EXACTLY. Do you think Lennon and McCartney are number one on the songwriters list because of their lyrics? No way.

My point is that Lennon and McCartney were the greatest writers of music in rock history. The list is emphasizing one sort of songwriting only--prog and other classical-influenced, artsy stuff. If that's the list, it should have a different name. If it's songwriting minus lyrics, then I think Lennon and McCartney should be number one, and CERTAINLY they need to be higher.

The lyrics were certainly a part of it. Both of them are highly ranked on the lyricist list, with Lennon in the top five. I suggested McCartney at number three. Lennon, like McCartney, will likely be in the top fifty. If they can be separated on the lyricist list, I don't see why they can be separated on the composer list.

The reason we aren't changing the name is because it generally implies something very obvious, and we don't want to be redundant or make the name too long. That's all there is to it.

Everyone is separate on the lyricists list. but the drafts here seem to be putting collaborators and even members of the same band together. If Emerson Lake & Palmer are an entry, then Lennon and McCartney should be, too.

The trouble is that what it implies to most people isn't what it actually is.

Not if they didn't actually collaborate together. I see your point about ELP, seeing as Emerson and Lake wrote (seperately) most of the music, but for the Pink Floyd entry, for instance, Gilmour, Waters, and Wright deserve to be put together.

Harrison's kinda separate, but I'll always standby a Lennon/Macca/Martin compositional team, and I'd probably have them round out the top 5.

Wrong. Everyone here seems hellbent on weaseling whatever definition of "composer" they want it to mean so their guy gets a good spot on the list. This is intended to mean composer in the classical sense and every damn person reading this thread knows it.

So where do the composers in the non-classical sense go? I always thought this thread was meant for them.

I don't know what "composer in the classical sense" means. I *think* that what is being put together here is a list of art-rock composers, or, if you prefer, classical-influenced rock composers. I'm actually not trying to change the composition of the list--I'm trying to change the name.

If it's just "Greatest Rock Composers", then Lennon and McCartney should be number one--and Lamont Dozier/Brian Holland, Smokey Robinson, and Carole King, to name a few, should be near the top. But that's not what the list looks like.

Brett's right. There isn't really any disputing this. I argued the same thing a while ago. It needs to be AT LEAST in the description under the title, in the first post: '...rock composers who fall within the classical tradition, compositionally' or something like that. 'Composers' alone is too ambiguous.

Can't we just do one on composers, plain and simple? After all, wasn't that the original purpose of this thread?

That's how I felt, and I listed that criteria. And no, Lennon/Macca would not be 1, it would still be either Zappa or Wilson, especially since tons of videos show the Beatles took a lot of their composing ability, mixing, layering, and creativity beyond a 4 piece band directly from Wilson, and have praised him, among others countlessly as the composer god of rock, who's been referred to by many as anything from the Mozart to Beehtoven as rock, similarly, Zappa is around that acclaim but only in certain circles of musicians, thought The Beatles have also praised his ability. I've never heard much about Lennon and Macca as composers, as songwriters, after reading countless biography after biography, books like A Hard Day's Write, and watching interview and interview, all Macca and Lennon did was come up with a singular melody, they rarely came up with more than that, they came up with a single line melody they could hum, or some chord progression they could play on the piano, throw in lyrics, and present it to close friends or the rest of the group and say 'do you like it? If so, where do we go from here?". Then a collective composition was designed by nearly all the member contributing their own part, and the person that tended to contribute the most after Rubber Soul and who wrote the arrangements, added the dynamicly advised touches, and mixed it was George Martin. But Lennon/Macca are in no way number 1. Songwriters sure, songwriting is pretty much designing the basic melody of the piece + lyrics. You can't tell me it's more than melody either, since Ringo came up with nearly all the drum rhythm parts and Harrison did most of his own lead guitar editions to the song, then why aren't they listed together? I'm in a band, when one of our member writes a 'song' (it tends to be our lead singer/rhythm guitarist, who has written around 75% of our material) he writes just the riffs and melody for the chorus, verses, and bridges. The lead guitarist figures out what the writer wants and then messes with it and adds his touches, I completely design the drumline on my own, and the bassist makes his own bass line that rolls with the songs melody. A whole band tends to collectively write their own parts and add their own touches to songs, yet why is their one songwriter? Because the songwriter is the one who initially came up with the melody. Why the melody? Because legally, the melody and melodic chord progression is the only thing you can patent or copywrite in a song. Yes, you cannot copywrite rhythm or harmony in a song, just the melody. We went over how bad this is in my class on the music industry. It's the reason "Ice Ice Baby" can completely rip off the Under Pressure rhythm line and no one can do anything. You can take Beehtoven's 9th, drop the melody, and keep everything else, through your own melody and chords on top of it, and then label it My 9th symphony and get a patent at the office the next day. Melody is what makes the 'official' term for songwriting.


Long post, I know, but it's necessary to define the boundaries of these defintions, as people are still confused (god knows why). I posted on the previous page a brief definition of each part of composition, and each job the composer must take up. I think that's the best criteria to go by, two tiers, first being Influence and Acclaim, second being ability as a Songwriter, Arranger, and Orchestrator.

I don't think that's remotely close to accurate. The Beatles admired Wilson and certainly were influenced in some ways by him (and him by them), but I don't see how they could have taken their ability from him.



Again, it sure sounds like you're saying they shouldn't be on the list because they didn't write in an art-rock style. Which is fine if the list is Greatest Art-Rock Composers. HOW they composed is irrelevant to how great they were as composers.



That has nothing to do with composing. But if you want to use the definition where all of that is part of composing, then the five of them (including Martin) should be an entry on the list. You can't say that composing includes arranging and orchestrating and then downgrade a body of work because the composer didn't arrange and orchestrate it.



Then composing is pretty much designing the basic melody of the piece.



You are misinformed. Queen settled out of court with the writers of "Ice Ice Baby". They received a substantial settlement and the four members of Queen and David Bowie are now all credited as co-writers of "Ice Ice Baby".



You can't get a patent for a piece of music. And you can do anything to Beethoven's Ninth and get a copyright for it, since it's in the public domain.




It's because the definition you posted conflicts with the definitions in dictionaries, which is also the definition that most people are familiar with.

Exactly.