You’ll be aware of the “Spotify mafia” even if you don’t know their names. The songs that dominate the streaming service bear the hallmarks of a select group of young international songwriters who have gravitated to LA. And they seem to be cleaning up.
Nat Dunn is one of them, part of a wave of Australian songwriters following in the wake of Adelaide’s Sia Furler. One of Dunn’s songs, Friends, was recorded by London singer Anne-Marie and DJ/producer Marshmello (who keeps his identity under wraps by never being seen without his marshmallow head). It reached number 21 in the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, clocking up nearly 300m plays on Spotify. With its no-nonsense chorus – “Haven’t I made it obvious? Haven’t I made it clear?” – it’s been dubbed “the official friend-zone anthem”.
But it’s a hard road to recognition, even for those writers who have “made it”. Dunn doesn’t want to be known as a ball-breaker, but she does talk straight, and she’s putting that energy into demanding a fair go for young songwriters – particularly young women. Having written for Noah Cyrus, R3hab, Tkay Maizda, Zara Larrson, Charli XCX, Rudimental and Bebe Rexha, she’s now well established enough to challenge what she calls “archaic mindsets” in the industry.
It’s taken a while to pin her down for an interview, but eventually she settles in with her phone in a café in between meetings. With a hint of an LA accent, she peppers her speech with the strange nouns of the songwriting set: “topliner” for a writer who specialises in vocal melody; “vehicle” for a guest vocalist; “track” for the beats underpinning a song. But her overriding message is “know your worth”, and she makes a habit of having that conversation with every female singer she works with, as well as the songwriters, convincing them they’re not just a cog in the machine.
Here’s the problem: the formula of a superstar producer/DJ using a hot songwriter like Dunn and a “featured” singer is a winning one, but there’s a power imbalance. Dunn says young songwriters can be easily convinced that they should count themselves lucky simply to be involved. This results in them not getting a fair slice of the royalty pie, or losing control over their song.
Singers drafted in by producer/DJs are often referred to as “featured”, implying they have no ownership over the song (an exception is Friends, on which Anne-Marie is credited equally with Marshmello). So Dunn likes to co-write in a room with a singer, to make sure their experiences are represented in the lyrics they’re putting their voice and face to – and to “make it known that if you’re not equally billed and you’re a feature, that’s your choice.”
“DJs often try and claim that 50% of publishing is track and 50% is melody and lyrics. That’s just so ridiculous,” she tells Guardian Australia. “If they really want this song to keep them relevant and to keep getting DJ gigs booked all over the world, they need you. Whose lyrics are being sung by everyone in the crowd?”
She’s right, and that crowd is becoming increasingly savvy to who these lyricists are, turning them into celebrities in their own right. That includes the Australian contingent.
Just recently there’s been a media spotlight on Sarah Aarons, the Melburnian behind compositions such as number one US hit The Middle, recorded by Zedd, Marren Morris and Grey. Just as Sia’s distinctive vocal fry in her guide vocals in demos has influenced a whole generation of singers to adopt her tone, so Zedd and Grey auditioned 12 singers to find a voice that sounded like that of Aarons. This unassuming expat has been so thoroughly profiled by the likes of New York Times and Variety that she’s put a moratorium on further press coverage.
Then there are twins Miriam and Olivia Nervo (Kylie, Britney Spears), Samuel Dixons (Adele), Vassy (David Guetta) and newcomer CXLOE (whose collaborations are currently under wraps).Dunn credits her business nous with entering the industry at the age of 15 and having to learn on her feet. “You’re a kid in an adult world,” she says. She won’t disclose her age now – “I don’t think it should matter” – but she grew up in the Glasshouse Mountains of New South Wales, and started working with a manager while still in high school. After cutting her schooling back to three days a week to allow for two days in a recording studio, she blipped on the radar of Australian music industry giant Michael Gudinski and signed a publishing deal with Mushroom. She’s now with Young and Vicious, a Mushroom imprint.
She’s also one of many expat Australian songwriters taking advantage of the professional network of APRA AMCOS, which has hot desks, co-writing spaces and offices in LA, as well as London and Nashville. As member relations director Milly Petriella says: “It can be incredibly lonely living and working overseas for a songwriter, particularly for those that don’t have a publisher or label, or even a manager. Often we’re the only support they have, so we do everything and anything sometimes.”
That includes placing songwriters into competitive writing rooms and songwriting camps, such as SongHubs in Nashville and Sweden, which Dunn attended. “Basically we gather some of the world’s top songwriters and producers, pair them with Aussie songwriters and lock them in the studio for three days,” Petriella says. “We’ve run over 50 SongHubs since the launch in 2013, and more than 20% of those songs have been released, earning over $1m in royalties for our members.”
Dunn acknowledges APRA AMCOS’s doorways into such ventures was career-changing. “It takes a village,” she says. “You can have the talent, but unless you have the support to be there, you can’t do it.”
The steady success Dunn has enjoyed has seen her graduate from a one-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood (“I could touch my stove from my bed”) to a loft downtown. She sub-let that recently when her own electronic duo, NAATIONS (with Australian DJ Nicky Night Time), spent six months using London as a base. “I’m trying to work out the balance,” she says. “When I work with an artist, they’re a muse and I love that, but then NAATIONS played a festival in Brixton with 5000 people engaged in our set and there’s something about that.”
Whatever her role, Dunn’s finger has to be firmly on the pulse, so it would be churlish not to ask her about the production flourishes she thinks need to die. She singles out what she calls the “girl singer Spotify” sound – which is usually stylistically clipped through a program such as Auto-Tune – and EDM drops. Again, she emphasises that a writer has the right to withdraw their song if they don’t like the window dressing. “If they put themselves at the mercy of labels and DJ producers, it’s enabling [those people’s] power,” she reasons. “You have to care enough. Or why else are we doing it?”
