By Shirley Halprin, Hollywood Reporter | “This is a labor of love for me,” says Lauren Christy. The hit songwriter, whose credits include Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated,” Bebe Rexha’s “Me, Myself and I” and Enrique Iglesias’ “Tonight (I’m Lovin’ You),” is talking about the just-released collection Their Hits, My Way featuring her own interpretations of her greatest hits, but she could just as easily be referring the profession of songwriting itself.
When Christy was coming up, first as an artist and later as part of production trio The Matrix, the economics of the craft were starkly different from those of today. In the ’90s and early 2000s, you could make a comfortable living from writing songs on a commercial release. Even if said song wasn’t a single, the proportional pay from an album cut – with LPs or CDs costing upwards of $10 each – was not insignificant. “You could literally buy a house,” says Christy.
Today? It’s an entirely different story.
“It’s very, very difficult to just be a songwriter today,” says Christy, who teaches a master class on the songwriting and offers advice for aspiring writers on TikTok. “With streaming, somehow the formula got flipped and the songwriter is the least important person. You got left out of the pie. And it’s so sad because, consider: you don’t need a recording studio; you don’t need recording engineers; you don’t need mastering engineers; or a record label or anything if you don’t have a song. It all starts with a song. We’re gonna need to have a national funeral for songwriters if something doesn’t change.”
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For more on why Ms. Christy feels this way, read the rest of the article here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/lauren-christy-wrote-hits-for-avril-lavigne-and-dua-lipa-now-she-warns-of-a-national-funeral-for-songwriters-if-things-don-t-change/
Lauren Christy Wrote Hits for Avril Lavigne and Dua Lipa. Now She Warns of a “National Funeral for Songwriters If Things Don’t Change”
