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Paul Williams, who took over last month as president and chairman of the board of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), distinguishes between the monetary compensation of musical copyright—which is his main ASCAP concern—and the personal rewards of songwriting that are no less important.
“When you write honestly about something that comes from the center of your chest and the rest of the world responds to it, there’s an immediate reward,” says Williams, sitting in his new office at ASCAP’s New York headquarters. “It’s that sense of family, that we all feel the same thing that’s expressed in the song.”
Then there’s a three-tiered payment structure for songwriters.
“The first level is when you’ve written something that other people relate to and come to the realization, ‘I’m not nearly as weird as I thought I was!,” says Williams, himself a huge hit songwriter and Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee. “The second level is when you can buy shoes for your kids based on your songwriting.”
The third level of payment for songwriters is Williams’ favorite.
“I call it ‘heart payment,’” he says. “Like my song ‘You And Me Against The World’ [Helen Reddy’s 1974 hit]: My mom was a single mother and really connected to that song. Or when people come up and say, ‘We got married to [Williams’ classic Carpenters hit] ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ or the first song our daughter played on the piano was [his Oscar-nominated] ‘The Rainbow Connection.’”
“There’s something mystical in this,” concludes Williams, “something higher-powered about the whole process of songwriting that I honor and respect and am fully aware of here in my new position.”
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