songwriter

The story of Kevin Morby’s superb seventh album begins in January 2020. After his father collapsed at dinner one night and was rushed to hospital, the Kansas-based singer-songwriter found himself leafing through old family photos of his dad in his youthful prime. The older man was in recovery by the time his son moved into the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee to pour out songs about mortality, family and the relentlessness of time.Morby maps all this out in the first track of This Is a Photograph: “This is a…

Shirley Eikhard, the singer-songwriter who supplied songs for Cher, Emmylou Harris, Anne Murray, Chet Atkins and found lasting fame penning Bonnie Raitt‘s Grammy-winning 1991 hit “Something to Talk About,” has died. She was 67. Eikhard died Thursday at Headwaters Health Care Centre in Orangeville, Ontario, due to complications from cancer, said publicist Eric Alper. The blues-rock smash hit “Something to Talk About” was written in 1985 and Eikhard had offered it to Murray and other artists, who…

Minutes before The Hollywood Reporter‘s Songwriters Roundtable was scheduled to begin in late November, we were informed that hitmaker Ryan Tedder, who co-wrote original song “Not Alone” with fellow Roundtable participant Joe Jonas for the film Devotion (as well as Top Gun: Maverick‘s “I Ain’t Worried” by his band One Republic), was too sick to make the virtual conversation. And Jonas, the boy bander turned actor-songwriter, would be joining late as he was stuck on a flight. So went the chaotic kickoff of a…

Atlanta rapper, producer and songwriter London Jae is speaking his piece after 130 unreleased songs by Latto were leaked online last week. The leak led to a larger conversation on whether women rappers’ songwriting is authentic. The 35-year-old is known for co-writing Cardi B’s “Bartier Cardi” (which he also co-produced) Lil Baby (“Detox”), Kevin Gates (“Walls Talking”), G Herbo (“T.O.P.”), French Montana (“Handstand”), several of Latto’s (released and unreleased songs) and more. Now, with seven years in the music…

In the Jim Crow South of the 1930s and ‘40s, in poor, rural Georgia, forbidden love struggles up through the briars. The teens, Bayou and Leanne, find they can be together only in the dead of night, signaling each other with paper planes. The message received, they head for their spot — a tree away from prying eyes.“You are the song that I long to hear once more / You are the light that I keep looking for,” sings a velvety young female voice after the story’s over: “And I’ll spend my lifetime / Sending paper airplanes to…

When Jamie Treays made his triumphant live comeback at Glastonbury in June after a five-year absence he, somewhat misanthropically, thanked a packed John Peel tent by pronouncing that he “couldn’t give a fuck” if anyone comes to see him any more. “I’d play to an empty room,” he said. “I don’t care.”There’s not much chance of that happening anytime soon. Every date on the 36-year-old’s upcoming UK tour – in support of his fifth album and first No 1, The Theory of Whatever – is sold out. Next summer, the Londoner will play…

A lawsuit filed against Mariah Carey in June, alleging that her juggernaut 1994 Christmas single All I Want for Christmas Is You infringed on the copyright of Mississippi songwriter Andy Stone, has been dropped, Rolling Stone reports.In his initial filing, Stone alleged that Carey and Walter Afanasieff, her co-writer on the track, had “knowingly, wilfully, and intentionally” infringed upon the copyright of his 1989 song All I Want for Christmas Is You, which he had recorded under the name Vince Vance and the Valiants.He…

Grammy award winning songwriter, singer and producer Richard Marx has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide and has landed a number one song on the charts in each of the past four decades, as an artist or as a writer. Marx will be remembered for smash hits in the 80s like ‘Hold on to the Nights’, ‘Right Here Waiting’ and ‘Hazard’ but he has worked tirelessly as a writer and artist since, scoring a total of 14 number one singles, including ‘Lot Hot Summer’ from Country music’s very own Keith Urban. ‘Songwriter’,…

Tourists visiting the Caribbean during the summer of 1981 might have spotted something unexpected: Joni Mitchell in the thick of things at a disco, grooving up a storm to the Police’s inscrutable hit De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da. “I love to dance, and anytime I heard it, boy, I didn’t care if there was no one on the floor,” she told Musician in 1983. “I was going to dance to that thing because of those changes in rhythm.” Mitchell’s appreciation for the Police’s worldly rhythmic approach would influence the direction of her…

“Happy birthday!” someone yells at Loudon Wainwright III. The classic American singer-songwriter clocked up another year on Monday. “Thank you,” he replies. “I’m 37.”He’s actually 76, but it’s the first of many yarns during an evening marked by sharp insights, darkly funny misanthropy and mischievous banter, all Wainwright’s trademarks. “You’re all liquored up, aren’t ya?” he asks the boisterous Yorkshire crowd, before cheekily customising new song Town & Country: “I can’t believe I’m here … in Pocklington!”Wainwright…