Direct link to BC Jean's version:
http://www.broadjam.com/player/playe...e=13672_394859
http://www.foxnews.com -
BC Jean is a hot, up-and-coming 21 year old female singer songwriter from San Diego. Those who’ve met her says she’s smart and "gorgeous." But BC (her initials, legend has it, are for "beautiful child") got a cold dose of reality this summer when it comes to the record business. According to sources, she and her manager/mother have been strong-armed by Beyonce’s people and others who saw gold in "
If I Were A Boy" and didn’t care how they got it.
You can hear BC Jean’s version of her own song, written with German pop-factory producer
Toby Gad, at
www.bcjean.net. It’s certainly as good as Beyonce’s if not better. It’s no wonder that this young woman is now the center of so much attention.
Altogether, I am told, BC Jean wrote and recorded about a dozen songs with producer Gad for an album the producer was planning to make of his own. When the deal fell apart, Gad — whose 300 plus credits are all co-written, never solo — took the songs and started marketing them to big name, established artists. Gad’s past "collaborators" include Fergie, on "Big Girls Don’t Cry."
Besides Beyonce, Gad brought at least one of the songs to Disney for "Hannah Montana" star
Miley Cyrus. But Disney wanted the lyrics changed to be age appropriate. BC Jean refused. For now, Miley and Gad have been rebuffed.
When I wrote about Beyonce’s version of "If I Were a Boy" last week, calls came pouring in from people who knew the real history of this story. BC Jean’s mother/manager,
Lori Carlson, told me she couldn’t comment on the situation. But plenty of people knew the saga of Beyonce’s legendary manager/father
Mathew Knowles’s aggressive pursuit of the publishing rights to the potential hit record. His goal was to get the rights to the song and to put Beyonce’s name on the writing credits.
The Carlsons, I’m told, recently came to terms with Beyonce, after enduring the kind of record biz terrors that would curl the hair of the guys from "Hit Men." Now "If I Were A Boy" is hitting big time. Part of the deal, my sources insist, is that the two singers will duet on BC Jean’s debut album once she gets her own recording deal. Right now, managers, publishers, and A&R people from all over the industry are falling over themselves trying to sign BC Jean. They should be. She seems to be the real deal, a potential artist with a big career looming in front of her. It’s a shame that this is the way she had to find out about the record business.
BC Jean’s story is an old one that dates back to Elvis Presley and continues ‘til today. The larger issue, of course, is that performers who don’t write their own music get no royalty when their records are played on the radio. That’s why a Performance Royalty Act is being pushed in Congress right now, and why songwriters should back it. Artists wouldn’t be looking to muscle in on their business if they were paid appropriately. Beyonce simply falls into a category that also includes
Frank Sinatra and
Tony Bennett as well as Sam Moore and Judy Collins, each of whom testified in front of Congress about this last year.
And by the way: BC Jean’s story is pretty common. I’d love to hear from all the other songwriters out there who’ve been ripped off just in the last year. The back stories of how records get made, how big stars who don’t write their own music wind up with hit material, are always hell raisers.
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