There is a huge disconnect between what we think is happenning and what is really happening. In a world of instant information the true nature of things remains hidden.
That is why I am an agnostic.
It seems to me that it is in the nature of reality to hide itself -beginning with people having the ability to not say what they think. Since people can lie, people do lie. And the truth is hard to decipher.
In rpck this is a weird moral vacuum when it comes to the creation of music.
1. Alan Freed and Richard Perry getting co-writing credits for Buddy Holly songs.
2. The wholesale stealing of copywrites from early r&b and blues black musicians by the white musicians.
3. Jay-Z's well documented truth that he ghosted the raps on VERY FAMOUS rappers songs (ergo Diddy).
4. The Strokes admitting to Ryan Adams and the Cardinals guitarist J.B. Bowersox cowriting and playing guitar on their first album
5. Wow, FIVE??? The entire dance and hip hop world in 2011 is so complicated, the question of creation is a bafflement to everybody.
The concept of who writes music is archaic and always was (if you see what I mean). For instance, Mick and Keith stole band member songs all the time and simply put their name to em. Mick Taylor wrote "Sway".
And in the 40s and even the 50s (really till the Beatles) the question of who wrote was wonderfully irrelebvant.
Today it is invisible and nearly non-existent. The new Britney, is it Britney? Or is it the doctor? Or is it the songs where they are sampled from.
Los Lobos once complained how Paul Simon stole their music and didn't credit them on Graceland. Today it is called sampling.
The point here is that the distance between song and recording has become so huge the question of songwrite is becoming a ghost in its own industry.