TY  - JOUR
AU  - Galenson,David
TI  - Innovators: Songwriters
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15511
PY  - 2009
Y2  - November 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15511
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15511.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David Galenson
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/702-8258
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: galenson@uchicago.edu
AB  - Irving Berlin and Cole Porter were two of the great experimental songwriters of the Golden Era.  They aimed to create songs that were clear and universal.  Their ability to do this improved throughout much of their careers, as their skill in using language to create simple and poignant images improved with experience, and their greatest achievements came in their 40s and 50s.  During the 1960s, Bob Dylan and the team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney created a conceptual revolution in popular music.  Their goal was to express their own ideas and emotions in novel ways.  Their creativity declined with age, as increasing experience produced habits of thought that destroyed their ability to formulate radical new departures from existing practices, so their most innovative contributions appeared early in their careers.
ER  -