Diss Post is About Answers

Kendrick Lamar and Drake have been firing diss tracks at one another over the last few weeks. But the diss track is really one small piece of a much larger history.

Over the last few weeks, there has been an explosive beef between hip-hop stalwarts Drake and Kendrick Lamar. What started out as a standard tit-for-tat has devolved into a volleying of nuclear bombs, accusations of predatory behavior, domestic violence, and absentee parenting flying with abandon. If you want a summary of a situation that is starting to require way too much time to follow, I recommend these pieces from Stereogum and Pitchfork.

Nevertheless, this back-and-forth got me thinking about how hip-hop diss tracks are really part of a larger, less defamatory tradition. Today, I want to talk that. As always, this newsletter is also available as a podcast. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or click play at the top of this page.

The Answer Before the Diss

A few weeks ago, a reader asked me when the first diss track was made. This allowed me to read up on ancient artistic and intellectual beefs. My favorite was between two Roman writers, Martial and Cinna. Here is what Martial wrote of his enemy: “Cinna, I am told, is a writer of small squibs against me. A man cannot be called a writer, whose effusions no one reads.”

After recounting that ancient diss, I quipped that “to diss is to be human.” I don’t think that statement is completely accurate, though. Not everyone is a hater. But if to diss isn’t to be human, then to respond is. Humans love hearing themselves talk and, in this case, sing. And we’ve talking and singing our thoughts on music since the first recording was pressed to a wax cylinder.

• The 1923 smash hit “Yes! We Have No Bananas” spawned the response “I've Got the Yes! We Have No Bananas Blues”. That response song was recorded by many popular artists of the day.

• After growing tired of hearing Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” dominate airwaves of the 1930s, Woody Gutherie wrote the response “God Blessed America for Me”. He would later rename it “This Land is Your Land”.

• Kitty Wells recorded “It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” in 1952, a woman’s response to Hank Thompson’s hit from the same year, “The Wild Side of Life”.

This compositional call-and-response trend was closely related to a reliance on cover songs in the first half of the 20th century. Often, when an artist released a popular song, you would see other artists and labels try to capitalize on that song’s popularity by quickly putting out their own versions. For example, in 1946 three different versions of the song “To Each His Own” topped Billboard’s National Best Selling Retail Records chart. During the same year, five versions were in the top ten of the Most Played Jukebox Records chart. While the response song could be used for commentary or genuinely interesting artistic expression, it’s rise was mostly tied to artists and labels trying to ride the coattails of established hits.

Using data from Wikipedia, RateYourMusic, and a handful of other websites, I built a database of 300+ answer, or response songs. To be included, a song couldn’t be a response to an artist or a situation. It had to specifically respond to another artist’s song without being a complete parody. While I couldn’t capture every answer song ever recorded, this data gives us a good sense of when and how those songs were used.

Primarily, the answer song’s heyday was from the late-1950s through the end of the 1960s. At that time, response songs were so prevalent that artists could have short careers by recording them. Skeeter Davis, for example, recorded the 1961 album Here's the Answer that only contained answers to popular hits. Additionally, Damita Jo had two top 40 hits around the same time. The first was a response to The Drifters’ hit “Save the Last Dance for Me”. The second was a response to Ben E. King’s hit “Stand by Me”.

“Save the Last Dance for Me” illustrates another important point. If a song was popular enough, it could spawn multiple responses. Along with Damita Jo’s response, Billy Fury released “You're Having The Last Dance With Me”. Some songs garnered a bunch responses. Shortly, after The Silhouettes scored a number 2 hit in 1957 with “Get a Job”, The Tempos and The Miracles both put out songs called “Got a Job”, The Heartbeats released “I Found a Job”, and The Mistakes dropped “I Got Fired”.

Sometimes there would even be answers to other answer songs. For example, Hank Ballard’s 1954 hit “Work with Me, Annie” spawned multiple responses, one of which was “Wallflower (Roll With Me Henry)” by Etta James. Ballard and his band then responded to James with “Henry's Got Flat Feet (Can't Dance No More)”. All of these intricacies and oddities aside, response songs generally fall into one of four categories.

Sequels

“Johnny B. Goode” is arguably the most famous song that Chuck Berry recorded. Less famous are the sequels. Pitchfork claims he wrote four, but I could only find two: “Bye Bye Johnny” (1960) and “Lady B. Goode” (2017). Though the guitar-slinger made sequels — or continuations of his own previously recorded songs — across decades, the sequel song peaked around the late-1950s and early-1960s with pairs of songs like Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” and Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” and “Judy’s Turn to Cry”.

Piggybacks

When Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” topped the Billboard Hot 100 on two separate occasions in the early-1960s, it not only set off a dance craze but a recording craze. In fact, I’ve been able to locate 66 “twists” by other artists, including Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, and Bo Diddley. I categorize these as piggybacks because they are clearly trying to piggyback off another artist’s success with little originality.

Gender Reversals

Maybe the most classic of all response songs is where an artist from one gender releases a song and an artist from another gender responds. Elvis Presley releases “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Dodie Stevens responds with “Yes, I'm Lonesome Tonight”. Gene Chandler releases “Duke of Earl”. The Pearlettes respond with “Duchess of Earl”. TLC releases “No Scrubs”. Sporty Thieves responds with “No Pigeons”. This answer type seems to have lost favor as women have gained more agency in their music careers.

Parries

The parry is the most popular answer song these days given that it is what the diss track falls under. That said, there are parries that long predate rappers tossing insults back-and-forth. For example, in 1970 Neil Young released “Southern Man”, a song detailing racism in the American south. Four years later, Lynyrd Skynyrd parried with “Sweet Home Alabama”, a song that not only references Young’s song but details their love for the south.

Beyond the parry, and more specifically the diss, the response song is largely a thing of the past. But it’s worth ruminating on what caused the decline and if we are to see them rise again.

As other forms of musical quotation have become more popular — like the sample and interpolation — and music has become more reliant on recordings rather than compositions, the cover — as noted earlier — has become much less common. With that in mind, it’s not shocking that the answer song, a close cousin of the cover, has fallen by the wayside.

Still, if we look at the history of the answer song, we can speculate where they are most likely to appear outside of disses. Country music, rhythm and blues, and hip-hop have all utilized answer songs at various points during their histories. When their use was most prominent, these genres were somewhat insular, operating outside the pop world. In other words, if you’re tired of the day’s hip-hop beef, turn to some small online genre and you will likely find artists responding to each other’s songs via songs.

A New One
"Be Here" by Ferry Townes
2024 - Indie Singer-Songwriter

Julia Gargano first stepped into the spotlight on the 2020 season of American Idol. With her powerful yet controlled vocals, she managed to finish in 7th place. Over the next few years, she would put out ballad-y songs in the style that made her popular on the show. Then she decided to rebrand. Gargano put together Ferry Townes, a new project that saw her delve deeper into contemporary production. “Be Here” is the lead single from that project. If you enjoy it, come back in a few weeks because I’ll be interviewing her.

An Old One
"The Wallflower (Roll With Me Henry)" by Etta James
1955 - R&B

Though most artists who establish themselves by singing an answer song don’t have careers much longer than said song, some can buck the trend. Smokey Robinson’s first hit with The Miracles, the aforementioned “Get a Job”, was an answer song. “The Wallflower”, Etta James’s first hit, was also an answer song. As noted earlier, it was responding to Hank Ballard’s 1954 hit “Work with Me, Annie”. Though she was only 17 and had yet to realize the full potential of her voice, you can hear the seeds of greatness on “The Wallflower”.

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Want to hear a bunch of answer songs? Check out this playlist that I made on Spotify chronicling their history.