Guest Stars on Albums
By Four Walls
@FourWalls (86652)
United States
October 15, 2015 11:58am CST
The new Don Henley album, Cass County, has a lot of guest stars on it: Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, and Mick Jaggar are among the big names singing on the album with the Eagles drummer.
It made me wonder, though, if people buy albums because of the person who made the record, or if they buy it because someone else is making a guest appearance on it.
I can think of a number of times where a "big name" helped a single: Elton John sang on Neil Sedaka's "Bad Blood" in 1975, at the apex of Elton's career, and the song went to the top of the Billboard charts. In 1981, Gary "U.S." Bond's comeback single, "This Little Girl," gave him a hit...thanks in no small part to the fact that Bruce Springsteen wrote it and he and the E Street Band appeared on the song and other songs from that album.
Have you bought an album or a song by someone you may or may not have cared for just because someone you really like sang on it? Do you think that's "friends singing together" or a marketing ploy ("Hey, if I get Paul McCartney to sing backup I'll sell more records!")?
1 response
@FourWalls (86652)
• United States
16 Oct 15
Actually, a person guesting on an album doesn't get royalties. He/she is either paid a set amount for the session or, if they're Musician Union members, they get union scale for the session. It's different if they had something to do with writing the song (such as Springsteen writing "This Little Girl"), in which case they get songwriter royalties. But someone who is singing on a song gets paid pretty much thte same way the piano player or the drummer does.
