Perhaps the most profoundly loathsome songwriter of her generation, Diane Warren whines about P2P:
- As a kid, I listened to the radio all the time. I didn't dream of becoming a rock star. I dreamed of becoming a songwriter. My dream has come true.
Sadly, the growing epidemic of illegal downloading and CD burning may make it a lot harder for a dream like mine to come true for other songwriters.
I struggled for more than 10 years, making the rounds of every music publisher and suffering countless rejections before I began to make a decent living from writing music. With my dad encouraging me, I persevered and made sure my songs were heard by everyone in the music industry I could reach.
I believe in what I do and work hard to craft the best songs possible. And though I don't write songs just for the money, I do expect to be rewarded for my hard work. Certainly, it wasn't just my love for writing music but also the promise of being able to make a living from my craft that helped keep me going in the beginning.
Will today's young talent have the same opportunities I did? If people are not willing to pay for the music they love, why should anyone be willing to spend the money it takes to make the music?
Record companies put hundreds of thousands of dollars into producing and promoting our songs for one simple reason: They expect to earn it all back and then some. But if the fans are stealing music instead of buying it, what incentive do the labels have to continue? Would a housing developer lay out millions of dollars building a new subdivision if he knew that squatters were going to move in and live there for free?
Fans may think that everyone in the music business is rich, but that simply isn't true. A lot of great songwriters (and bands) get only one commercial hit in their career. Their real interest may be in creating alternative or ethnic music, material that is wonderful but simply not commercial. The money from that one popular hit makes it possible for these artists and writers to devote themselves to the music they really love. To the extent that illegal downloading robs them of those royalties, it robs them of this freedom.
In addition, there are the technicians, session musicians, backup singers and others who play an essential role in helping to make the music you enjoy. If big-name bands and singer-songwriters start spending less time in the studio because pirates are stealing their music, these people will suffer the most.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - tobyslater
Eric,
Much of Diane Warren's music isn't to my taste either, but that doesn't mean that her opinions on p2p are any less valid. Though she scores close to zero for avant-garde cred, her songs have given joy to millions of suburban romantics the world over. Perhaps those people are the target market for MusicUnited's anti-piracy campaign!
I found John Scalzi's "MusicUnited.org - a bad idea" article to be a fairer examination of the failings in this recent RIAA educational campaign, the main two flaws of which are:
1) Multimillionaires like Britney Spears make spectaclarly bad figureheads for a campaign designed to show how artists may suffer from p2p downloading; the RIAA should find a way to convince more _real_ starving musicians to support its case.
2) It's almost impossible to get most consumers to make ethical buying decisions. People will stop using illegal music services when there's a superior, decently-priced legal version on the market. Just as many of us are happy to pay over the odds for the convenience and quality of Evian bottled water, so we will one day pay for well-packaged online music. In the meantime trying to tell kids to uninstall their p2p apps is a futile and patronising gesture.
2 - Eric Olsen
Toby, can't disagree with anything you have to say, and John's take is certainly more convincing and serious than mine. This was largely an excuse to vent my spleen at this songwriter who has so consistently polluted the air around my head over the last 15 years or so.
Obviously people like the songs or she wouldn't be so hugely successful, but I don't think you have to go all the way to "avant garde cred" to find listeners who find her consistently awful. Look what she did to Aerosmith!! (not that they weren't willing)
Who she is doesn't have much bearing on what she has to say, but it makes it more fun to slam.
3 - adam powell
Hi Toby!
Don't pull your punches. Warren isn't worth it. McDonalds sells a lot of spongy hamburgers too, but that doesn't make it right.
4 - adamsj
Let me tell you something: There are two songs in that list above with the name Starship after them. I saw Starship last month, and they don't do either of those songs live.
Coincidence? Or conspiracy?
No--just belated outbreak of good taste.
5 - frank
Eric,
You are an idiot. Diane Warren has as much right as any songwriter to speak her mind. That fact she's become filthy rich makes NO difference you fool. File STEALING is just that! STEALING! Maybe if had the talent to make a living off of songwriting you wouldn't sound so dumb.
6 - Eric Olsen
Frank you ignorant shithead, why you dug this up now, I have no idea, but upon reading it 14 months after the fact, I think it's a great post. Diane Warren is the single worst mega-successful songwriter in history. Her noxious, disingenuous complaining about file sharing is wrong on virtually every level. Unauthorized file sharing is not theft, it is not "piracy," it's copyright violation at worst.
Diane Warren can speak her mind all she wants and it will be worth ignoring every time.
You are either an industry shill, a Diane Warren fan, or just too stupid to live.
7 - Tom
dude
1/4/5 sounds good... even Mozart, Bach and Beethoven knew that. Would you so quickly and brutally knock them?
Sure, they changed keys all the time and gave melodic variation, but it was.. still.. 1/4/5.
do you put some NOBODY writer above them?
lmao.
Diane Warren knows what sounds good. she's not afraid to take on the "i hate pop music because everyone else likes it" crowd.
if her sounds really suck, please write one that's even HALF as musically palatable.
by the way, i have perfect pitch and could sing your song before your even figured out what chords you wanted to write it with. lmao at "avant-garde" fans like you.
moral:
just because something's popular doesn't mean it sucks; 1/4/5 (eg: G, C, D) will always sound good.. always has, always will; DIFFERENT does NOT mean GOOD! ! ! ! !
Final thought: Great choruses make great songs.
8 - Tom
of that entire list, my favorite song is "When I See You Smile" by Bad English.
great chord progressions... and a freaking beautiful chorus, among the best i've ever heard.
that chorus embodies the music of the Great Musical Forebears:
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
Bach: Air
Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A: Mvmt II
Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake
Beethoven: Moonlight Sonata
Handel: Water Music
Schubert: The Unfinished Symphony
et al.
they all featured 1/4/5 and made it sound good. SURE, if you're in G you're likely to include (besides the proven G, C, D..) Em, Am, Bm, maybe even F, Dm, G7, C7, .. crap, toss in an A and put the listener on his ear.
but thugs like you do NOT know music... you like what others don't (ie, you like what you like JUST to be different..) and for that you should be loathed. you should like what you like because you like it, not because you want to be "avant-garde" .. as if anything you listen to is "original" anyway.. lmmfao.. every conceivable chord progression has been written. There are only so many notes on the scale.. only so many chords and possible chord progressions. G/Em/C/D has been written a million times by a hudred-thousand different writers.
Nothing is original anymore. Millions of people have been writing music for thousands of years.
If you really don't like Diane Warren's music per se, that's one thing. If you hate it because you think you should, well, that's just sad.
Moral: Like what you like. Neither hate nor love music because of others' opinions.
the chorus of "When I See You Smile" really is great.. absolutely spot-on harnessing of proven age-old musical genius. play it slowly on your guitar and you might actually agree, though you'll likely never admit it.
9 - Diana
I find that many of the comments made about this article have been made by people who are amateur musicians and don't know anything about music. They are pretending they know musical theory. Their comments are a joke and their comments on chord progressions don't make any sense. It's not just the chord progression that makes the song. Any professional musician laughs at you! Go to school, perform on stages, deal with professionals and then make an intelligent comment. You sound so stupid!
10 - Eric Olsen
so was that a pro or con Warren statement, Diana?
"Professionalism" can also be perilously close to hackdom. A lot of art, including popular music, is very professional but also soulless and trite - Warren fits that for me.
11 - Diana
I appreciate someone can like Warren's music or not. Both are OK. They're simply opinions - no right or wrong. I just find it pathetic when people talk technically about "music" as if they know what they're talking about when it's obvious that they don't. They can sound so stupid trying to sound so smart. It may be 'souless' to some. That's an honest comment. Comments that are not honest though are, for example, comments made about chord progressions, etc. when it is obvious the commentator has a very little experience with the above. They are just trying to sound like they know it all, when they don't. Music is such a vast subject. I have a lot of schooling in it and the more I learn the more I realize how much there is to know. I am also very aware and can appreciate that some musicians write and play from their minds and not from their hearts. This is something I am not a big fan of also. I just sometimes get a little tired of hearing people talk about a subject as if they know all about it when they actually sound like a two year old trying to spew out nuclear physics facts. I would never even try to comment on something I know next to nothing about. It would be a useless thing to do. That's how some of the comments I've read here affect me. I usually just listen to people that spew out know-it-all comments and say nothing. I just thought I'd finally give myself a voice. Black and white, all or nothing thinking is so boring sometimes. I feel that nothing is all bad or all good. Sometimes I can't even put my finger on theoretically why a certain song doesn't affect me. It just doesn't move or touch my soul as you say. It's easy to comment if you haven't walked a mile in their shoes. The music industry itself can be very cold. Sometimes it comes across in the music. That is not such a far stretch really when I think abou it.
12 - Eric Olsen
thanks Diana, I think what you are talking about is people trying to explain subjective things with objective terms and the terms themselves may be used loosely but the response from the untutored is just a valid as the response from the tutored
13 - Diana
You may be right.
14 - BRICKLAYER
We the people don't give a rat's bottom about what songwriters and musicians associated with major labels think about file SHARING. You made your decision to be part of the machine, so deal with it. Music lovers have been getting ripped off for years because they had to deal with the only model available to them. Well, now there's tons of viable indie labels, and lots of technology that enables us to work around the corrupt major label music industry. Instead of rethinking their model, they simply try to suppress technology. Well, too late. The people creating file sharing systems will always be smarter than the wankers trying to stop them. These "artists" crack me up. I'm glad tribs like Lars Ulrich and Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines (Ha Ha!), and this schmaltzy songstress are offended. It means we must be doing something right. The next time one of these spoiled crybabies want to mouth off about file SHARING, they instead should apologize for being part of the devilish major label music industry that is well know to be a division of the military industrial complex, and begin refunding their fans for the price gouging and sub par products they have been offering lo these many years!
15 - Diana
Warren can go on about her loss of income from her songs do to the internet, but it's going to happen. Unless she comes up with a way to stop it, her letter sure won't. Tough luck. That's life. Things change and must evolve. She tried to win the reader over. I doubt it made a difference.
16 - andy marsh
I've asked this question before, but I'll ask it again...why do I have to pay for music more than once.
I own around 300 LP's...that's vinyl for you youngins...around 50 8-tracks, don't ask!!!...a couple hundred casettes...and around 100 cd's...if I download stuff I already own, am I stealing?
17 - Eric Olsen
as far as I'm concerned, if you already own it, it's just a convenient form of format shifting, which is legal, but I'm not the government
18 - andy marsh
that's really the way I see it...it's alot easier to download an mp3 than to go thru the hassles of trying to convert...besides the fact that I don't have the technology required to change my LP's into mp3's
19 - Banana
I think they'll eventually be able to stop all the stealing of music on the internet ... when pigs fly!
20 - originalman2000
If you worked day and night to produce a product, and someone stole it from you how would you feel? Songwriting is a business, an honorable one. Music is the sound track of our life. Don't try to make it seem insignificant. American creativity has brought us many innovations and has changed our lives...so has the music don't support the decline of and industry by stealing.
21 - Dualot
Pirating cannot be stopped, the higher the prices goes up for CDs, the higher pirating becomes. I am against piracy myself, but when singles might soon becomes $50-$100 each then many people will have to resort to piracy.
22 - Bob A. Booey
You can see why she's against pirating -- she doesn't get tour revenue, she doesn't perform music, so the only money she makes is off song royalties and album sales.
Dianne Warren's an interesting woman -- she's never been in love or had a relationship with a man yet writes all these love songs.
It's funny how we picked the same songs that were tolerable out of her catalog, Olsen. "Unbreak My Heart" is clearly the best song she ever wrote.
I didn't know she wrote for Ace of Base too. That's funny.
The song I hate most on that list is "Set the Night to Music." Ugh.
That is all.
23 - omgpetey
I have to disagree with this post. With all due respect it seems like most people making negative comments about Diane Warren are just simply not songwriters and are uneducated about music and art in general. While I do agree that most of her collection of music can appear banal at times , I am also sympathetic to consider a few points. Some artists are standard artists. Her style reflects her personality. Maybe she is a boring person. Theres alot of people out there that are. #1 Respect those people. Not everyone is socially aware and busy writing political statements or art statements in their music. Nor should they have to. Some persons are simply unaware of what avant garde is. If you want avant garde go pick up Low Heroes or Lodger and stop picking on people who have experienced life differently. #2 Some artists, they live a life that is different that more artsy types of people , they are are not particularely innovators or revolutionaries. These artists are masters of their skill and technique. Sure Pink Floyd is more innovative and not as banal as Diane Warrens songs but they are two different types of artists. Its like comparing Chopin to Mozart. Great artists understand that a formula exists, and the formula works every time. Some artists explore creativity through great ideas and innovations and other artists are standard by the book format and simply innovate through better techniques. I can promise you Diane Warren writes better songs than Pink Floyd or the Beatles. More predictably, and more often. Her songwriting chest is outrageous. What has she written like 1000+ top 20 hits? Jeez. That surely counts for something. In fact it was John Lennon who was so frustrated with the incredible raw skill and technique of "tunesmiths" that he nearly gave up songwriting and just started copying other songwriters. When you look at Mozart , he wasnt innovative, nor was Shakespeare, nor was Milton, they were all standard format by the book artists using by the book art techniques. Their greatness lied in their raw skill of developing melody and, their ability to churn out tremendous bodies of work, and their raw talent of being able to put tunes together where others struggled. So theres nothing wrong with being a popular songwriter and writing by the book, even if it is a bit banal. No one ever knocked Milton.
I cannot tell you how many idiots I run into who love hip hop and tell me they are into "underground" music like "The Roots" and that I shouldnt listen to pop garbage like Lil Kim. Meanwhile Scott Storch was the songwriter, keyboardist, and producer for both artists and when I tell the person this they stare at me in confusion. Yes the same person who wrote all the Roots music wrote everything for Lil Kim and alot of stuff for Beyonce. Dr Dre is commercial and by the book. He isnt innovate at all. Does anyone knock Dr Dre ? No I dont think so. Dont you think his loops are banal by now? they are always the same stuff. BTW: Storch helped alot of his tracks too. Do you think great producers like Rodney Jerkins or Babyface would produce a Diane Warren/Brandy song if they didnt think the songwriting was excellent? Of course not, they get involved because they think its great stuff and choose to work on it. I think alot of you haters would like alot of her songs better had they been produced by a different producer because dont forget a great producer can change the whole imagery of the song as well as alter all the arrangements. In the end , when all the air is clear and all the innovative artsy fartsy songs have been made, you know what? people always end up turning back to listen to a 3 minute A B B A format song. Why? Because of FORMULA. Formula works because we are all human and animals respond and behave the same in the end.
24 - omgpetey
Just to further back up my point:
Just think of some of the most revolutionary artists. Guess what? The irony is that their standard format banal garbage is what has proven over time to be their best work, let me illustrate:
David Bowie- Ziggy Stardust
John Lennon- Imagine
Led Zeppelin- Rock N roll
Velvet Underground- Rock and Roll
Janes Addiction- Been Caught Stealing
etc
Meaningless trash- is my point hitting home yet?
25 - gcott
Here is the irony lost on the legions of Diane Warren bashers (whose very number proves how sheep-like and unoriginal they are):
At her best, what she writes is 100 times hipper than the supposed "avant garde".
Final thought: there are literally millions of "bad songwriters" in the world. Do you seriously think that an atrocious songwriter would have tons of hit records? If this were true, the world would be filled with millionaire bad songwriters. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.