all I know is most of them songs on that top 50 are better than this man Conan Gray's song.....

this is true, maybe conan should use writers lol

He dedicated Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me to Mac.
I let him slide

That was when music sold the image tho,you had to have that talent to write to be the best or these labels would chew you up and spit you out. Best artist who writes their songs is Frank by far,all these other guys now are manufactured hype in terms of Pop.

Rap is the closest thing to pure songwriting we have and very few are good at that cause most songs now follow the same pattern and flows. Kendrick wins by a landslide as a writer in Hip Hop and he hasn’t even dropped in 3 yrs.

you say that but the music press cover her like she is a lot of the time. same with a lot of people who can't write. she can't even write like some of her peers like john legend or alicia keys

some music journalists might actually not be music heads tho lol. UK music press is terrible, idk if you're from the uk, but we have a singer here called Lily Allen and i recently saw a Guardian journalist calling her first album Grime

Lemonade has some good songs, but tbh i think the best writing for B was done on 4. Chad from the Neptunes came through on I Care And there's Party, Love On Top etc.

Damn he just called everybody trash what's ktt finna do

Like Baby Keem

i feel like there was more people back then who had bad looks, image, stage presence and vocals but got a way with it cos there songwriting was so good. idk if that would happen now

Kendrick is definitely the best. out of the major rappers Drake is probably a prolific writer even after you take away the ghost written songs. And Ye was for his production alone too

the beauty of music creation is that there are so many elements that make it come together. everybody has the thing that they excel at.

I'll use your example. The-Dream (one of my fave songwriters) can write 1+1, but then where that "twist" you mentioned comes in is what can sometimes make or break a song. someone like Bey who isn't necessarily a lyricist, but we know is heavily involved in production and arrangement choices, definitely deserves credit for making her records into their final product. but she wouldn't be put on the same level as the artists you mentioned, in that category.

true but tbh i think the Dream is a better artist, cos all those songs he wrote for others might not be part of his discography, but are part of his 'songbook'.

Verzuz showed that a little bit, like John Legend being able to play American Boy and old Ye hooks

Well atleast i know this person is a plant now cus i’ve never heard or seen anything from them but they’re getting specific praise from elton john? Yeah this is some bs cliche artist being pushed by labels

Warriuh euphoriuh

drake, cardi b and lil baby fans in shambles

a lot of people are signed to Elton's management so maybe conan is involved some way there

but tbh elton always praises young artists, especially hip hop artists

he was on youtube before he was a musician, so he had a pretty natural following i think. just the way things are these days lol

i think this is more a case of Elton being aware. but i'm not even sure i ever truly found out what a plant is so

I agree but there’s is a significant difference in how we hear about him with someone like Thugger versus this by name random mention of this artist. Especially next to an already long term established act like Father John Misty. Weird mention

this the most interesting thread in weeks

maybe we should find more random quotes from musicians...that will actually encourage discourse about...music...

GG Fellas!

yeah seems random. the one old songwriters seem to go for rn is Finneas not Conan.

That's an insult to FJM, his songwriting is some of the best out and reminds me more of Leonard Cohen than Conan's music. maybe he's got some great songs i haven't heard but so far it's seemed bland and polished to me

I am glad I started an interesting discourse 😎

i think NME used to be legendary but has slowly got worse and worse, peaking in s***ty takes a few years ago.

it was always provocative tho, deliberately going out of it's way in the 70s to s*** on people it's audience loved.

It's coverage of bands in the 90s for example was probably cool. Like when they'd have some leftfield bands on the front cover, that was cool to me. their circulation was probably high then and that would have been a big cultural look.

but they've been forced to write about drill, grime, garage, hip hop etc. and they always get it wrong. for a while they'd just compare any new release to Em or Ye like that's the only hip hop they'd heard

All the good UK music heads are on the radio. On Reprezent. Or on the BBC like Toddla T, Benji B, Semtex, Ravenscroft, Cerys Matthews, Giles Peterson, Mary Anne Hobbs (used to let Skream and other dubstep producers do sets on Radio 1 when dubstep was amazing and not commercialised). Or the radio legends from Grime and other parts of uk dance. The reviewers are terrible

it's not an insult to FJM, doesn't seem like he was comparing them in any way other than being two artists that write most of their stuff solo. he probably just thought of them off the top.

there's plenty other artists he could've said that I'm sure he appreciates in the same way. Lorde, Billie, Ed Sheeran, etc etc