maharizm wrote:No disrespect to musicians/singers who get help from songwriters, I am one for bands who write their own stuff. And if the album comes out once in two (or more) years even, it doesn't really matter. And I look forward to the time will come when we have SCANDAL members having full credit to both song and lyric composition for an entire record.
That probably won't ever happen. I'd be happy if it did, but for many reasons, it won't.
I used to feel the way you feel but one day I just decided to ask myself why it mattered, and I couldn't come up with an answer. Why does the performer of a song also have to be the songwriter? Mozart didn't get up and play all the instruments for his musical pieces, and on the other hand Frank Sinatra hardly wrote any of the songs he's famous for performing. The "singer/songwriter" thing is actually a pretty new idea if you go back through history, and I can't think of a reason why it *has* to be that way for rock music.
HaRuRiNaMaMiToMo wrote:I didn't know it was so different in Japan for the albums release. I guess they just have a different style/industry. I'm also used to the western style where it can take much muuuuuuch more than a year between each album.
Western bands are usually contracted for a certain number of albums within a certain period of time, but if a band gets very popular, they can set really lenient terms for the amount of time in between. And they often don't fulfill those terms anyway, because of writer's block or whatever.
I am not sure of every little detail of the Japanese system but I know it is not like that. Being in a band is more like a regular job. Most artists are employed by an "office", which in Scandal's case would be Epic. Most artists (except the *most* popular and senior) are actual employees, who have to show up to work every day. A lot of popular Japanese artists have talked about their early days in their office, where they're gathered with a bunch of other "up and comers" training and practicing and basically waiting until the office schedules them for something outside. Some never get scheduled for anything and eventually just quit once their employment contract lets them. Others get lucky and get popular and have stuff to do pretty much every day.
But that's why people shouldn't worry about Scandal being overworked with this kind of schedule. They'd probably otherwise be going in to work every day anyway, and just spending all their time learning and practicing their instruments, having boring meetings and planning sessions, or worse. I'm sure it's a lot more fun for them to be recording and doing things out on the road.
.wtf.
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