One of the many fascinating aspects of John Seabrook's history of manufactured pop in the noughties, The Song Machine, is the way he touches on the occasionally complex feelings that big songwriters-for-hire have about performing in their own right.
"She's gonna be a really big songwriter outside of Lorde," Songs' president Ron Perry said.
Miller became one of the biggest songwriters of the 1950s.
In 2011, The Smeezingtons were awarded the title of 'Biggest Songwriters of 2010' by Music Week.
And to make it authentic, it needed the music and the songs of the day, written by the biggest songwriter of the time.
You must have noticed that some big name songwriters have been publicly disclosing how little they are being paid from the streaming of their hit songs.
The best tracks on Electra Heart are, in fact, not the ones involving the big-name songwriters.
He went solo in 1984, and with his first single (the classic ballad Careless Whisper) and first album, Faith, became the biggest singer-songwriter in the world.
What they noticeably fail to do is what you presumably employ a big-name songwriter for: deliver the kind of melodic sucker-punch that allows them to transcend their generic musical backing.
This year's big new singer-songwriters sound remarkably like last year's big singer-songwriters, influence of wafty electronica and all.
