Pre-fame Songwriting

Ke$ha a.k.a. Kesha Rose Sebert and Katy Perry a.k.a. Kathryn Elizabeth Hudson have a lot in. common, they had similar musical beginnings, both started out in California chasing the dream of becoming successful singers. Though they had not formed their artistic personas quite yet, fast forward a few years, and they are now household names with distinct and different styles.

Ke$ha reportedly recorded over 200 songs for her debut album "Animal", which is not that surprising considering that track recording began 4-5 years prior, and Katy has had a number of projects before album "One Of The Boys", including a debut Christian album and a non-realized studio album. During the recording process for their albums, tracks that they had written or recorded that were not included on the studio album were given to other artists.

The Veronicas - "This Love"

Official Single Cover

In 2007, The Veronica's released their second studio album "Hook Me Up" and included on the tracklisting was "This Love", which was successful as a single in Australia. The song was written by Ke$ha and producer Toby Gad ("Big Girls Don't Cry", "If I Were A Boy"). 

Check their video and compare it to Ke$ha's demo.

Miranda Cosgrove - "Disgusting"

Official Album Cover - "Sparks Fly"

Miranda Cosgrove, known for her roles on Drake and Josh and iCarly, released her debut album "Sparks Fly" in fall of 2008. Included was a track called "Disgusting", co-written by Ke$ha and her mother Pebe Sebert, as well as the producers. Judging from the track, and comparing it to another written and produced by the same producer of "Disgusting" (proof), the sound if the songs doesn't sound like the rest of her tracks on "Animal", so I would assume that they were written and recorded by her, but not up to par. 

Check out Ke$ha's demo and Miranda's version.

Miley Cyrus - "The Time of Our Lives"

Official EP Cover

Bridging the gap between Miley's debut album and her latest effort was the EP "The Time of Our Lives", which was a Platinum-selling EP released in fall of 2009 preceded by the immensely successful "Party In The U.S.A.". Written by Ke$ha, her mother Pebe, Dr. Luke and legendary songwriter Claude Kelly ("Circus", "Take It Off", "Grenade"). When asked about the song, Ke$ha said that she was writing specifically for Miley and it wasn't necessarily a left-over track.

Though a demo hasn't leaked (yet), you can clearly hear Ke$ha's lilting yodel on the chorus.

Girl's Generation - "Run Devil Run"

Official Album Cover - "Oh!: Run Devil Run"

Asian group Girl's Generation (presumably) re-recorded a Ke$ha track as the first single for the re-release of their second album "Oh!", also borrowing the title from the song naming it "Run Devil Run". Judging from the demo, it sounds like it was a part of Ke$ha's initial album plans and is a decent leak.

You can check out the Girl's Generation video, though it's in Korean, and Ke$ha's demo.

Charlee - "Boy Like You"

Official Single Cover

Austrian singer Charlee released "Boy Like You" as the lead single from her debut album "This Is Me" in Fall 2010. Only the back cover of the single reveals Ke$ha as the writer, and it's lyrically similar to her other songs, though it's different "Animal" so that and the fact that the demo is quite polished and identical to the single version leads me to believe that it was never intended for Ke$ha's album.

Check out Charlee's music video and Ke$ha's demo.

Fun-facts: Just because she hit the big time, doesn't mean she stopped writing song for other artists; Ke$ha revealed that she had written for "Loud", Rihanna's latest album, however the song was not included on the final tracklist for the album. Ke$ha has also recently confirmed that she penned a track for Britney Spears' 7th album "Femme Fatale", not surprising considering that Dr. Luke, who produced all of Ke$ha's studio album releases, is co-producing "Femme Fatale". The title is "Till the World Ends" and is about "imagining her and nay female musician touring the world, you know, when you go out, and you're having an amazing, magical night and you don't want to go to sleep and you want it to last until the world ends".

Ashley Tiasdale - "Time's Up"

Official Album Cover - "Guilty Pleasure"

In between Christian-rock "Katy Hudson" and "One of the Boys", Katy had recorded an album with songwriting/producer team The Matrix, known for their work on Avril Lavigne's debut album "Let Go". She was just to be a featured vocalist, think Timbaland, but with just her and Adam Longlands (couldn't find any info on him). One of the tracks "Love Is A Train"/"Time's Up" was taken from the album sessions and given to Ashley Tisdale to record for her second album "Guilty Pleasure", released in Summer 2009.

Check out Ashley's version and Katy's version, both are studio versions, not demos.

Kelly Clarkson - "I Do Not Hook Up" & "Long Shot"

Official Album Cover - "All I Ever Wanted"

Kelly Clarkson's latest album, released in Spring 2009, saw 2 recycled Katy tracks, "I Do Not Hook Up" and "Long Shot", the first becoming a successful single. Both tracks are leftover from Katy's unrealized debut album, and both the Kelly versions are produced by Howard Benson, who has a mostly Rock background (Daughtry, Flyleaf, Reliant K). "I Do Not Hook Up" was originally titled "Hookup" and was co-written with Kara DioGuardi and Greg Wells while "Long Shot" was co-written with Glen Ballard (Annie Lennox, Michael Jackson) and Matthew Theissen, lead singer of Reliant K, who also worked on Owl City's studio album "Ocean Eyes".

Long Shot: Check Katy's music video and Kelly's track.

Hookup: Compare Kelly's video to Katy's original version.

Selena Gomez & The Scene - "Rock God"

Official Album Cover - "A Year Without Rain"

SGaTS' second studio album "A Year Without Rain" was released in Fall of 2010 and included "Rock God", a song co-written by Katy Perry, Victoria Horn and Printz Board (The Black Eyed Peas, Fergie). Selena confirmed that Katy had given her an old track and was also featured on the background vocals, which you can hear clearly when you listen to the chorus.

Katy's version and Selena's track.

Fun-facts: On Miley Cyrus' debut album "Breakout", 2 songs were included that had been recorded by Katy Perry, "Breakout" and "The Driveway". Now, checking the album booklet for the writing credits, both "Breakout" and "The Driveway" don't list Katy as a writer, but do include her as a background vocalist. I've read some fan comments claiming that Katy recorded the vocals after Miley had been given the song, but Katy recording a full version wouldn't make sense, especially since her version "The Driveway" has different lyrics than Miley's. I'm not sure if Katy had a hand in writing the songs, but she always writes her own music, besides these songs, I've never heard Katy record a song she didn't write (unless it was a cover obviously) so it's a mystery to me.

Check Miley's "Breakout" and Katy's version and you can also check Katy's slightly different "The Driveway" and compare it to Miley's.

E.T. - Single Review (EDIT: Kany West feature reviewed)

Official Single Cover

Sometime in May/June of '10, Katy Perry's demo for "E.T." then labeled "E.T. (Futuristic Lover) leaked and up until then, all I had heard from the singer was "I Kissed a Girl", "Hot N' Cold" and "Waking Up In Vegas". Though my friend had burned me her album "One Of The Boys", I actually never listened to it until that summer, and I was very pleasantly surprised. I ended up getting pretty attached to the song, the chorus especially reminded me of another song, not entirely sure which one, some say t.A.T.u.'s "All The Things She Said", the repetition in both songs is similar.

I don't need to say anything more about Dr. Luke, he for sure knows what he's doing, and he co-produced this with frequent collaborator Max Martin and newer producer Ammo, a.k.a. Joshua Coleman, who also co-produced "Your Love Is My Drug", "We R Who We R", and "Check It Out". The writing for the song has the same whimsy as many of Katy's others, but she pulls it off without being corny, which, for a song called "E.T.", is quite a feat. The single has a great *thump thump clap* beat playing over a bleeping melody followed by a powerful chorus driven by a rapid hi-hat beat, swooshing electro gusts and an unintelligible noise someone is moaning, appended by a simple synth and chord repetition on the bridge. 

In my opinion, the demo is better than the album version, listen here. Maybe because that's what I grew to love first, but there are pros and cons to both; the demo of course is not as produced as the finalized product, so instrumental wise, not as great, however vocally, Katy sounds over-produced and the singing is much simpler on the final version, they take out some of her distinctive voice during the verses, especially on the runs on the emphasized last words of the lines (could you be the devil, could you be an angel). The song did not initially cross my mind as a single choice, I would've expected "Peacock" or "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) as it is a rather dark-sounding song, but its is unexpected, which is something Katy loves to be, so we'll see how it fares on the charts, strong downloads when it was released as a part of iTunes Countdown to the album made it peak at 42 on the Hot 100.

EDIT: Katy has since released the single that will be impacting radios and it features a couple verses from Kanye West. This union is a good example of a couple things; the difference between a song originally intended to be a collaboration (California Gurls with Snoop Dogg) and one that wasn't, compromising morals in order to sell more records (wasn't it Katy who Tweeted after the Taylor Swift scandal "FUCK U KANYE. IT'S LIKE U STEPPED 0N A KITTEN." which has surprisingly not been deleted) and a good idea gone awry.

It's not that the +Kanyeezy version is totally bad, it's that when compared to the original, it falls flat. It doesn't sound like he really grasped the concept of the song, or he just didn't care. His verses consisted of him talking about, what else, getting girls, sex, wearing nice threads, sex, being a legend and sex. So he really went out of the box with this one.

Bottom line: it's interesting to see someone's artistic interpretation of the song's theme. But please play the album version.

Official Single Cover

Who is Skylar Grey?

Official Single Cover

2010 was a big year for seemingly new singer-songwriter Skylar Grey, with songwriting credits on "Love The Way You Lie" (all 3 versions, serving as co-producer on the Piano Version), "Coming Home" with Dirty-Diddy Money (which she's also a featured artist on) and "Castle Walls", the chilling T.I. featuring Christina Aguilera single. Interesting fact though, the only people credited on the single "Love The Way You Lie" (check it) was Holly Hafferman, a.k.a. Holly Brook, a.k.a. the girl who sings the chorus on Fort Minor's well known hit "Where'd You Go" (in which she also plays the piano).

As a solo artist, Holly has released material as recent as June of 2010, however any official pages the artist had have either been cancelled, like her Twitter, which had previously updated posts on her MySpace, the last entry was June 20th 2010, and her Facebook Page, the last post being July 28th, however there are many posts by people asking about her name change.

Stage Names are nothing new in Hollywood or the music industry, whether it's dropping your last name (Cher, Beyonce, Rihanna) or an entirely new one (Lady Gaga, Fergie, P!nk), it's not out of the ordinary. It would appear that Holly is taking a Gaga-esque approach to renaming herself, removing all former websites, music and pictures of herself from the interwebs, however it wasn't that hard to put two and two together.

So what does this mean for the new artist? Well, she is clearly talented, she has a great voice, writes great songs, and great piano pieces. Great. Hopefully we'll start to see more of her new persona, not just on other people's records, but putting out some of her own, and then actually being out there, seeing her perform live, be more visible.

Fun fact; Holly Brook WAS signed to label Machine Shop Recordings, run by half of Linkin Park, including Mike Shinoda, a.k.a. Fort Minor. Alex Da Kid, up-and-coming producer-genius behind "Love The Way You Lie", "Airplanes" and "Coming Home" has signed her to his production company Wonderland Entertainment. Together, they make magic, not unlike the Dr. Luke + Ke$ha combo that proved very successful.

EDIT: Here's the list of songs she has written/composed that have been listed on the BMI song list.

F**kin' Perfect - Single Review

Official Single Cover

A little over 4 months ago, P!nk's lead single from her "Greatest Hits... So Far!!!" album "Raise Your Glass" was released and it was awesomely another #1 for her, 2nd as a solo artist following "So What", 3rd if you count "Lady Marmalade". I had random songs from her various albums on my iTunes and when the track-listing for her Greatest Hits came out, I was a little surprised that it mirrored exactly what I had in my library. So I bought the LP, it was a great price, and how perfect that it was everything I already liked. Get it? Perfect?

In addition to old favorites, this album also introduced 3 new songs, "Raise Your Glass","F**kin' Perfect" and "Heartbreak Down" (4 if you were lucky enough to be able to buy the International Version which also included "Whaddaya Want From Me", written by her, performed by Adam Lambert, check it out). I immediately gravitated to "F**kin' Perfect", and it really made me realize that not only has P!nk stayed true to her sound throughout her career, she is the one pop artist that comes to mind that consistently puts out singles with meaningful lyrics. It seems that of late, a lot of songs have touched on the idea of acceptance and being who you are (Firework, We R Who We R, Raise Your Glass), and this song, as cliche as it sounds, is one we can all relate to.

Writer-producer-extraordinarie Max Martin, who also worked on her last 3 albums, co-produced the new tracks with Shellback, an up and coming producer under Martin's production label. His work with P!nk always brings a nice rock-edge that has been lost in the synthy-pop that dominates the radio, and this track is a great example of that, with the simple guitar chord-strumming opening the song to more rapid strumming accompanied by some great drum work and then with thumping bass and soaring strings on the chorus. She would seem to have really hit her stride in the past couple of years, and well timed too as everything seems to be going extremely well in her personal life.

Made by yours truly

Hold It Against Me - Single Review

Official Single Cover

If you haven't heard Britney's new single, or at least heard she HAD a new single out, you literally would have to be living under a rock. As a Britney fan, I was probably more aware of the progress of her latest album than the average person, and as the premiere date for the song drew closer, super-fans were foaming at the mouth for official news, surprisingly they were divided on whether they wanted the song to leak or not, some feared for the songs success if it leaked early (no one would buy it) and others, like myself, wanted to hear it. My policy on music is that if I want to support the artist, I will, and this was one instance where I wanted her to have a great start to her new album, which she did with "Hold It Against Me" debuting at #1, her 4th single to do so (Baby One More Time, Womanizer, 3). The demo, featuring the vocals of co-writer Bonnie McKee, leaked a couple days before the single, and was very catchy, but needed some refining, and boy did it get one.

Producer of the moment, and Grammy nominee for "of the Year", Dr. Luke is behind some of the biggest hits in the past 4 years (Right Round, TiK ToK, Circus, Party in the U.S.A.). Frequent Katy Perry and Ke$ha collaborator (executive producer of their most recent efforts), Dr. Luke a.k.a. Lukasz Gottwald knows how to craft a catchy pop song. With "Hold It Against Me", he has really outdone himself, if you've just been listening to it through speakers, you need to pop in a good pair of ear buds because thats when his effort becomes evident, the finished product is leaps and bounds better than the demo, from the oscillating bass, throbbing synths and piano chords on the chorus,  not to mention the dub step bridge, simple the production is not.

 Overall, the song was a great lead single for her album, proved commercially and critically successful, and showed several great steps forward for the artist; the first thing that I noticed was that it's her, her voice shines through and is not overpowered by the backup singers, dubstep is growing in popularity and for her to take that step on what is going to inevitably become the new "thing" was very smart. Some fans have brought up the point that the passion in her songs has been slowly declining in the last few cycles of Britney music (don't think that you can't sing with passion through auto-tune, check it). However, the #1 songs of late aren't exactly showcasing jaw-dropping vocals (if you say Firework, I will force you to watch her sing it live), so don't hold it against her :-)

Made by yours truly, as is the one below, in case you wanted a cover for the Funk3ed or Brian Cua remixes 

Nicole Scherzinger - Singles Review

No available in the U.S. to purchase yet, but go ahead and listen

Official Single Cover

Nicole Scherzinger, former lead singer for the Pussycat Dolls, has been trying her hand at being a solo artist, even when we didn't realize it; "Jai-Ho (You Are My Destiny)" was released "The Pussycat Dolls featuring Nicole Scherzinger". Her now shelved debut album, "Her Name is Nicole" attempted to garner attention through a series of promotional singles (or rather a slew), none of which really had staying power (though Supervillain wasn't half bad).

In comes one of various producers-of-the-moment RedOne, now synonymous with radio-friendly pop after producing most of Lady Gaga's hit singles (Poker Face, Just Dance, Bad Romance, Alejandro). Synth-pop with a steady bass beat, "Poison" was made for the dance-floor, which nowadays seems to be the mainstream flavor of choice. With his help, there may be some viability left in her solo career. In the U.K. Despite being from the U.S. (yes Hawaii is a state), her single has yet to be released here, though it has fared quite well overseas, peaking at #3 on the U.K. singles charts, bolstered by a series of live television performances, notably a tricked out X Factor appearance (American Idols' U.K. predecessor). However, being that the U.K. is the size of Texas, a #1 there VS. a #1 in the U.S. are two very different things; even a fantastic song can flop without proper promotion so we'll see if she releases it in the U.S.

That beings us to the follow-up single, "Poison" was released October '10. Keeping with the same vibe as her "debut" single, "Don't Hold Your Breathe" is a mid-tempo pop song, not quite a ballad, but for sure containing the essence of a woman scorned, it deals with an ambiguous situation of a guy doin' her wrong, can't we all relate? "What you did to me, boy I can't forget, if you think I'm comin' back, Don't Hold Your Brea-e-eth"

The history behind this song is an interesting one, originally performed by Timberland and Keri Hilson (cause they haven't done enough songs together) and leaked back in 2008, the song had a harder, colder vibe and featured a man VS. woman dynamic and was pretty...like not good, its understandable why he passed on featuring it, presumably on Shock Value. 

No word on who officially produced Nicole's version, but they updated the song in a big way, the demo featured more of a rock-pop-edge and slight alterations to the chorus (and in my opinion, was sung by Kelly Rowland as a demo for HER newest dance-flavored effort, she was rumored to have had it in her hands). There are two versions with Nicole's vocals now circulating the interwebs, the first is in the vein of the demo, opening with sparking synths and overlayed with background vocals "ohh ohh"-ing over her appropriately breathy voice. The noticeable difference between the two is the second one has less emphasis on hard guitar strums and drumming and goes more fully into the synths and dance beat. It is possible that the second version that's out there is Dave Aude's radio edit of her single, as he confirmed he is remixing it, however there are some minor differences in the second half of the songs vocals.

In any case, the verdict is that Nicole has made a smart move in jumping on the bandwagon with every other artist trying to re-invent themselves, though it presents nothing new to the world of music, so far her "new" sound is very listen-able and radio-friendly, so we'll see if she will have a little more longevity this time, after all, she don't got her Dolls to fall back on no mo'.

Made by yours truly, no official cover yet

EDIT: Cover art revealed today, possibly official

First post - S&M single review

Above is the official cover art for Rihanna's "third" single off of Loud (if you don't count Raining Men, which is fine by me). With such a stylized art direction with the albums visuals, it's understandable that the label wants to keep some similar design elements with products released, it's smart marketing, makes is more recognizable and re-brands her as an artist, however, as is so often the case with official single covers, it's lacking in presence, creativity, originality, and doesn't really reflect the meaning and tone of the single.

This was instantly my favorite song, helped by the fact that it's the albums' opener, it almost plays like a sequal to Only Girl with its' strong, bass driven beat crafted by frequent RiRi collaborator Stargate (Firework, Rude Boy, Take A Bow) and penned by Ester Dean, the songwrite behind What's My Name, Firework and Not Myself Tonight. Strong digital downloads have already made the song impact on the Billboard Hot 100 chart ahead of the release date, and honestly it's a no-brainer to release S&M, I'd bet money on it being Rihanna's first #1 in 2011 (and maybe her only one).

"I may be bad but I'm perfectly good at it, sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it, sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me."

Cover made by yours truly, I felt that the cover needed to be more contrasted and vibrant, and to me this is a much more sensual pic than the one they chose originally.