Well last weekend I was sitting with a group of friends playing some porker and I decided to play some music. The song I chose to play was "The Saints Are Coming" played by Green Day and U2. Little did I know that playing this song would lead to an angry conversation and name calling argument that would last for the next hour. As it turns out, in my ignorance I claimed that Green Day and U2 were the authors of this song. My friends jumped on my case and made claims that music artists from Muse, Bob Dylan, and The Animals were the real authors of the music piece. After much debate I came to the conclusion that there was nothing we could conclude.
After a lot of research I have discovered that the song's been adapted, changed, and covered by many different artists going back over a hundred years. Even before that the original is believed to be a 16th century folk song.
In my Intro to Film Studies class we covered the Auteur Theory, which discusses who is the real author of a film are. Taking that concept and applying it to writing songs I am left believing that credit must be given to the original writer for providing the work off of which other artists have built.
I gave credit to writing the song to Green Day and U2, only to find out that the song was a cover of a song by the Skids, a 1972 Scottish Punk band. From there I learned they wrote their song "The Saints are Coming" using the first verse of "House of the Rising Sun" a song made famous by the band The Animals in 1964. Thinking that the song's origin started there I was shocked when I discovered that the Animals modified it from a recording of the song back in 1927 by Texas Alexander. Going back as far as I could I found out that it was an European folk song that was brought over here by immigrants and Americanized.
Now here I am, trying to decide who is the author of the song? Is it the bard who first sang the words? Is it the first person who wrote the lines down? Is it the father who couldn't remember all the lyrics so he sang what he knew to his son? Is it the rock band who took what they could and made a song? Or finally is it the Punk band who took one of the versus and made their own art out of it.
Looking at the theories of Michel Foucault in his work, "What is an Author" I take note of one of his Author Functions, in particular the one stating that the "author" is not always the writer. This applying in this case when you have multiple narrations of the same story, portrayed in a song. As such I argue that there are many many author to the song "House of the Rising Sun" and "The Saints are Coming"
Here are a few of my favorite authors telling their story.
Green Day/U2
The Animals
Muse
