Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk

Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk by Rufus Wainwright

Rufus writes pretty songs... he's probably one of the most unique artists out there right now, imo. His songs swoon and soar, they're passionate, funny yet glib, sarcastic, intelligent, and subtle all at once. As a singer-song-writer, Rufus is pretty effin' good.

A few years back some magazine did a whole, "overrated/underrated" thing. And one of the overrated items they had was "The Singer-Song-Writer". At first I thought this was sort of insane. The singer-song-writer is so pure, authentic, and cool. Bob Dylan, Jeff Tweedy, Paul Simon, Neil Young... these guys are singer-song-writers. They're great. They aren't phonies, they're real live people writing really good songs.

But as I mulled this over in the next weeks, months, and even years, I came to the conclusion that the singer-song-writer IS overrated. There are not that many good singer song writers; they come few and far between. And so many of the best songs weren't written by the same people who preformed them. Motown with Barry Gordie, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Phil Spector et all wrote kick ass songs for other people. Should I think differently of or like the Jackson Five, Diana Ross, or anyone else less because they didn't write the song? Of course not.

The fact is, most singer-song-writers are whiny boring little, pardon my French, bitches. I don't care if she broke your heart and it feels like someone is kicked you in the gut. That's a bad analogy... in fact it's an analogy that everyone in the world can/could/has thought up. If you want to be a singer-song-writer, at the very least, be as good as Mason Jennings. And if you are the next Dylan or Simon, then by all means, write your own material. But if you've got a pretty voice but can't writer a fresh hook and only think of bland lyrics... then by all means, find the next Phil Spector and sing whatever he puts in front of you.

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