Completions and Connections

The two people credited with writing the most successful Christmas song of the modern era, I believe you know the one I’m talking about, it’s probably playing somewhere within earshot right now, are famously unable to agree on one simple fact: which one of them actually wrote it. What’s publicly known about Christmas queen MARIAH CAREY and her co-producer WALTER AFANASIEFF is they evenly split the songwriting royalties for a song that the Economist estimated had already earned $60 million by 2017 (and that was before it hit #1 in the US for the first time), that he says they wrote it together, side by side, that she suggests they didn’t, and that they apparently haven’t talked in years.

If there’s one thing songwriter advocates will tell any songwriter willing to listen, it’s get the details in writing and figure out the splits before you think about doing anything with a song. At least Carey and Afanasieff took care of the splits, which will buy both of them all the presents they’ll ever need under their Christmas trees for the rest of their lives, even if the lyric (which even Afanasieff says was primarily Carey’s) insists she doesn’t care about those things. But the fact that nearly 30 Christmases have passed since the song was recorded (primarily by him, he says) and they still haven’t been able to make peace on all the other details is one of those things that makes me sad every holiday season. All I want for Christmas is for you guys to work it out. To set an example for collaborators everywhere.

This is on my mind again thanks to a Los Angeles Times story about one of the season’s other perennial blockbusters, “JINGLE BELL ROCK,” originally recorded in 1957 by BOBBY HELMS and written by—well, you should read STEPHEN THOMAS ERLEWINE’s story. Suffice it to say, all available evidence disagrees with what the credits on the contracts and the records say, at a cost of millions of dollars to the ones whose names aren’t there. Helms died in 1997. JOHN KLEIMAN, who managed him and owns his licensing, tells Erlewine that Helms never confronted his label, DECCA, about the writing credits “because if you got into it with them, they would stop putting your music out.”

It's the oldest story in the book. You’ve read dozens like it in your music business guides and so, you assume, has every songwriter and artist who has access to those same guides and the internet and, most important, managers, lawyers and other artist advocates who can tell them where the money is hidden and how to get it unhidden. Everyone is supposed to have more information and more access now. Recording software has writing and production metadata built into it. The power balance has shifted. And yet... SUSAN GENCO, co-president of the AZOFF CO. and a founder of the MUSIC ARTISTS COALITION, tells Erlewine how some things, amazingly, haven’t changed. She shares the story of an unnamed major artist and their manager who ignored her recommendation to lock down the artist’s songwriting split on a new song before releasing it because, they said, “it was more important for the record to come out, to explode on streaming.”

I hear echoes in that anecdote of streaming bosses and other captains of technology constantly telling artists (or “creators,” as they’d more likely say) to just put out “content” and more “content” and let it go viral and then worry about the money. Followers now, monetization later. The tech captains, of course, are monetizing now. Because they’ve read their own business guides. And they know the power balance still favors the ones who can make you believe that, if you get into it with them, they can just stop and move on to someone else. Even if it isn't true.

Rest in Peace

Live events promoter ALLEN BECKER, a dominant figure in Texas music with his Pace Entertainment Group and Pace Concerts.