Could you "retire" off of royalties from one hit song?

I wish I’d written Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody. I went shopping briefly today and it was playing in 4 different stores.

 

And it's practically unknown in the U.S.! I don't think there's anything about it that doesn't translate lyrically -- wonder why it never caught on here?

 

A good acquaintance of mine Les Emerson (singer/songwriter) from a Canadian band called "Five Man Electrical Band" had a huge hit with the song "Signs". They had a few other hits too, but "Signs" was covered by other bands.

"Absolutely Right" was another hit of his that was used in TV shows too.

"It's A Long Way Home" was also another hit of his in his "The Staccato" band days.

Safe to say he's living comfortably, but they do still play bars on some weekends. Not sure if likes to play, or has to play...

 

The one I always wonder about is Joe Vitale. He has one writing credit on a non-hit song on Hotel California, but I'll bet he still gets a nice check in his mailbox every three months from that.

 

Absolutely Right is a stone killer track. It's on my workout iPod.

 

You didn’t really have big Christmas single hits on the pop charts in the 70s, did you? Here we couldn’t move for them. The charts move very quickly in the U.K. so Xmas hits might only be around for a few weeks but they’d sell enormous amounts in that period.

 

Someone here said that about Roy Wood's Xmas song years ago. Just cause it was a zero in the US doesn't mean he isn't still getting nice checks from it.

 

Just takes one, baby

 

Of course, Dave Clark did okay from owning all the rights to the DC5 releases, something the Beatles and Stones probably wished they had done.

 

I'd never knowingly heard it until I saw The Office's Xmas episode, and that was about 15 years ago. Don't think I've ever heard it elsewhere, either!

 

Well it works both ways , I had never been aware of Quiet Riot's cover of Slade's Cum on feel the noize until I joined this forum (still haven't heard it)

 

For many years, I NEVER heard John & Yoko's Happy Christmas (War Is Over) in a mall, or on a holiday music channel. Now it's ubiquitous. I'm sure a lot of young listeners know John Lennon for this song, only.
Yoko must be raking it in big time on this one.

 

Yes. I love Don McLean and he has great albums, but he did say "American Pie means I don't have to work anymore" something along those lines.

 

I'd always heard that Robbie Krieger was "set for life" just from writing "Light My Fire".

 

I would bet Jack Tempchin made enough on "Peaceful Easy Feeling'' to never have to do anything again.

 

This reminds me of 'Suicide is Painless' from MASH. The lyrics were written by Robert Altman's 14 year-old son Michael in five minutes and by the 80s he'd apparently already made over $1m out of it. Altman himself was paid $70k for actually directing the film.

 

Very possible.

Wally Bryson of The Raspberries said when the band split up in 1975 they owed Capitol Records $50,000. The royalties from The Raspberries Best LP issued the following year covered a lot of that debt.

 

Generally they charted on a special Christmas Chart. If they used regular methods I think they would have hit
the charts more in January, because Billboard was always behind. Also radio play seems to build over the years
on the ones that are well known. Nowadays they play Christmas songs longer too.

 

I think there are a lot of urban myth discussions going on here. The OP was talking only about songwriter royalties. The situation where a songwriter can "retire" from 1 or 2 songs is EXTREMELY limited. All of my knowledge is pre-internet, but unless my memory is completely shot, I think songwriters used to receive 9 cents per record sold (album or single). So, if you write one song, and the record sells a million copies, and the album that it is on sells a million copies, you would make $90,000 + $90,000 = $180,000. There are also performance royalties etc., but those are general minor. That's good! But it's only one year. Most songs do not continue to sell over and over again.

But take an extreme example of, say "Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club. Mariah Carey used that song in a song of hers called "Fantasy". Fantasy ended up being a huge single, on an album that sold 20 million copies and she used it twice (in a reprise). That might be, oh $1.8 million songwriter royalties from the single, $3.6 million from the album. Then it appears on her greatest hits album (which maybe sold another 20 million copies?) so that's $1.8 million. So that's $7 - $8 million in writer's royalties, and you have to add the DVD that it was been sung on, and you have a tidy sum of money in the initial couple of years. Now, it all has to be split a bunch of ways because Tom Tom Club had 4 members, and there were other writers. But I would not be surprised if the four members came away with $1+ million each in writer's royalties from the initial releases. There is also a decent continuing revenue stream, as the song continues to get sampled.

The Norman Greenbaum Spirit in the Sky example is also an exception. But I think that a lot of his revenue has come from the residuals of the use of the recording (not just writer's royalty). Also, Norman basically lived in a trailer for a couple decades. He must be in his late 70's and is still performing - that one song.

 

Depends on a lot of factors, and it depends on how extravagant a lifestyle you wish to maintain.

 

Christmas song royalty generator. You can click on this and see amounts going up constantly. This appears to
be just UK. Mariah Carey is the big winner.

Christmas Song Royalty Calculator

 

Mariah has been very shrewd about her publishing. My understanding is she makes a ton of dough off that one Xmas song alone, not to mention all her other gazillion hits. Wish I was on her Christmas list.

 

I once worked with a woman that at the time was married to a musician that had been in a band with Garth Brooks (Santa Fe) that first time he headed to Nashville. Well, Santa Fe broke up, and we all know what happened to Garth. About 20 years ago, Garth was considering recording one of his former bandmates songs for his current album. They were told that if that happened, he would make a minimum of $600K. It didn't happen, but still, $600K would go a long ways.

 

She's beat by "Fairytale Of New York" by 200K. Still, not a bad showing eh?

Had no idea she co-wrote that song and many others.

 

I think most of these stories come out of the "pre-internet" days of selling albums, tapes, CDs, physical media, etc. I'm curious if today, with streaming being the predominant income source, do these metrics still apply? Would one big streaming hit today generate the income someone could retire off of? I'm guessing it would be far less likely.