Gilbert O’Sullivan Talks Songwriting Today Swift and Gaga Style Verses Songwriting Then

Songwriting today is a lot different to the formula of 50 years ago. The songs of Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga have a completely different structure to that of The Beatles. Gilbert O’Sullivan understands why.

Check out the Noise11 Gilbert O’Sullivan interview:

About songwriting Gilbert says songwriters today “would argue that the days of the M8, the middle eight, has gone. What’s interesting is that the lyrics of Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga are all vocally powerful. There isn’t that much break musically in the middle of them. On the majority of Taylor Swift records she doesn’t write the music. She writes the words. The words and words and words are what she comes up with. So she fills the track with her words”.

Gilbert also points to the conveyor belt of ideas that go into a pop song today. “When you look at Lady Gaga, the amount of people involved in the writing isn’t just her. I come from that school with Bacharach & David and the McCartney school of writing that has three verses, four verses and has a middle section. What I love about middle sections is that they can take you off on a tangent out of what the verses are talking about. You can have a breather from that and then you can bring it back in. I just find that fascinating. I do think that for a lot of writers today it is just all vocal, vocal, vocal.”

Gilbert O’Sullivan has rarely toured Australia but he will be back at the end of April.

Gilbert O’Sullivan Australian dates are:
29 April, Perth, Astor Theatre
1 May, Melbourne, Palms at Crown
2 May, Tweed Heads, Twin Towns
4 May, Sydney, Recital Hall
6 May, Canberra, SCC Club

https://abstract.net.au/event/gilbert-osullivan/

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