or Songs Written by a Woman, Sung by a Man?!

I have done several pieces on women songwriters and women in the music industry. The series I just finished on Rock/Country covers started with a Cindy Walker tune, it gave me the thought to look at songs that were written by women, but for a man to sing. We certainly know men have written the vast majority of songs period. This also means historically the majority of songs women sing are written by men. Taylor Swifts and Joni Mitchells notwithstanding. Off the top of my head I could only think of a couple songs that may qualify, apart from the many written by Cindy Walker.

As if women songwriters were not rare enough, I’m going to have to disqualify male/female writing teams such as Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry and Marilyn and Alan Bergman, these are the names that are most well known to have written many songs together. They as a team of course wrote songs for men and women.

I did check and see if the women in these pairs wrote songs not only by themselves (which some did) but with the intention to be recorded by a male singer. Of the couples above I only found one name that I will reference later.

Hopefully this activity stays in the past but, women songwriters sometimes wrote/co-wrote songs and they were not given any credit. I have run across this several times, for example, perhaps it was a song not co-credited as some of Elsie Williams songs were with the publishing of Jimmie Rogers songs. Then, another likely scenario is, only the a mans name ended up on a song he did not write.

A practice that is almost as old as written music and includes both Male and Female singers, (typically big names or more likely their management) demanding an undeserved song writing/publishing credit. Tom Parker demanded such for Elvis and in one instance Dolly Parton told him to stuff it. A couple years ago a group of song writers openly asked for better treatment in this regard so apparently this activity still continues.

For one, on the case of “Killing Me Softly” I am on the side of Lori Lieberman. I believe her claim that she wrote down a poem on a napkin after hearing Don Mclean singing. She was at the time under a contract with Norm Gimbel and Charles Fox (both credited for the song) but was never given a songwriting credit. She has endured a lot of grief over her attempts to have her name added on the song. Don Mclean believes her but apparently the napkin disappeared and left her with no evidence. She doesn’t want a lawsuit. She worked with Gimbel and Fox and saw the song develop beyond her skill level, but the concept and some of the lyrics she says are her words. There is a good article in the Washington Post.

There are of course many songs that were written by women, but almost always for themselves or with and for other women, for the latter I’m thinking Toni Stern writing with Carole King for example. Lot’s of songs written about or to a man as we know. Again I am looking for songs written specially for a man to sing. Somewhat ironically in the traditionally male dominated Country genre is were I found most of my examples.

There may be some female penned songs that were covered by a man and perhaps became more well known. “That’s Enough” is a song Johnny Cash (1958) was the first to cover. It is a 1957 Gospel song written by Dorothy Love Coates and recorded by the all female group, The Original Gospel Harmonettes. So it was Cash that had the first cover and mainstream version.

Then we have Dolly Parton’s “In the Good Old Days (When Times were Bad) from 1969, which is the title track of her third album. It really is autobiographical but for some reason Merle Haggard was the first to record and released it. I don’t know the full story but she wrote the song with herself in mind. Something similar happened with the recording order of her song “Kentucky Gambler” in 1973. Odd things an happen with the record company.

Context

According to a study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative that was commissioned by Spotify, “over the past decade, women only make up 12.7% of songwriters”. In some years this was as low as 2.8%. This study looked at the Billboard Hot 100 from 2012 to 2022.

There are similar results when we look at the Hot 100 Country chart, for example in 2020, women had just 23% of the #1 songs (all of which they did not write) and this is the highest percentage in the Country genre since 1994.

Here is a quote from an article on Billboard.com “The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study found that women were more likely to appear as songwriters on dance/electronic songs, with 20.5% of these songs written by women over ten years and Pop songs coming in with 19.1% and least likely to work on Hip-Hop/Rap, with women writing just 6.4% of these songs over ten years and R&B/Soul, with women writing 9.4% of these songs.”

If you do a little looking there are more stats and studies that show even more dismal results for women in all genre, so you can include Blues and Jazz as well, and again some references that show women in Pop music fair a bit better. I can tell you historically the numbers for women songwriters in general are worse the farther back in time you go.

There are lot’s of reasons as to why women are unrepresented; culture, bias, systemic issues, access and opportunity would all be at the top of the list I would guess. Ability is not one of them. I did a post on the Most Recorded Women Songwriters and there you will see Dorothy Fields at the top of the list. Dorothy, like another high on that list, Betty Comden, was a lyrist and to my knowledge they hold no solo song credits.

See below for some exceptional women songwriters with some examples of when they wrote for men. By no means is this an exhaustive list.

The Songwriters and the Songs

In an upcoming series I will post the names of the women^* that I found to have written songs for men. Just a reminder I am looking at women who wrote the songs, words and music on their own. No that I avoided them but my research did not necessarily include looking at all genre from all decades, but these are the names that surfaced during my general search. Since I already gave it away I will give you one of those names today.

Cindy Walker

Cindy Walker is someone I have referenced several times in the past, and as noted above the inspiration for the post. It was “You Don’t Know Me” a song she wrote for Eddy Arnold used in the Between a Rock and a Country Place series that got me thinking. In addition to “You Don’t Know Me” she wrote some 60 or so songs for Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, several songs for Jim Reeves, Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry and more. She of course did not write just for men. She had a lovely voice and recorded some covers and her own self written original songs.

Here is an excerpt from an article in the Austin Chronicle were she tells the story of how it all started for her.

No, let me tell you about that. My father was a cotton buyer, and we were in Tucson. We took a trip to Hollywood to sell some pima cotton, and I saw the Crosby Building. I said, “Stop, Papa, stop! I’ve got a song for Bing Crosby, and I want to see him!” And Pop said, “You’re squirrelly, girl. Bing Crosby’s not in that building!”

But I went in and saw Larry Crosby there. I told him I was a songwriter. I couldn’t play the piano and didn’t play guitar very well, so I ran downstairs and got Mama and made her play piano. He said, “Well, what are you gonna sing?” I said, “‘Lone Star Trail.'” He took me over to Paramount the next morning, and I sang it for Bing. His publisher liked it too, so that’s the way that happened!

Here is a excerpt of her talking about writing of “You Don’t Know Me”

She also wrote for Loretta Lynn and Sue Thompson but the truth is there were very few women Country Singers. As a full time writer, she was a lone figure in the male dominated Country Music space but she excelled, and was one of the best in the business. You will all recognize this next song.

I am pretty confident that no other women songwriter has written more songs specifically for male singers. In fact no one has ever come close and it’s unlikely that she will ever be matched in this regard. Cindy Walker was one of a kind.

* The genders in reference on these post reflect the known choices of the persons that I am writing about, my research did not include writers that may or may not have identified themselves differently.

Series Sources: Woman are rare in the Music Industry, Songwriters group…