Lauryn Hill’s most successful single " Ex-Factor" was written, performed and produced by Lauryn Hill. That’s what album information, Wikipedia and other sources agree upon. So I was astonished to find a list of 12 composers credited for this work.
Last year @tigerman325 added these composers and left 3 links in the edit note. Two of them (Genius and Wikipedia) do not give prove for additional composers, do they? The third is ISWC-Net, where a search for Ex-Factor results in some information I cannot interpret, including the name Lauryn Hill. Probably based on this information @HibiscusKazeneko recently added publishing information to this work.
I would like to remove all these composers from this work, but I don’t want to destroy other people’s edits, so I ask first, in case I have missed something. Maybe it’s confused with another work and it’s possible to repair without loosing information.
Apparently it samples “Can it all be so simple” by the Wu-Tang Clan, which explains why all its members are credited for Ex-Factor. This is often a legal requirement as a result of the sample clearing arrangement.
I think that whether the original writers of the sampled work should be credited for the new work should depend on how important the sample is for the new work: if it is the complete backdrop (sample and loop), credit is due, if it is just some minor sound, they shouldn’t be credited (regardless of the legal issues, I don’t care about that at all).
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https://secondhandsongs.com/work/40967
That’s the reason they are credited as composer and not writer, is that they wrote the original music that is sampled throughout the song. Lauryn Hill wrote the lyrics and is the only one credited as doing so.
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http://iswcnet.cisac.org/MWI/result/list.do?pageNumber=1&localEngineCode=999
[
](javascript:openWorkDetailPopup(0)) EX FACTOR ISWC: T-070.892.100-9 Duration: 00:03:30 (Original Title)
Creator(s) Creator-Id Role
BERGMAN ALAN 00002823424 CA
BERGMAN MARILYN 00002825026 CA
COLES DENNIS D 00242580775 CA
DIGGS ROBERT F 00242590771 CA
GRICE GARY E 00334136392 CA
HAMLISCH MARVIN 00013300159 CA
HAWKINS LAMONT JODY 00183503870 CA
HILL LAURYN N 00336371761 CA
HUNTER JASON S 00183499233 CA
JONES RUSSELL T 00187272836 CA
SMITH CLIFFORD 00228481265 CA
WOODS COREY TODD 00182385946 CA
Performer(s)
COLUMBIA RECORDS
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
LAURYN HILL
MARGARET GLASPY
MS. LAURYN HILL
SMOOTH JAZZ ALL STARS
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But shouldn’t there be kind of “based on” relationship?
She sampled songs on other tracks too and they are just “sampled” and no additional composers were added.
I don’t know how important the sample is as I don’t know the original work(s). But I still think it’s a new work based on others.
I just listened to Ex-Factor. I can hear the sample if I pay a lot of attention (especially at the beginning), but this seems really minor. At the very most I would add those additional writers as, well, additional.
Perhaps an attribute could be created for ‘inherited’ writing credits? That would make it easy for people (like me) to filter these credits when tagging, while still making it possible to record this information.
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However, they are credited by the rights societies as writers. I agree, there should be some way to distinguish what is credited on the release and how it is credited on rights societies, which is not always the same.
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It’s not pressing as I have to repair the mess I caused with recordings (you put my nose on it, thanks!), but I would like to tag my files including relationships.
And Jim Morrison isn’t composer and lyricist for Superstar, although he is clearly heard on this track and also not credited on the album. Instead Light My Fire is a “sample” relationship to this recording.
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I think there is a difference between boring legal reasons (you have to credit us as composers or else you can’t use the sample) and much more interesting musicological reasons for credits (the old work forms an integral and important part of the new, and the new work would not have been possible without the old one). Of course the latter is a matter of personal opinion and can only be set by consensus.
But in my own metadata I would like to only have the true composers and songwriters of the new work (plus the information about the sample itself, which is interesting), and not some old fart who’s sample is heard for about a second and who happens to have a better lawyer than the other old farts who are sampled for a second on that same work (or heaven forbid, a huge list with all the people involved in every used sample, please don’t let any of the people who add 18646548 release countries to digital releases see this post!).
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