Singers are trying desperately to be solo acts.. As long as they can write decent tunes, they are always gonna go solo now because they don't hafta split the profits and can simply hire the best cheapest background musicians and pay them diddley.. Also, in a solo environment, they don't have any arguments over musical direction or artistic expression because a hired gun will get fired immediately for trying that..

Think of it this way: a group of friends writes and creates the newest operating system for computers.. one of the guys has the money to take it go bigtime, so he dumps his buddies and takes the OS big time.. He needs grunts to do the manual labor, so he hires a bunch of yahoos making minimum wage, instead of sticking with his friends who all get an equal cut. Later on he wans o make stupid changes to the system, and in this case, he has nobody to argue with him how stupid his idea is.. He eventually goes out of business because he doesn't have the collective brain power making the decisions.. He ends of selling insurance..

This scenario kinda fits Alanis Morrisette, who ditched the guy who wrote all her first LP material, because she thought she could write songs herself.. Turns out she couldn't.. Aspiring career goes off the rails and she's reduced to a question in Trivial Pursuit..

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Friendship is like peeing your pants.. Everybody can see it, but only you can feel the warmth..