So on my really, really long-ass drive to work this morning (the roads sucked. it took me like an hour.), I was listening to Shredd & Ragan going on and on about, uh, whatever it is they go on and on about. (they lost me when they started talking to the guy from FHM about Teri Hatcher and Desperate Housewives and how comparing it to Sex and the City is bullshit because “that show was all about ‘oh, is he gonna call?’ and this one is just about a bunch of hot chicks getting it on.” Um, yeah. Whatever. It makes me wonder why I’m ever entertained by these guys. But I digress…)

Before all this blather, one of them mentioned Tim McGraw (why Tim McGraw? Who knows…), making a point of the fact that one of the biggest stars in country music doesn’t write his own songs.

Well, duh.

Whatever your opinion of it is, this is a fairly common phenomenon in Nashville. And only slightly less common in regular pop. There are a few talented singer-songwriters in Nashville who are currently making it work (Brad Paisley is one), but for the most part, it’s discouraged. The Dixie Chicks wrote little of their debut album, but not because of lack of talent or ability. I remember seeing an interview with them where they told about how they wanted to record their own songs, but were gently steered toward the “professional” songwriters. (One thing that made me really respect the Chicks…they won an award for “Wide Open Spaces,” which they did not write. They made the songwriter get on stage with them and handed the award to her. Very cool.)

The country singers like Tim McGraw are making a career out of performance…and if you’re a *good* performer, is that necessarily a bad thing? The really successful ones usually get involved in production and have a creative say in their work, rather than being just mindless singing corporate robots.

The guys argued for a few minutes, one of them making an Ashlee Simpson comparison, causing the others to disagree. “But dude, she sucks AND she doesn’t write.” They brought up Frank Sinatra.

So while I have greater creative respect for someone who writes his or her own songs, I can enjoy a good vocal performance (something you find in country music that’s found much less in pop music) purely on the merit of the performance. Martina McBride comes to mind. This is one of the things that really attracted me to new country…women who can actually sing, with power and soul, rather than being little disposable pop-tart clones.

So what do you all think?