What makes a brilliant song? A catchy tune? A set of memorable lyrics? A man listlessly mumbling and guns and how everyone should probably go and buy a pair of his trainers?
That last one is what The American Society Of Composers, Authors And Publishers (ASCAP) seems to think, anyway. ASCAP just awarded 50 Cent the title of Songwriter Of The Year at a gigantic back-slapping ceremony it held. But 50 Cent wasn't the only winner of an ASCAP award, because ASCAP also dished out awards to cutting edge, innovative artists like Clash copyists Green Day and Annie Sodding Lennox.
Now, we've never been to an ASCAP awards ceremony, but we don't think that it'd be too much of a stretch to imagine that it's a big room full of loudly self-regarding, champagne-quaffing fools all wearing the classic T-shirt/suit/trainers combo and keeping their Rayban Wayfarer sunglasses on even though they're indoors and it's night and it doesn't suit their stupid ponytailed bald heads.
The ASCAP awards are voted by 700 industry 'experts' including artists, songwriters and music industry leaders. And, oddly enough, the majority of these 700 people thought that there was no better songwriter around than rubbish filmstar and hater of fat kids 50 Cent. We're not sure which 50 Cent song gave him the edge, but we're pretty sure it was either the one that goes "mumble mumble mumble guns" or the one that goes "mumble mumble mumble bitches." But 50 Cent didn't care which song won him the plaudit, and told the ASCAP assembly via video message:
"I want to tell you that I use you for energy. I listen to the material that you create… it helps me move to the next level… it inspires me to write even more exciting material."
The rest of the ASCAP awards were pretty much a pick and mix of music awards gone by. From every single awards ceremony over the last couple of years – Green Day won the Creative Voice Award – whatever that is – and shared the Song Of The Year award, for Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, with We Belong Together by knicker-wetter extraordinaire Mariah Carey. And from every Brit award from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s – Annie Lennox won a sort of lifetime achievement award for doing a few semi-OK Eurythmics songs 20 years ago and the song that Demi Moore danced to in that film where she took off all her clothes.
Read more:
50 Cent, Green Day Top ASCAPs – E! Online
[story by Stuart Heritage]