Whaa? Avril doesn’t write her songs!?

What a drag it is to learn that the lovely yet moody young Ontarian, Avril Lavigne, is being accused of of not writing one of her songs. Bummer.

Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride, Lavigne’s manager, has been here before. His other big act is Sarah McLachlan, who went to court to fight a former session musician/collaborator for songwriting credits and won.

I know the financial stakes are high, but what’s wrong in admitting that your young divas need help writing tunes? Does anyone think that any of the Four Tops or the Supremes would take credit for a Holland-Dozier-Holland classic? Or Elvis penned a Lieber-Stoller great?

Outsourcing the song composition worked well in previous generations, and performers are successful in large part for how they look. Today the job descriptions are usually blurred, and visually pleasing performers are expected to be clever or emotionally interesting composers.

Maybe I’m too much of a skeptic, and the Avrils of the world are really profound. But I can’t listen to today’s pop music without wondering if style has completely crushed the life out of good songwriting.