Harmonizing Small-Group Cohesion and Status in Creative Collaborations: How Songwriters Facilitate and Manipulate the Cowriting Process

Status Orientation in Creative Communities

It is crucial to consider how structural contexts shape creative products (Peterson and Anand 2004) and how the relational structures that contextualize creative industries influence the form and process of art making (Becker 1982). These structural forces that shape creative processes can fundamentally shift the patterned cooperation that underlies how art is created, who makes it, and toward what audience it is oriented. Artists must target a particular social field of peers and the status order controlled by that field in their work, for example, by targeting their art toward critics, peers, or the commercial market (Bourdieu 1993; Pinhiero and Dowd 2009). The ways that they orient themselves socially are connected to industry- and genre-specific artistic conventions (Lena and Pachucki 2013). There is some evidence of potential for dual orientation toward art and commerce in, for example, poetry and underground rap music (Craig and Dubois 2010; Oware 2014), but generally the art that attains success in one status order will differ from that which is lauded according to another status order (e.g., Schmutz 2005). These findings have used the individual artist or artwork as the unit of analysis and have generally focused on artistic fields where the final product is primarily the product of one artist’s creative effort rather than of a creative collaboration.

From the field- or industrywide perspective, scholars have sought to understand how creatives come to a social or community understanding of their work, how they collaborate, and how they co-constitute the social space for enacting creativity. Embeddedness within a community of peers is important for artists since opportunities for work and collaboration are distributed through reputation and social ties (Dowd and Pinhiero 2013; Dumont 2018; Menger 1999). Given the degree of precarity that is common in creative careers (Lingo and Tepper 2013), artists may take individual and collective action to sustain their wider community of peers, working to further the chances of individuals and their overall industries or genres as “communities of fate” (Cornfield 2015). Research on the social circles and networks that constitute creative industries (e.g., Faulkner 1971; Lutter 2015; Uzzi and Spiro 2005) further establishes the importance of communities as status-distributing informal organizations and as spaces that can enable or constrain creativity. Despite established understanding of the importance of social embeddedness and norms of collaboration in the arts, both in terms of creating art and in how status is distributed, there is a gap in understanding how artists individually orient toward either art or commerce within collaborative creative processes.

Small-Group Dynamics and Face-Work

There is continued interest in the individual strategies and identities that artists employ to position themselves and their work (Fine 1996, 2018; Lindemann, Tepper, and Talley 2017), but the question remains as to how they do this in creative collaborations with other artists. Beyond the ambitions and goals that artists have for their work, members of groups that collaborate on creative projects have a vested interest in maintaining collegial relationships with their peer collaborators (Bechky 2006; Menger 1999). Assessing the quality of individual contributions can be ambiguous in collaborative creativity (Lingo and O’Mahoney 2010; Parker and Hackett 2012), so one way that collegiality is enacted in creative collaborations is in sharing credit, reflecting norms of reciprocity and cooperation. Songwriters in particular minimize conflict in collaborative settings through norms of equal authorship despite actual levels of contribution to any particular song (de Laat 2015). In smaller, more intimate collaborative circles, peers cooperate on shared projects and maintain common goals over time (Farrell 2001). This arrangement is especially effective at spurring innovation and creativity, though commercial and economic pressures can weaken or break up the collaborative circle (Corte 2013).

Having positive relationships with peers is essential, and relationships with gatekeepers are likewise important, particularly in contexts like the music industry, where in addition to recording artists, there are industry executives, A&R staff, producers, and others who control the commercial selection and distribution of creative work. Gatekeeping is typically separate from the creative process, as gatekeepers’ interactions with creators are more often as filters for legitimating creative work (Parker and Corte 2017) or as mediating brokers between creators and fans (Foster, Borgatti, and Jones 2011). Learning to appropriately interact with gatekeepers is one of the primary kinds of socialization needed to effectively navigate an artistic occupational community (Skaggs 2019), but having an outside gatekeeper in the creative space can shut down some of a group’s creative energy (Parker and Hackett 2012). There is no doubt that pressure from gatekeepers affects some artists’ creative output, but research on gatekeeping understands the role of creator and gatekeeper to be separate and hierarchal rather than situating the gatekeeper as direct collaborator or peer in the creative process.

Conflict may emerge through the course of collaboration in interoccupational groups (Begun and Lippincott 1987), like one containing a creator and a gatekeeper, though when groups have members with diverse bodies of knowledge, it “expands the range of perspectives that teams can draw upon to innovate” (Edmondson and Harvey 2018:348). For groups focused on creating shared aesthetic work, sharing a “community sense” of what is good or bad knits the group together (Wohl 2015), and mismatched tastes can lead to group conflict (Becker 1974). It follows that it would be important for groups to minimize conflict and maintain cohesion, particularly when the groups unite disparate resources, aesthetic tastes, and motivations in terms of skill, status, and goals.

Goffman’s (1955) concept of face-work answers the question of how individuals might minimize conflict and maintain a group’s expressive order when conflict arises. By attending to the flow of emotions and maintaining the “face” or social worth of individuals in a particular interaction, group cohesion is strengthened and blunders can be ignored (Goffman 1955). The spontaneity of face-work is emphasized as important in the technique’s ability to limit others’ embarrassment and lead to harmonious interactions, but it can be effectively planned and strategically deployed toward maintaining group harmony as long as the face-work appears to be spontaneous and authentic (Lee 2009; Scarborough 2012). Context is also important to how individuals use face-work, as those with more contextually appropriate resources and status will be able to more adeptly use and benefit from face-work (Scarborough 2012). These literatures are well suited to explaining how face-to-face social harmony can be maintained, but there is not sufficient scholarly attention to the ways that an individual might orient efforts toward maintaining status in the wider community, while simultaneously attending to small-group cohesion when the group has mismatched goals, skills, or tastes.

On the whole, the literature on status orientation in creative communities lacks attention to how individuals orient toward art or commerce when they are creating art in small groups, and the literature surrounding small-group dynamics and face-work is lacking in explaining how face-work operates within subgroups of larger social units. Hence, I ask how songwriters orient the creative process toward either the artist’s goals or their own goals while being a “good hang” in order to maintain group cohesion.

The Context of Country Music Songwriting in the Twenty-first Century

In the country music genre, most songwriting takes place in Nashville, Tennessee, where teams of approximately two to five professional songwriters come together to collectively produce the lyrics and music of a new song over the course of a morning or afternoon. It is possible that any combination of cowriters may come together only once or may reconvene many times over the course of their careers after initially being introduced by a mutual friend or scheduled to write together for the first time by their publisher. Unlike the singer-songwriter approach to penning and performing one’s own music, country music has generally kept separate the role of singer and songwriter. This has been fundamentally altered in the twenty-first century. The digitization of music and a resulting decline in revenue has changed the music industry. Record labels responded to these changes, altering recording contracts so that recording artists (henceforth referred to as “artists”) were obligated to write their own songs (Kasaras 2002; Moreau 2013). This change has led to artists increasingly being included as cowriters on songs with groups of professional songwriters.

Michael Lewis, a commercially popular and peer-recognized songwriter, describes the shifting earnings landscape and new contracts in the music industry. He told me, “Traditionally, the songwriter makes their big money off of radio—terrestrial radio. The artist makes their big money off of live concerts. Labels make their big money off of CD sales, which are not happening.” Since music sales are down, new contracts between record labels and artists have been structured such that the record labels can recapture their investment more easily. Michael continued, “So what has happened in the last ten years is that labels have signed acts with what’s called a ‘360 deal,’ which means they own a little bit of everything that artist does. So they want that artist to write their own songs because they make more money when [artists] do that, and it makes up for what they lose from the CD sales on that side.” Under the new so-called 360 deal contracts, record labels established partial ownership over everything that the artist does, including publishing, merchandise, live performance earnings, and music sales (Marshall 2013). The piece of the 360 deal that is most directly tied to the creative process is the new requirement that artists write some of their own music so that they, and importantly so that their label, will have a stake in their music’s copyright. Though not the only gatekeepers in this industry, artists are arbiters of taste who participate in their own song-selection process, so songwriters now navigate the creative process with gatekeepers as collaborators.

Because of an artist’s structural position as a gatekeeper, songwriters are incentivized to maintain collegial relationships by keeping artists happy during a cowriting session, or a cowrite. Like Parker and Hackett’s (2012) scientists who needed “good island personalities” to be included in important collaborative groups, being a “good hang,” the descriptor for songwriters who are fun or easy to be around, is one of the things that cowriters consider when selecting collaborators. In addition to being a likeable collaborator, songwriters are known by their songs’ reputations among industry peers. Commercial hits are important, but according to one industry leader, a hit song that is admired by peers is a highly valued “song with dignity;” another industry leader told me that these are the kinds of songs that become standards. Songwriters talk about trying to write songs that are more in line with the characteristics of a song with dignity by lyrically weaving “threads of truth” into the song, but artists have a narrower range of what kinds of song fit their persona as a performing artist. Further, in their role as a gatekeeper in charge of song selection for albums, recording artists’ structural position in the room differs from that of songwriters and alters the more egalitarian distribution of power that exists between groups of songwriters. During cowriting sessions, problems might arise if there is disagreement over what the end product of a collaboration should be. Should a song include a dated reference suggested by the artist? Would a song called “Tailgate Blind Date” be too cliché to be taken seriously by music critics? How should a songwriter simultaneously tell the artist that his or her idea is not good, maintain a good relationship with the artist, and write a song that will sustain his or her own reputation among industry peers?

Small-Group Norms in Country Music Songwriting

The mix of new and recurring collaborations on a songwriter’s schedule can vary, some saying their calendar is “50-50” people they have written with before and new teammates, with the impetus for recurring appointments being “mostly based on friendship and sometimes on success.” There is also a mix of cowriting with other songwriters or with artists, but most songwriters expressed the need to write with artists “as the business has tightened up so much.” The actual creative work of songwriting remains the same for songwriters whether they are writing with other professional writers or with artists: spend three or four hours penning the music and lyrics of a song. In the room, there are different roles that a cowriter might fill. Michael Lewis elaborated some potential roles in the writing room: “You have people that are editors. You have people that are—I call them ‘spouts.’ They can just spit out lyrics, like really fast, but they need great editors usually. And then you have… people who constantly cultivate great idea[s].” He also said, “You change roles at lot of times with different people . . . you know, when you really click with someone. You kind of feel there’s a creativity, and you become this part of the cog, the wheel, and it just works.” The song “just working” is a feeling that songwriters hope to achieve in their collaborations.

Songwriters talked about the final written song from a collaboration to be a collective product, not something that can be attributed to the efforts of just one or some of the collaborators. Lucas Lane, a writer whose songs are recognized by the commercial market, peers, critics, and Grammy nominations, said,

I mean honestly if you are in a room, if you and I were in a room and there’s another writer, and we were writing a song. Even if you’ve said nothing, just the fact that you’re there, it somehow changes. The chemical changes something. And the song that’s written is different, and it’s gonna be a more unique thing just because you’re there. Literally, if you said nothing.

Kathy Becker, a commercially successful writer said that if people in the room are considering how much any one group member contributed to the song, people will be “uptight” and concerned about making sure “that you’ve written enough,” which means that “instead of having this great creative fluidity, you have people worrying about how much they wrote.” I asked Claire Clark, also a commercially successful songwriter, if she felt that if somebody is in the room, even if the person did not say anything, the room is different. She replied, “Yes, definitely,” and elaborated that songwriters have to learn to “navigate around” the fact that someone might not contribute as much.

Reflecting Kathy’s assertion that being aware of one’s proportional contribution to the song can stifle the overall creative flow or energy, Claire said, “You have to learn how to know when to shut up. When somebody in the room is feeling it and they’re on a roll, you have to learn when to let the song happen in that direction.” She continued, “I try not to just throw a line in just so I am like throwing a line in. Just mainly focusing on making sure the song is 100 percent the best it can be is the goal that I go into a room with.” Stepping aside is, according to these songwriters, essential for the creative energy of the song to persist and for the song to be the best it can be. Claire said,

I don’t like to leave a room feeling like it’s half-assed or there’s a line in there that I just cringe at. That’s hard to figure out how to communicate that or just shut up and let the other person go. Sometimes, some days, you’re going to be the person on a roll, and some days, you’re going to be the person sitting back a little bit.

In this kind of creative work, a good collaborator knows when to contribute and when to hold back.

After writing a song, the group’s goal is to have the song recorded and released on an album, preferably as a single. It is not surprising that the primary tactic that songwriters have used toward this goal since the emergence of 360 deals is to write as much as possible with artists so that the artist cowriter will record their song. According to Jack Fraser, a songwriter whose work is commercially popular, peer recognized, critically acclaimed, and Grammy nominated, there is only a “little window” of opportunity for songs to be included on an artist’s album as an “outside cut,” that is, a song that is not cowritten by the artist. If the majority of the slots on an album are already filled by songs that the artist and his or her record label have preselected or written, the chances of any songwriter having an outside cut on the record is slim.

Mason Morgan, a successful artist who was the cowriter of one of his commercially successful songs, told me that he does not have a strategy for selecting cowriters and that he has been “lucky” as a songwriter because of his role as an artist. He said that this “would be an entirely different scenario,” though, if he “came to town as a writer. If you are coming into town [as a writer], it’s probably going to be kind of a struggle to get in a room with one of those people.” He recognized that it would be stressful to be in the position of trying to get in the room with successful songwriters, but for him, “when I came to town they were just throwing me in a room with everyone. I mean and it was like the most amazing thing. I mean writing with guys that wrote songs that I’ve been covering for years as an artist.” He continued, “I’m just to the point where it’s like, if I don’t really feel like there’s a solid chance of me getting something out of it, in terms of a really great song, I don’t [do it].” He said that he will write with anyone once; after that first time, however, if they do not connect on a personal or stylistic level, he will think, “Hey that was a great time, great to meet you. Another person that I know in my life, and if I see you at the store I can give you a hug, or whatever, but probably won’t take the time to, you know [write together again].” Trish Nolte, another commercially successful songwriter who also has had a career as a chart-topping artist, said that, as an artist, if the experience of cowriting a song is bad, she is not likely to put that song on her record. For Mason and for Trish, the songwriters with whom they collaborate have to be good hangs in addition to writing a good song for the artist’s record.

Bespoke Facilitation

Alice Pearson’s songwriting with artists is critically acclaimed. She detailed the differences in her approach to writing with other songwriters as compared to writing with artists. “Well, here’s the deal,” she said.

I did many different types of cowriting at my publisher. And sometimes it was just me and [an]other writer and that’s kind of like going on a date where you walk in and you have to be brave and say, “Got any ideas?” And then you just start talking about what’s going on in your life. Sometimes you’d walk in with a musical riff or a little thing that you’d started, or sometimes just a title. And when you get two creative people in the room, you just never know what’s going to happen. . . And we were just trying to write the best song that we could.

She went on to say,

The other half of the time, I was getting hooked up with artists. And so, that’s different in that you’re writing for them, and then you kind of want to let them have the wheel because it’s ultimately going to be something that they sing. So you’re really thinking about what they need for their project and what they want.

She clarified, “You kind of put yourself aside and what you want the song to be and go, ‘Well, what does this person want to say? And what are they looking for?’” This was in fact the modal way that collaborations were described in interviews. I call this strategy “bespoke facilitation” for the fact that, as Alice said, instead of trying to write the “best song possible,” the songwriter puts herself aside and tries to write exactly what the artist wants.

The facilitation approach to collaborating with artist cowriters entails deferring to the artist’s ideas, even when the ideas are not fully formed or do not align with the songwriter’s preferences. Commercially popular songwriter Drew Ross said that he is “definitely gonna give [artists] a lot of deference” and that “no matter how strongly [he] might feel about an idea, there’s no sense forcing it on somebody that you hope might record it.” He went on to list the key question that matters for writing in the bespoke facilitation strategy: “Does this feel like something that fits your wheelhouse?” Another commercially popular songwriter, Jamie Brooks, put it bluntly:

My job is to facilitate their vision, to really help facilitate what it is they wanna say, what kind of song they want. They’re looking for a song to do a particular job on stage at their show at Bridgestone Arena? I’m here to help you write that song. Or if we just wanna sit and talk and you know open our hearts and spill our guts let’s do that, see if something comes up. But you know first and foremost, it’s about being a hang.

I interviewed critically acclaimed songwriter Brandon Simpson and one of his female collaborators, Natalie Reynolds, together. Brandon and Natalie discussed this in a cynical banter. Brandon says of artists, “Most of them can’t really write. So you just end up . . . .” Natalie interjected, “So they just kind of like narrate what they want to write about. Yeah, they are like taking an order.” Brandon agreed, “Yes, placing orders . . . so then you write a song for them.” Though they agreed that artists can learn to be better writers through the cowriting process, they were adamant that having an artist in the room changes the cowriting experience such that their skills as songwriters are mobilized in service to the artist’s creative goals.

Nathan Grant, who has had commercial success writing with artists, has been a member of a self-contained band as a performer and songwriter and maintains a high-profile career in and outside of Nashville as a studio musician. Nathan described his role in the self-contained pop band he was in as an in-house songwriter and musician to facilitate the front man’s singing. He told me that in the band, “the singer didn’t write music. He just didn’t have the skill set to be self-contained. He needed somebody with him to provide some background ideas and get him inspired musically.” In Nathan’s role as facilitator of the songwriting process, he described the extent to which he tailored songs for the singer:

I just approached it scientifically. So I went in and mapped out the melody, I figured out where his voice sounds best, and I figured that there were three or four keys that I could work in where that ended up being the right note in the scale to really show up.

Whereas many songwriters spoke negatively of the facilitative strategy, Nathan likes it. He spoke of facilitation, like working with a lead singer’s vocal range, as a “road map,” telling me, “I love boundaries. I’m not a blind canvas person; I’m going to work inside these boundaries. That’s what I love. I do that just for my own creativity and that was really my first exercise instead of owning that for myself. I think I need boundaries, right?”

Dan Britton’s artist cowriting sessions have been commercially successful. He, like Nathan Grant, operates a bit outside of the Nashville machine, preferring to work across genres rather than only in country. Of choosing to cowrite with artists, even if the artist is not a good songwriter, Dan mused, “You can say, ‘Well that’s just terrible,’ because he’s not going to write too much of the song, but he is the vehicle that’s going to get it recorded.” Dan also spoke to the risk a songwriter takes in facilitating the artist’s personal brand and goals in a collaboration:

Now you have to make a choice, because sometimes that song can get completely kind of forced into that guy’s wheelhouse direction, which makes it inaccessible to somebody else to record. I mean like if he says, “Man, well, I like driving a Kia,” and you’re like, “Don’t you want it to be a truck?”“No, no, man, I want it to be Kia, and I like drinking milk,” or something. You go, “OK,” and it’s a bad analogy, but so you put that in a lyric. Kia rhymes with another word in the verse and milk rhymes with another word in the chorus, so you’ve kind of, now you’re in.

Dan went on to say that if for some reason the artist loses his or her record deal or chooses not to record the song, that song is unlikely to be able to be recorded by anyone else. Since the cowriters facilitated something so specific and personal to the Kia-driving, milk-drinking country artist, it is unlikely that another artist would record it.

I asked Trish Nolte, a successful artist who has also written successful songs for others, if being an artist changes the way that she cowrites songs. She replied,

Oh, yes. Because it’s like making a dress, right? You have a seamstress there and you want to make sure that that hem is right because you have to walk in it, that the sleeve is right because you want your arms to be whatever you want it to be, the look of your arm. It’s literally like crafting a dress.

She went on to tell me that in particular, the key and notes are important for songs that she will perform, but also she needed to have a voice in her record, lyrically speaking, which is why it is important to get to know her cowriters on a more personal level.

After making sure to tell me that she does not think she is “the greatest writer or anything,” commercially successful songwriter Claire Clarke said, “When you’re writing with an artist, I think that it’s smart to kind of listen to where they want to go with the song. Sometimes artists aren’t really the greatest—you have to kind of gently navigate the write and the song.” The “gentle navigation” and deference to the artist’s vision is the face-work that songwriters must do to be a good hang when the song they are writing does not contribute to their own artistic goals or creative vision.

The bespoke facilitation approach to cowriting with artists maintains the collegiality of the relationship between songwriters and artists by orienting the creative process to the artist and his or her creative and personal branding goals. The orientation of this process toward the artist means that ultimately, songwriters are resolving the tension between art and commerce by leaning into the commercial potential for the songs they write with artists.

The Manipulation Dance

In a departure from the deferential approach to facilitating artists’ vision, the second strategic approach that songwriters undertake in collaborating with artists is more deceptive. The manipulation dance, as one songwriter called it, is a strategy of prewriting music and lyrics before a songwriting session with an artist in the hopes of guiding the creative process according to the songwriters’ artistic goals. Jack Fraser spoke to the sleight of hand and misdirection that he and his cowriters employ at times when writing with an artist in the room: “You are supposed to have the lead on the ideas, so that’s why you see so many three-way cowrites where there’s two lead writers and the artist. Because the writers have to work with each other to make it happen.” Bill Moore, whose songs are commercially popular, peer recognized, critically acclaimed, and Grammy nominated, recommended that writers “do [their] prep work” and “have a song partly written” when collaborating with an artist. He explained that artists’ demanding schedules are what make this a necessary act. He said that even the artists who “can write” are often too busy to craft a good song because “they’re signing autographs, they’re doing endorsements, they’re going to go to the shopping mall, you know. You got sound check, you know, they’ve just, they got stuff to do.” Whether the artist lacks the skill to write a good song or whether he or she is too busy to be able to write well once finally in the writing room, the strategy of prewriting allows the songwriter to come prepared for the collaboration.

Jack Fraser also finds it useful to engage in prewriting but is more forward with his mindset and goals in this process. He said,

It goes to the point where me and a writer would get together the night before. We would have several things already written . . . and . . . when the artist’s ego got in the way and they needed to have something, we’d kinda go with that and then back at it. Like say a cowriter says something, and the artist didn’t like it. And it was good five or [a] few minutes later down the session, I go to the artist, “What was that you said?” And make it their idea. It’s a total manipulation dance.

I followed up with Jack, asking, “It’s like a constructed interaction?”“Yeah,” he replied. I continued to probe: “You literally already had written a song?” He replied, “Well at least a verse and a chorus.” In Jack’s approach to collaborating with artists, the deception of the manipulation dance allows him to write a song that, while collaboratively written, is oriented toward the personal tastes of Jack and his songwriter collaborator.

Sometimes the manipulation dance is preplanned for a specific artist, but at other times, songwriters get further along in a song and realize that they need to wait to finish the song until they can get an artist cowriter. Alex Hill, whose songs are successful commercially, among his peers, and among critics, said that when writing with his professional songwriter peer group, “We might write something where we used to go, ‘Hey, we got it. Let’s go in [to the studio]. We’ll demo it up,’” but they must now ask one another whether the song’s chances are better if it has an artist collaborator. They might say, “Let’s hold this until we’re in the room with this.”“We would have never done it before,” Alex admitted. Now he and his cowriters ask, “Do we go ahead and put it together and put it out, or do we hold it and wait until we’re in a certain situation? Now, that conversation has started in the middle of [writing] the song when it’s up and going.” For these songs, the creative process has to go on hiatus until an artist with the right industry connections can be brought into the collaboration.

Miles Foster, who has had successes in commercial markets, peer recognition, critical acclaim, and Grammy nominations, also engages in a manipulation strategy, though his approach is characterized by more levity. He detailed on one occasion setting up for an artist cowrite with another songwriter, based on the artist’s reputation as a difficult writer, by making sure it would be a short appointment and by setting a scene that would put the artist in a good mood. Miles and his cowriter achieved this by playing a Beyoncé song, dancing around the room together, and generally having a good time at the beginning of the cowrite while also dangling the promise of taking her to a new restaurant that she had been wanting to visit after they had written a song. In this case, Miles and his cowriter preplanned the entire day, not only the song itself, so that the writing appointment would be a good experience for the writer. They planned to have a good hang, and by doing so, they were able to write the song that they wanted to write.

Commercially popular writer Matt Berry failed at doing the manipulation dance in one of his artist cowrites. Though writing sessions generally begin with some time for catching up and talking to one another casually before landing on a song idea, Matt described the artist diving right in to write. After asking Matt if he had any ideas, Matt began playing the music he had prepared. The artist told him that it sounded like a complete song already and that he did not want to write that. Matt, embarrassed at being caught, reflected on the experience: “But it’s just a lesson to me like, yeah, don’t do that. Don’t be the guy. Artists are going to be like, ‘Dude, I know what you’re doing.’” Though Matt said artists will know, his version of the manipulation dance seems less deceptive and less convincing than Jack’s smoke and mirrors or Miles’s preplanned perfect day that makes the artist feel like he or she is contributing to the song through the planted idea.

Also talking about the work of collaborating with other artists, recording artist–songwriter Trish Nolte said, “There’s that fine line or that little bit of a dance that you have to do with the artists that you know may not be a good songwriter.” But she has also been on the receiving end of low expectations in a cowriting appointment, experiencing the “little bit of a dance” from songwriters who treated her poorly: “They think they know everything.” She said, “[When] I walk in the room, they don’t really need me to help them write the song. They didn’t know that I am very bold and I’m very outspoken. Well, I’ll let you do that. But guess what? Your song is not going to go on the record.”

Songwriters have always engaged in some degree of prewriting content by taking notes and writing snippets of ideas or lines down as the thoughts come to them, but the added deception of surreptitiously inserting them into the songwriting process or purposefully misattributing ideas to the artist cowriter is specific to the new group composition of having the artist as cowriter. Throughout my conversations with songwriters, the theme of prewriting or at least bringing semi-developed ideas into the room with an artist was not uncommon. Logan Ellis said, “I mean, and we’ve all done it. We’ve all written songs and brought an artist in on them. We’ve all done it.” It does not appear that the prewriting manipulation dance that writers sometimes perform is the modal situation, but most songwriters expressed that it does happen from time to time. The manipulation dance resolves the tension in the writing room by orienting the songwriting process toward the professional songwriter’s craft and artistic vision.

Mixing Strategies: Pragmatism in a Time of Desperation

Though I separate the strategies of facilitation and manipulation into distinct categories, writers might employ neither, either, or both as required in a particular situation. Alex Hill’s songs, including some cowritten with artists, have been successful commercially as well as peer recognized and critically acclaimed. He discussed the kind of artist cowrite that happens on the road while the artist is touring. A songwriter will meet up with the artist in one of the cities where the artist is performing, and in some of the artist’s limited downtime, they will work on a song. Alex said that there is a lot of waiting before finally getting a short window of time with the artist. He talked about needing to be ready for the cowrite immediately and showing the artist what he has written in preparation for the cowrite. He’ll tell the artist, “I got this started, this started, this started, this started, this started,” then he will ask the artist, “Well, what do you think about this?”“If he likes it,” Alex said, “then you customize it, would be the kindest way to put it. You’re never just sitting down where you want to write; that’d be a big waste of your hour.” He described another potential situation where the artist might say to him, “Well, I’m thinking this. I’m thinking that,” and Alex said he would spend the cowriting time writing down the artist’s ideas and then go back home and write a song, constructing it like “a simple little Lego set.” Alex’s approach of mobilizing strategies of facilitation and manipulation in artist cowrites is driven by the context of the music industry and of artists’ career roles outside of the writing room. Because of artists’ role as performers, their schedules leave them with little time to fulfill their contractual obligations as songwriters.

Songwriters are engaging in pragmatic collaboration strategies to forward their careers, and some did comment on the ways that the system limits artistic creativity for them personally. Commercially popular and critically acclaimed songwriter Cole Parker, after expressing that the music coming out of the country genre today is too “homogenous,” said that “there has always been style chasing that went on in music” but advised that “if you see a format that seems even more repetitive than before, I think that’s because everybody is in more of a desperation mode than a free-to-create mode.” Similarly lamenting constraint to his creative freedom, Logan Ellis expanded on previous commentary about the country genre only allowing up-tempo, “frenetic” songs, saying,

I hope we’re getting to it the point where some of that stuff’s gonna change. I don’t know if we are or not. All us guys that are writers want it to, but we don’t know. I mean all we can do is wait and see, you know, ride it out.

Logan has penned the music and lyrics to many hit songs and has received critical acclaim, but he still said that all he and his peers can do is “ride it out” until they can write music that they like. Though songwriters work to write good songs, they encounter a variety of constraints in making music. In addition to the constraints of genre convention and industry dynamics, there are relational constraints in collaborative settings, particularly when a gatekeeper or high-status collaborator is in the room.