Diane Warren woke up and chose violence on Monday when she took to Twitter and asked, “How can there be 24 writers on a song?” And though she accented her question with a conspicuous eye-roll emoji, she insisted in a follow-up tweet, “This isn’t meant as shade, I’m just curious.”
While Warren didn’t call out anyone by name, the Beyhive promptly began swarming her, presuming the legendary songwriter was referencing “Alien Superstar,” a standout track from Beyoncé’s seventh studio album Renaissance, which happens to have 24 credited writers.
The virtual assault on Warren was quick, stinging, and occasionally just plain mean, with some Beyoncé fans trying to offer “helpful” primers on the business of song samples, and others just outright bullying her. To her favor—or maybe to her detriment, depending on how you view Twitter spats—Warren tried to spar back, bragging that “that’s 23 more” writers than are credited on her songs, which she famously writes alone. But after the initial onslaught, she attempted to quell the madness, conceding in another tweet, “Ok, it’s prob samples that add up the ammount of writerrs.”
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Of course, Warren—who’s penned hits for everyone from Celine Dion to Cher to Beyoncé herself—knows that. She’s not dumb; she knows how music law works and is well aware of the business of sampling and the creative process of collaboration, even if that’s not how she herself chooses to work. She was probably just feeling snarky and thought she’d attempt to prove a point, albeit a tiresome one.
And yet, the conversation surrounding “Alien Superstar” and the growing trend of committees of pop songwriters has persisted, with Renaissance collaborator The-Dream getting involved, and tons of people chiming in with their own opinions about the question at hand: How can there be 24 writers on a song?
The simple answer is, yes, it’s because of samples. If you sample or interpolate multiple songs on a new recording, all of those original writers get credit, along with those who contribute to the new song. On an album like Renaissance—where Beyoncé uses a wealth of samples and interpolations to create lush soundscapes—there are a ton of credits at hand.
“It makes a lot more sense than people on social media are making it out to be. Beyoncé sampled three different songs, and with that, she has to include all of the songwriters from all three of those songs. That’s why there’s 24,” Brooklyn-based entertainment attorney Adam Freedman explains.
Let’s break down “Alien Superstar.” The intro to the track samples the 2008 song “Moonraker” by John Michael Holiday, who performs as Foremost Poets, while the outro is a spoken-word portion from the 1973 speech “Black Theater” by Barbara Ann Teer, a writer and teacher who founded Harlem’s Black National Theatre in the 1960s. Then, in the song itself, Beyoncé interpolates Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” when she sings, “I’m too classy for this world, forever I’m that girl.” Those three samples add up to seven credited writers right there.
Beyoncé tapping a bevy of collaborators is nothing new; in fact, we had almost this exact conversation in 2016, when she released Lemonade. That album counted 72 total songwriters, plus Beyoncé, in its credits, spawning many a think piece about whether or not her work was diminished by enlisting so many accomplices.
In reality, though, this all has less to do with artistic integrity and much more to do with something admittedly way less sexy: intellectual property law. The roots for this can mostly be traced back to 1991, with two seminal (and very costly) court cases that changed how we define songwriting. That year, the Turtles triumphed in a sampling lawsuit against hip-hop duo De La Soul, who had to pay the band $1.7 million. Then, Biz Markie had to pay $250,000 in damages to Gilbert O’Sullivan in a separate suit later that year. Both cases made it clear that sampled acts held the power over samplers, and ultimately, the solution was that the writers of sampled songs had to be attributed as songwriters on the new compositions.
All of that said, the sheer number of people credited on “Alien Superstar” might not actually be for the best for all those involved. Karl Fowlkes, a New York-based entertainment and business attorney, says, “Music in the streaming world can be super lucrative, but when you start really divvying it out, it can get very small very quickly.”
Speaking about “Alien Superstar” specifically, Fowlkes explains, “There’s a lot of people with probably one percent publishing on this song. The bucket’s not that big. There’s still probably one or two main producers for this song, and you have to tell them, ‘Hey, I know you produced this record but you’re only going to get, say, 5 percent publishing.’” (Still, as Freedman points out, “Even two percent of a Beyoncé song that gets a billion streams will make me good money.”)
Fowlkes compared the “Alien Superstar” situation to Kendrick Lamar’s “Die Hard,” off the rapper’s recently released album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. That song boasted two samples and 14 credited writers, including one whom Fowlkes represents. “A lot of people would be like, ‘Please throw that song away because it’s going to be too complicated.’ But Beyoncé and Kendrick can do what they want,” he said, adding that it’s easier for marquee artists like them to deal with the legal headache of sampling. And because it is such a nuisance to use multiple samples on a single song, he doesn’t foresee it becoming a trend in the music world.
“In terms of samples leading to 24 songwriters, it doesn’t happen that much. That’s a bad business move because everyone gets less of the pie. I don’t think that’s a way we’re trending. I know there’s some data that says there are more songwriters per song now, but you’re talking about five or six or seven, not anything over 10,” he says. “Producers are probably depending on royalty for income, so imagine telling a producer who actually produced the majority of a record, but there’s two samples in it...it’s just not lucrative. It doesn’t make sense.”
All legal red tape aside, one could make the argument that Beyoncé’s propensity for sampling on Renaissance should actually be a point of celebration. An ode to Black and queer music history, Beyoncé uses the album to honor some of the artists responsible for that history—the liner notes include credits for legendary ball DJ MikeQ, ballroom pioneer Vjuan Allure, drag icons Kevin Aviance and Moi Renee, and more. And “Alien Superstar” is perhaps the most glaring example of that homage to ballroom culture: a bold, self-celebratory anthem that makes you think the more creative influences were involved, the better the music is for it.
“Maybe she wanted to do right by them,” Freedman points out, adding that Beyoncé’s apparent pursuit of giving credit where credit is due is actually something of a rarity in the hip-hop world, where clearing samples is “treated a lot looser” than in other genres.
“I work mostly in hip-hop, and most artists would not have cleared everything beforehand and done it properly,” he says. “They would’ve waited until you found out and approached them. Like, Migos puts out an album, they haven’t paid the producers before it comes out. It’s always after.
“The main reason one would reach out to clear a song would be to negotiate a lower rate than what’s required,” Freedman explains, adding that Beyoncé likely got ahead of it “because she’s just such a big business, ultimately. I think Beyoncé did everything right and people are trying to turn it into a controversy.”
And while we don’t know about her specific contributions to “Alien Superstar” or any other track on Renaissance—such as whether she wrote entire verses or simply tweaked one word in the booth—Fowlkes says it’s foolish to question her writing credits on all the album’s tracks. “Beyoncé is the one performing the song all over the world. It’s her brand equity that even gives the publishing any value. So if she wrote half a lyric or 10 bars on it, she’s justified.”
Warren, for her part, did eventually have a change of heart about questioning “Alien Superstar’s” roster and the superstar at its center, tweeting, “Ok, I meant no disrespect to @Beyoncé who I’ve worked with and admire. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding.”
We have to imagine Bey doesn’t mind much; as she herself tells us on “Alien Superstar,” she remains “flying over bullshit.”
