Kevin,

It is something that is more and more common in the overall music industry. If you are doing this at all, you start going to workshops, make trips to a music center, study songwriting/artists web sites, watch entertainment television or DVD's, or study the history of music, you find that actually collaborations are the rule rather than the exception.

You only have to be around it a little while to realize there are some very basic reasons for it. the least not being that someone playing to someone else's strength while someone filling in their own weaknesses and learning the craft insist upon it.

But over the past ten years it has become not only suggested but a requirement. You write a song by your self and you then go "Now What?" About ninety per cent of threads like these are dedicated to pitching, TAXI, PRO's Publishing, songwriting pitch services,finding ways to market music. You have to get in the doors. So how you do that is collaborate. It opens up your perspective for the craft, enables you to get out of your own way, addresses problems that might come up in critiques earlier rather than later, and then gives you contacts you did not have on your own.

In Nashville it is the way of life. The entire town is founded
on it. The Music Row area is three blocks wide and 16 blocks long of small houses next door to each other. The place was founded as a neighborhood of writers, artists, publishing and record companies, close proximaty to reinforce that community. And while we now have major conglamorates intersperced as well, it still has that small town feel.

You are probably seeing the effects here. Most people that are interested in songwriting in this day and age make a pilgramage to Nashville at some point, whether to be involved or just as a fact finding mission. So they see and hear that over and over and finally it sinks in. This is truely a community type business and you cannot do it alone.
So the co-writing is an extension of that. That would be my two cents on why you are seeing that effect. It is simply the way things are done. And throughout history, you see many more songwriting collaborations than you ever see solo writing.

MAB