My friend Claire asked me a really simple question yesterday.
“Who is the better songwriter: John Mayer, or Ed Sheeran?”
Like with most tough questions, the part of my brain controlled by my gut had an answer long before the part of my brain controlled by my brain. And what my gut wanted to say was, “You can’t really compare them. They’re too different.”
What I really meant by this is I think there are two very different kinds of songwriters: the craftsman and the sculptor.
The craftsman is a songwriter raised in the Nashville songwriting tradition of efficiency and accessibility. These are the people who have honed their pens to be so sharp that they can turn an idea into three verses and a chorus within minutes, and while they might not be known for coloring far outside the lines, they are masterful with what they can achieve from within those lines. If you’re asking whether songwriting is an art or a science, they are much more likely to view it as a science, seeing themselves as students of the trade and tirelessly working to understand what makes a melody stick, what makes a chorus catchy, what makes a story arc memorable…
Ed Sheeran has stated that “Shape of You,” “ Perfect,” and “The A Team” all took under an hour to write, and he reportedly said in the recent “Shape of You” lawsuit proceedings that he considers it a “failure” when it takes him longer than two hours to finish a song.
While writing “Still Crazy After All These Years,” Paul Simon tried to work a key change into the bridge so that he could work the notes C and C# into the vocal melody, which he thought would be “refreshing” to the listener since he hadn’t used those notes yet.
Dolly Parton has famously written over 3,000 songs in her career and cracked out “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” literally in the same night.
All of these songwriters — Ed Sheeran, Paul Simon, and Dolly Parton, plus greats like Bob Dylan, Ben Folds, Phoebe Bridgers, Max Martin, Ryan Tedder, and Taylor Swift — fall into this craftsman category. They approach the task with an academic’s results-driven mindset and a mason’s efficiency.
The sculptor is more concerned with this abstract concept of “artistic expression” than any sort of economy. They are people who refrain from sharpening their pens too much because they don’t want to be confined by lines or ABAB structures. Rather than seeing songwriting as a formula to crack, sculptors get turned on by the occasional pain in the creative process because songwriting is supposed to be a labor of love rather than just labor. They don’t have songwriting sessions; they have songwriting moments. If you’re asking whether songwriting is an art or a science, they are much more likely to view it as an art, a journey to translate memories into melody that never seems to get easier.
Elton John started almost every song of his career in the exact same directionless place: staring at a blank sheet of lyrics from songwriting partner Bernie Taupin. From there, he laid his hands on the piano and listened for what chord shapes or melodies or moods might be hiding in the page. And then he began twisting this poetry into music.
Brian Wilson was so determined to be in the right headspace when he wrote that he built a sandbox in his house so he could feel like he was at the beach while he composed. But he speaks of his songwriting more as a function of luck rather than skill; he once told Rolling Stone, “I’ll play chords, and play, play, play and play forever, and all of sudden the melody comes.”
Perhaps the best example of “sculptors” are Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Any White Album or Abbey Road fans have seen first-hand just how powerful some music can be when you break the traditional verse-chorus-verse structure and follow wherever a sonic rabbit hole leads you.
All of these songwriters — Elton John, Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, plus greats like Kate Bush, Björk, Lorde, Kanye West, Thom Yorke, David Bowie, Billie Eilish and FINNEAS — fall into this sculptor category. They are the artists where you emphasize the word “artist” a little bit more.
Neither craftsmen nor sculptors are "better" or "more impressive" songwriters than the other. Neither has more clout. It's just two different styles of creating. And as a result, comparing a craftsman to a sculptor feels wrong. I can say which one I personally enjoy the songs of more, but it's really hard for me to say which one is "better" at their job since they work so differently.
And that's the dilemma I run into when comparing Ed Sheeran and John Mayer. Everything about Ed's one-song-an-hour writing pacing and pop conventionalism puts him firmly in the craftsmen camp in my mind, but John Mayer feels more like a sculptor. His vocal melodies and lyrics are too influenced by his soulful guitar playing and vice versa for him to fit cleanly into any Nashville-style craftsman category. So even if I find him more impressive as a writer than Ed Sheeran, can I really say John Mayer is "better" when Ed isn't really trying to do what John does, and John isn't really trying to do what Ed does?
Honestly, who cares. They're both freaking brilliant. Let's just be thankful for the music.
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