Singer-songwriters are the half-breeds of pop music. Evolved from Bob Dylan's navel-gazing spawn, they lead hyphenated existences because each half of their calling is considered insupportable without the other. Though many are accomplished vocalists, what distinguishes them as singers doesn't always transfer successfully to other people's material, as proved by the wince-inducing performances of Elvis Costello, Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow in the recent Cole Porter biopic "De-Lovely." And while a few do well on the publishing side -- the late Warren Zevon probably made more money off of Linda Ronstadt than he ever made from his own records -- the majority only write songs for themselves, which may explain why so many tribute albums are instantly disposable.
Unlike a pure instrumentalist or a pure singer, as a performer a singer-songwriter is locked into an image that can be a crutch and a curse. The impact of one important song can bind a group of fans to the singer-songwriter for life -- think Tracy Chapman and "Fast Car." On the one hand this guarantees a living (up to a point), but on the other it can make it almost impossible to grow as an artist.
Lisa Loeb's important song was important in more ways than one. "Stay," released in 1994 on the "Reality Bites" soundtrack album, became the first song by an unsigned artist ever to go to number one on the U.S. singles chart. A sensitive, verbose, and mostly low-key study of modern relationships, the song's success was doubly surprising since there was nothing in the Top 40 to compare it with at the time. It set up the classic singer-songwriter dilemma: How to expand rather than merely cash in on the image, which in Loeb's case was compounded by a fashion flourish that was, like it or not, even more distinctive -- those glasses.