Why you should never trust songwriting credits

Songwriting credits are, as we know, not always to be trusted. Since the dawn of music publishing, there has always been a manager or an agent or a well-connected representative of organised crime willing to take a small cut of a song’s royalties, in return for services rendered or threats not carried out. Who actually wrote any song? Well, we know that Bob Dylan wrote ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, but after that it gets a little murky. Lennon/McCartney songs, after the first couple of albums, were written by Lennon or McCartney but rarely by Lennon/McCartney. The Verve’s ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, notoriously, sampled more of Andrew Loog Oldham’s orchestral version of ‘The Last Time’ than it probably should have, and thus the song carries the credit ‘Jagger/Richards/Ashcroft’, with the two Stones getting 100 per cent of the money and Richard Ashcroft having to make do with a slightly disappointing 0 per cent. Allen Klein, that legendary enforcer, insisted on the full whack or the record would have to be withdrawn from the shops. Remember records? Remember shops?

Every song, of course, sounds a little like another song, except possibly for ‘Wuthering Heights’. It’s only when similarities become uncanny that the lawyers are called in. Most recently, chubby young awards magnet Sam Smith settled out of court with Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne after someone noticed that Smith’s ‘Stay With Me’ bore a striking resemblance in the tune department to Petty’s ‘I Won’t Back Down’. ‘All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen,’ said Petty, unpettily. ‘Most times you catch it before it gets out of the studio door but in this case it got by. Sam’s people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement.’