BBC on Saturday at 9:45pm

TV Guide

A must see for all budding songwriters, with tips from the best exponents.

Yes - planning to watch!

Yes some really good tips here, which both writers totally ignored and wrote a piece of crap bolstered up with a huge production stolen from Tchaikovsky. Ludicrous lyrics, boring predictable melody.

The key is that they had nothing before they started, start with a seed and grow it.

Guy harping on about the opening chords to Angels, oh I could have gone this way, or done this. You didn't though did you? BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T WRITE IT!

The 2 top radio pluggers don't have a clue FFS.

Interesting comment by the fans of power ballads at the end, "All you get is cool these days, cool is easy", very true.

I did watch - and then went into a deep sleep!
I've written hits and still have no idea how or why!

Haven't you ever heard of a polished turd?

I loved the programme. The fact that the song might not be an all-time classic does not take away from the fact that having a TV crew follow them is instructive for anyone not within the industry. I thought the song was pretty good, but as Chambers said in the programme and JK kind of implied above, it's sometimes hard to know how good something is at the time.

On a sidenote, how on earth did they leave the "Don't bore us..." as the chorus? Yikes!

The beauty of writing and producing is that they are crafts - the older you get, the better you can be.
The singer often needs to be young and pretty but that doesn't apply to the rest of us!

Angels made Robbie's career. I don't understand how Guy Chambers can say what he is saying in this video when Ray Heffernan wrote the melody and major words to this career launching song. Guy did contribute significantly to the arrangement however the disingenuous of this reeks. They really should have made this right, no matter how naive Ray may have been back then. Personally, I think he could have gotten out of the release.

As a professional songwriter this makes my blood boil.

It's not as if they would have a hard time making this right.

Didn't Chuck Berry sell his publishing for a new Cadillac?

...and this shit is still going on

As it happens I just listened to Angels and realised the lyrics make absolutely no sense at all.

You get a lot of that in pop music - take the lyrics of the Elvis Costello single Oliver's Army for example; if you bother to think about it, the words make no sense whatsoever but it is still a great fun song to sing and dance along to.

I would imagine in Elvis' case, that the tune came first and the lyrics were written on the fly afterwards to fit that structure.

Really In The Know wrote:
Angels made Robbie's career. I don't understand how Guy Chambers can say what he is saying in this video when Ray Heffernan wrote the melody and major words to this career launching song. Guy did contribute significantly to the arrangement however the disingenuous of this reeks. They really should have made this right, no matter how naive Ray may have been back then. Personally, I think he could have gotten out of the release.

As a professional songwriter this makes my blood boil.

It's not as if they would have a hard time making this right.

Didn't Chuck Berry sell his publishing for a new Cadillac?

...and this shit is still going on


3:33... how coincidental is that?!

fascinating but he seems very grounded and not bitter.

JK2006 wrote:
fascinating but he seems very grounded and not bitter.
Yep, "I was young and naïve". Now why can't Guy say he didn't write it? He's really gone down in my estimation.

Did you notice the lyric at 3:33? Such a strange coincidence being that's the line that struck a chord with people on here.

This is the video I thought I linked yesterday but it didn't show.

I know Guy Chambers.........WTF are you talking about Guy?

This is not incompatible with how things could have gone. He says basically that Robbie came in singing the verse. This was presumably on the basis of Ray and Robbie's impro session. Guy could then have simply taken that ball and run with it, being a composer and arranger. What happened before was between Ray, Robbie and Robbie's lawyers. If you put Ray's video on pause towards the end, you get an idea of the discussion that was held between them.

Sorry to talk like a lawyer, but Guy is not necessarily being evil on this one. It looks as though Ray was practically written out of the song and accepted a monetary transaction to reflect that. As it turns out, it wasn't the best of transactions nor perhaps the best idea. But greater injustices have been done in the biz.

Correct Michael; spoken like a true professional.

JK2006 wrote:
Correct Michael; spoken like a true professional.
The "story" I've heard in the past was that Guy took what Robbie and Ray had done and wrote the chorus, I'm sure it was Rays words too as he praised Guy for it.

What I have/had a problem with is Guy playing the part which is supposedly written by Ray telling us how he came up with it. He even says it’s not how he’d normally write.

Either way, we have snippets of information, one mans word against the other. Michael is quite correct, I shouldn’t take sides.

When you consider that Robbie already had a proven track record with Take That, and was probably well on his way to becoming a superstar in his own right, it beggars belief why Mr Heffernan didn't go to a music biz lawyer first before signing away the rights to his song for - excuse the pun - a song!

As a music biz insider, what kind of a deal would you have cut with him Ken?

Clive Smith wrote:
When you consider that Robbie already had a proven track record with Take That, and was probably well on his way to becoming a superstar in his own right, it beggars belief why Mr Heffernan didn't go to a music biz lawyer first before signing away the rights to his song for - excuse the pun - a song!
It's easy to forget that Robbie's solo career had a far from illustrious start - his post-Take That "fat dancer" year hanging around with Oasis made him a semi-laughing stock, his first solo singles, though making the top 10, didn't get to number 1, and his 4th single ("South Of The Border") only got to number 14. The story goes that the next single was meant to be "Let Me Entertain You", but he wouldn't make a video for it because he thought he'd look ridiculous if it was a flop (understandable in the context of the lyrics.) Somebody at the record company offices noticed that the one track all the secretaries kept playing was "Angels", so they took a chance on releasing that instead, with a quickly-shot video of a sullen Robbie walking around on a beach, And The Rest Is History.

All of which is to say that the pay-off might look like a bad decision now, but it wasn't quite the banker it might seem now at the time.

Many many songs in the history of popular music that we all know and love, were on the brink of being scrapped, when someone saw or heard something that no one else did took the shot and they became massive hits.

The fact that the girls at the label were playing the song over and over is the best market research one could have. You can't manipulate that!

Point is that anyone that has been around for anytime at all in the song business can recognize that any particular song is good and may have potential. My advice to any youngster is not to short sell publishing.

The very fact that someone was willing to pay Ray 7,000 quid 15 years ago should have raised a red flag if any lawyer was involved. 7K is a lot a money to a kid I can understand.

I had a brilliant female singer crap out on me after about a 50k expenditure. She just quit. I could have taken a payout in cash to let it go away. No way I would let that happen. If she becomes the next Celine, or Adele, or whatever, I will make millions with my percentage, and it is deserved. The music business knows her because of me.

Just saying..... and that is just one example.....I'm sure many of us here have a story or two like this.