In Praise of the Brill Building Professionals

Lots of so-called critics like to dismiss the pop music of the pre-Beatles '60s as trite and easily forgettable, a regrettable detour from the harder rock 'n' roll of the Elvis '50s that was put by the wayside when the British true believers invaded American shores in 1964. I, however, disagree.

You see, the story of popular music in the 20^th century is written, in large part, by  professional songwriters -- the very folks who produced those oft-dismissed early '60s tunes. Professional songwriters apply their craft to the three-minute song, writing memorable words and melodies for other musicians to perform. The key word here is "professional" -- these are folks who know their craft and put out quality product on a consistent basis. None of that introspective bleeding heart emo crap intoned against a strummed chord or two; we're talking tunes with real melodies that anyone could sing along with.

In the first part of the 20th century, professional songwriting in America was concentrated in that area of New York City on West 28^th Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, commonly called Tin Pan Alley. (The name came from writer Monroe Rosenfeld, who likened the cacophony of so many songwriters pounding on so many pianos to the sound of beating on tin pans.) Songwriters, together and in teams, churned out their compositions in factory-like style; the best of these songs got sold to music publishing companies, and were then issued as sheet music (before the explosion of the record business) or picked up by one of the major singers of the day. Sometimes these Tin Pan Alley tunes ended up in vaudeville productions, Broadway plays, or Hollywood movies. The best of the best endured, and became classics.

The best songwriters of a generation filtered through Tin Pan Alley. George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin; all were professional songwriters for hire. Their songs were sung by the top singers of the day—Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Nat 'King' Cole, and the like. Their songs were professional compositions, the work of trained musicians who were masters of their craft. They featured pretty melodies, sophisticated chord progressions, and mature, often witty, lyrics; they were written by adults, for adults.

By the 1950s, Tin Pan Alley and the New York music business had moved uptown—to that stretch of Broadway between 49^th and 53^rd streets. The hub of this activity was 1619 Broadway, in an eleven-story edifice called the Brill Building.

The Brill Building was built in 1931, during the height of the Great Depression. Some of its first tenants were music publishers, including Famous Music, Mills Music, and Southern Music. By 1962 the building was home to more than 150 music companies, and this concentration of companies made the Brill Building a kind of “one stop shop” for aspiring musicians.

The entire music process was contained in that one building. You could write a song on one floor, sell it to a publisher on another floor, have an arrangement written on another, and cut a demo on yet another. If you needed musicians for your demo, there were plenty hanging around; if you were a publisher or a singer shopping for a song, all you had to do was wait around a few minutes and someone would be knocking at your door.

For songwriters, the working environment was Spartan, almost factory-like. Songwriters and songwriting teams occupied tiny cubicles, just big enough to hold a piano (for the music writer) and a desk (for the lyricist). Independent songwriters rented cubicles and tried to sell their songs, one at a time, to the many music publishing companies in the building. The more established songwriters were employed by music publishing firms, typically earning a salary of $150 (or less!) a week.

While the Brill was the nexus of the Broadway music complex, some of the biggest hits came out of a building catty-cornered across the street, at 1650 Broadway. It was this building that housed Aldon Music, which for a time dominated the teen music charts.

Aldon Music was a music publishing company run by a young Don Kirshner and his older partner Al Nevins. Kirshner got his start in the music business thanks to his friendship and professional partnership with Robert Casotto–who became better known as singer Bobby Darin. Before Darin’s later success as a performer, he was Kirshner’s songwriting partner, going door-to-door in the Brill Building looking for business. When Darin finally hit it big as a solo artist, twenty-one year-old Kirshner found a new partner, Al Nevins. Nevins had some previous success as a composer and musician (as part of the Three Suns in the 1940s and 1950s), and with Kirshner, founded Aldon Music in May, 1958.

It didn’t take long for Aldon to make its mark in the music publishing business. Kirshner and Nevins had just moved into their new offices, and were in the process of setting up their new furniture, when two aspiring songwriters knocked on their door. Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield were looking for a publishing contract, and they played a half-dozen songs for Kirshner and Nevins. One of the songs was called “Stupid Cupid;” another was called “Calendar Girl.” Kirshner and Nevins signed them on the spot.

Capitalizing on the initial success of Sedaka and Greenfield, Aldon Music began signing the best of that generation’s songwriting teams, and soon became the most successful of all the Brill Building publishing companies. Kirshner and Nevins had an ear for talent, and a unerring sensibility for the newly emerging teen record market.

The list of songwriters signed to Aldon Music is legend. In 1960, Kirshner hired Neil Sedaka’s high school girlfriend, Carole King, and her new husband, Gerry Goffin; they became the most successful songwriting team of the early 1960s. The following year, Kirshner signed songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil; Mann and Weil wrote separately for awhile, but ultimately teamed up (both professionally and personally) to pen hits for the Drifters, the Crystals, the Ronettes, and the Righteous Brothers. Kirshner also signed another husband-wife songwriting team, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, as well as the teams of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman and (later in the decade) Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. By 1962 Aldon had eighteen songwriters on staff, none older than twenty-six.

Of course, Aldon wasn’t the only Brill Building music publisher; dozens of smaller publishers also contributed to the hit-making machinery in that pre-Beatles era. When Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller brought their west-coast R&B stylings to New York, they took up residence in the Brill Building. Burt Bacharach and Hal David, the era’s most sophisticated songwriters, also paid their dues in a Brill Building cubicle.

(And, yes, the typical Brill Building songwriter was actually two people, working together in a team—one providing the words and the other the music. While there were solo songwriters, such as the talented Toni Wine, and while some members of some teams sometimes wrote with other individuals, during the Brill Building era it was the team approach that ruled.)

The sheer volume of songs that emerged from the Brill Building compound was astounding in its own right; that so many songs became popular hits, and even time-honored standards, further speaks of the talent assembled there. While these talented individuals certainly wrote their share of throw-away pop confections (Barry Mann’s “Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)”, co-written with Gerry Goffin;  Goffin and King’s “The Loco-Motion;” Barry and Greenwich’s “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”), the best of Brill Building pop holds its own with the great Tin Pan Alley songs of Gershwin, Porter, and others of their generation.

While Brill Building pop was every bit as well crafted as Tin Pan Alley pop, the Brill Building songwriters were writing to a completely different audience—the then-new teen market. The 1950s marked the first time that teenagers were identified separately from their parents, and they craved their own clothing, movies, and music. Brill Building songwriters targeted the teen market, and wrote songs that that era’s teenagers could identify with.

As most teenagers (then as now) were intrigued by and infatuated with boy-girl relationships, the typical Brill Building song dealt with teenage romance, in one form or another. The lyrics were more to-the-point than in similar Tin Pan Alley songs, eschewing erudite witticisms for the vernacular of the day that spoke directly to their youthful audience. The music was simpler, too; with some exception, the Brill Building sound built on the simple chord progressions and harmonies of 1950s Doo Wop, with catchy, easily sung melodies piled on top of familiar chords.

Another difference between the Tin Pan Alley and Brill Building sounds was the latter’s emphasis on fully produced records. In the heyday of Tin Pan Alley, a song was put out into the world for any artist to sing, and its success was measured in terms of sheet music sold. By the late 1950s, the medium of measurement was the 45 r.p.m. single, so a completed Brill Building song was quickly made into a demo for a specific artist. The typical Brill Building single (whether recorded in New York or in the west coast studios favored by producer Phil Spector) featured elaborate, often bombastic production. There were lots of instruments on these records, including full string sections playing sophisticated arrangements. And, owing to its Doo Wop heritage, Brill Building pop surrounded the singer with multiple backing voices, especially on those songs written for the Girl Groups of the era. These records were short, catchy, and full of hooks—aimed at teenagers, not their parents. And they all sounded great coming from the tinny speaker on the average car radio.

What Brill Building songwriters shared with their Tin Pan Alley predecessors was a high level of professionalism, and a devotion to their craft. These were professionals, in every sense of the word; they worked nine-to-five to produce the flawless pop concoctions demanded by their listeners. The typical Brill Building songwriting team wrote hundreds of songs over the course of their careers, in some cases writing a dozen songs a week. Given the competition, only the best of the best made it onto AM radio’s top forty hit lists.

And, from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s, Brill Building songwriters sent one song after another to the top of the pop charts. Brill Building songs fueled the careers of many a teen idol, helped to create the Girl Group craze of the early 1960s, and supported the many manufactured groups of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including the Monkees and the Archies.

It’s worth noting that, while the Brill Building might have been the east coast nexus of the professional songwriting world, there were other professional songwriters operating in the 1960s, out of many other locations. For example, there was a west coast equivalent of the Brill Building combine in Los Angeles. The two driving forces of this west coast sound were the local office of Aldon Music, headed by Lou Adler, and Metric Music, the California extension of New York’s Liberty Music. The songwriters working for Aldon and Metric included Randy Newman, P.J. Proby, David Gates, and Jackie DeShannon.

Another songwriting nexus was in Detroit, as Barry Gordy employed a raft of songwriting teams for his Motown label. The Motown composers are legend, and include names like Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Norman Whitfield, and Holland-Dozier-Holland.

And not all professional songwriters were American. In England, the center of professional songwriting activity was London’s Denmark Street. Successful British songwriters of the period included Carter and Lewis, Graham Gouldman, Cook and Greenaway, Tony Hatch, Les Reed, Barry Mason, and Geoff Stephans

Of course, Britain was also home to the century’s most successful songwriting team. John Lennon and Paul McCartney weren’t professional songwriters, at least not in the same way Mann and Weil or Goffin and King were, but they did produce a series of popular songs unmatched in the 20^th century. If the Beatles hadn’t existed as performers, Lennon and McCartney could have been Brill Building (or Denmark Street) songwriters without peer. As-is, their songs have been recorded by hundreds—if not thousands—of other artists, and were every bit as influential as anything coming out of that eleven-story building at 1619 Broadway.

Interestingly, many Brill Building composers went on to have successful solo careers of their own. Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond (who, during his stint at Famous Music, penned “I’m a Believer” and “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You” for the Monkees), Paul Simon, and Lou Reed all served their time in the Brill Building, although they’re better known today as performers than as songwriters.

The most successful solo artist to come from the Brill Building combine was Carole King. As half of the Goffin-King songwriting team, Ms. King created some of the most memorable melodies of the Brill Building era. After she split with husband Gerry Goffin and moved to the west coast, she began performing her own songs. While she had toyed with performing before (she actually charted “It Might As Well Rain Until September,” under her own name, in 1962), it was her 1971 album, Tapestry, that provided her with megasuccess—as both a songwriter and a performer.

The beginning of the end of the Brill Building era came in 1963, when Kirshner and Nevins sold Aldon music to Columbia Pictures-Screen Gems. Kirshner moved to the west coast to run the parent company’s publishing and recording activities, while Nevins signed on as a consultant. While Kirshner, in his new position, still turned out the hits, they were mainly manufactured concoctions for manufactured groups, such as the Monkees and the Archies.

A further nail in the coffin came in 1964, when the Beatles invaded America. The Beatles marked the ascendance of the fully contained artist, musicians who not only performed but also wrote their own songs. With one new group after another writing its own music, the market for professionally written pop songs began to dry up; by the mid-1970s, that songwriting factory called the Brill Building quickly became irrelevant.

In the 1980s and beyond, professional songwriters became a dying breed—at least in the straight rock and pop genres. Professional songwriting continued to flourish in the fields of movie soundtracks, New Country, and each succeeding current generation of manufactured teen idol performers. The genre that started with Tin Pan Alley writers Harry Von Tilzer, Irving Berlin, and George Gershwin and reached its zenith in the hundreds of brilliant three-minute Brill Building pop songs was, by the end of the century, still flourishing, albeit in a different format, and with a different audience. 

I'm a fan of professional songwriting, and of professional songwriters. There's too much amateurish songwriting in pop music today; ust because some guitar player can put a few chords together doesn't mean he knows how to construct a decent melody. It's even worse with rap and hip hop, where the very notion of musicality has been tossed off the turntable. Enough of this thrashing and bashing about; I long for the days of the well-crafted pop song. The kiddies have run the asylum for much too long. Wouldn't it be nice if the  pros returned to save the day?

Fragmenting and Personalizing

It's not a secret that the  music industry is a lot less monolithic than it used to be, and a lot more fragmented. Some of this results from the continuing decline of the major record labels; with the rise of smaller independent labels, the big companies have less control over what radio stations play and what music lovers listen to.

But there’s more than that; the industry itself has changed. Back in the heyday of Top 40 radio, radio stations played pretty much everything from everybody; radio was truly cross genre. A single station would play a little British Invasion rock mixed with Brill Building pop, beach music, sounds, Motown, country, even the occasional Frank Sinatra tune. That kind of variety helped promote all musical genres; everybody heard a little bit of everything.

All you have to do is scan up or down the dial to know that that’s not the way it works today. Over the past several decades radio programming has become much more segmented. Instead of a radio station playing music from different types of artists, stations today have relatively narrow playlists. A station might play only hip hop, heavy metal, or alternative rock, and nothing else. There’s no cross-pollination between genres. You pick your station of choice and then never get exposed to anything else.

This blinders-on programming is even worse in the worlds of satellite and Internet radio, where segments get further sub-segmented. You want a station that plays only gangster rap? You got it. How about an outlaw country-only station? It's there. What about a station that plays only Elvis Presley tunes? Yep, there's one of those, too. (Although you can’t yet discriminate between early “good Elvis” and later “Vegas Elvis” tunes.)

Then there’s the fact that most music lovers today program their own music, through personalized playlists on their iPods or streaming music services. When you can program your own music, you need never be exposed to anything new, let alone anything different. How do you hear the latest breaking artists when all you have playlisted is a bunch of New Wave bands from the early 1980s? We're all listening to our own private stations, everything else be damned.

Now, that may sound fine if you’re a discriminate music lover; you know what you like and that’s that. But there this fragmentation and personalization of the market has many ill effects, not the least of which is that we no longer have common musical experiences.

Let’s face it, in today’s digital world, there’s no such thing as a big act any more. In the old days, a hit single could sell tens of millions of copies, because people from all walks of life were exposed to it. Not the case today, where a "big" single only sells a hundred thousand copies or so, and isn't even recognizable by most listeners -- who happen not to listen to that particular format.

There are exceptions, of course; Brit singer Adele did a good job of bridging genres in 2011, due in no small part to the universal nature of her music and her all-around talent. But for every Adele there are a hundred Arcade Fires. Remember when Arcade Fire won the Best Album Grammy in 2011 (for The Suburbs) and the general chorus was “What is an Arcade Fire?” As talented as the group is and as great as that album was, it hit only a small segment of the listening audience. Aside from their small but dedicated fan base, nobody else had heard of them; everybody else was too busy listening to their own personalized and fragmented playlists, and missed out on a great album.

The challenge, then, is to move beyond the music you’re comfortable with and discover something new. That used to be as easy as tuning your radio to the AM dial (which is now filled with right-wing airbags); today, you have to try harder.