partner
LeShawn Daniels. The names of the four girls from the group were added again, so they could share in the collection of royalties.
There’s more: "Baby Boy" was based on a hit by reggae star
Ini Kamoze called "Here Comes the Hot Stepper." "Naughty Girl" is merely a hefty sample of
Donna Summer and
Giorgio Moroder’s "Love to Love You Baby." "Bills Bills Bills" was written by singer/songwriter
Kandi Burruss and producer
Kevin Briggs. "Nasty Girl" and "Survivor" were the work of composer/producer
Anthony Dent, who had to share credit with not only Beyonce but also her father,
Matthew Knowles. "Bootylicious" is simply
Stevie Nicks’s "Edge of Seventeen."
Nicks, following
Sting’s lead from years ago with
Diddy’s sample of "Every Breath You Take," did not allow Destiny’s Child or Beyonce to get any royalties at all. Rock on, Stevie!
In fact, not one of the songs listed under Beyonce’s name on the BMI Web site is written solely by her. They are usually credited to a list of songwriters. The list comprises the actual writers, and then a few people who’ve "tweaked" the song with a rap or by adding samples.
But this is the way it’s done in hip-hop and rap. "Writing" a song has new meaning. It means "licensing" the song from another writer. The word "composer" is not in the hip-hop dictionary.
This can make for a peculiar situation at the Grammy Awards. In 2000, Jerkins and his writing team had to share the Grammy for Best R&B Song for “Say My Name” with the members of Destiny’s Child because their names were on the credits.
In 2003, Beyonce, Harrison and Jay-Z won a couple of Grammys including Best R&B Song for “Crazy in Love.” Record’s name isn’t even listed on the Grammy Web site and he was the writer. Hopefully his widow is getting checks.
Over the weekend I discussed this phenomenon with a famous songwriter concerning rapper
Nelly, whose albums — like
Kanye West’s — are made up of samples of previous works. I thought they’d find the whole thing deplorable. Not so.
"Really?" they said, realizing the revenue that could be realized. "I’ll send him my whole catalogue for his next one!"
Otherwise, Vanity Fair’s annual music issue, as has been noted elsewhere, is an attempt to make up for not including African-Americans in years of previous issues. The magazine photographed nearly all of the most famous members of the hip-hop and rap community. Most of them fare very well, although Sean “Diddy” Combs probably regrets his portrait.
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