Before Paris Grey—the inimitable voice behind hits like "Good Life" and "Ain't Nobody Better"—joined forces with techno pioneer Kevin Saunderson to form Inner City, she said she sang vocals on several other tracks. Though Grey's voice certainly has the same soulful and arresting sonic quality in these early songs, there's one big difference from her Inner City work. With Saunderson, Grey attested she always split everything fifty-fifty, and their collaborations were fair, synergistic and fulfilling—both creatively and financially. On the other hand, for some of these earlier tracks, Grey said she was only given a studio fee, never any royalties.

"There's a couple of tracks that I wrote and sang on that I'm not collecting anything from, that I didn't get anything for," she said. "I just kind of chalked it up to I didn't know better than that back then. I didn't know how it worked."

Throughout the history of dance music, there have been many instances of vocalists facing similar treatment, both in terms of under- or unpaid work, unfair royalty deals and even lack of credit. Martha Wash, the voice behind C+C Music Factory's iconic "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)," has repeatedly made headlines for her uncredited vocals on the 1990 track and others. In 2013, The Guardian published an article exposing the unfair pay standard for vocalists in dance music, drawing on stories from Kristy Hawkshaw, Coco Star and more. In 2020, the publication followed up with another article about how these issues disproportionately affect singers of colour in the UK.

Carla Werner, whose voice graces Paul Oakenfold's 2002 smash hit "Southern Sun," among others, said that she too faced challenges with pay as a young vocalist. In her own words, her work with Oakenfold "set the bar" in this regard—meaning she was actually paid for her time in the recording session.

"I have been paid twice for vocals in my entire experience in the EDM world," Werner, who is based in New Zealand, told Resident Advisor. "In the real world, I'll charge $500 for a vocal session and studio, which to me is pretty cheap, but I just remember in the early years I wrote that into the contracts, but then they got turned down."

Werner, Grey, Wash and others certainly blazed the trail for the vocalists forging careers in dance music today. But even with the legislation precipitated by Wash's case—which necessitated the addition of vocal credits on CDs and in music videos—and a general growing appreciation for singers and songwriters in dance music (largely prompted by conversations started by the vocalists themselves), many of the issues faced by early vocal pioneers still affect the dance music singer/songwriters working in the industry right now.

"They were doing that back in the '80s, when dance music was born," said Luck, an LA-based singer/songwriter who has collaborated with DJs and producers like Venessa Michaels and Kingdom. "They were planting those seeds early on."

Carla Werner

HALIENE, whose ethereal, otherworldly voice is a key component in tracks by superstar American producers like Seven Lions, Said the Sky and Illenium, also sees the throughline from the past to what she has experienced in the present. The singer/songwriter has had to fight tooth and nail to get where she is today—that is, on a major tour following the release of her debut solo album, Heavenly, in addition to performing regularly on the North American festival circuit, with solo appearances at festivals like EDC Orlando and Lost In Dreams.

"I think we came from, in dance music, a way of thinking about the vocal as a sample," she explained. And indeed, though the heavy culture of borrowing has made dance music the collaborative, multifaceted and nuanced genre it is today, this legacy often has a darker side for vocalists.

Alfred Darlington, who produces music under the moniker Daedelus, is an assistant professor in the department of Electronic Production and Design at the Berklee College of Music. Agreeing with HALIENE's sentiment about sampling, they also added that, in the early days, when dance music was a more "fringe," underground genre, there were many instances of "wild sampling" without much thought to crediting the creators of each disparate element that went into a single track. But today, vocalists are contributing a lot more to the final track than a sample.

"For almost every single track, I'm absolutely writing the lyrics and all the melodies that go along with those lyrics, or me and my husband [Matthew Steeper] write everything together," HALIENE said. "Oftentimes, we are also making a demo track, recording pianos, sometimes strings, in order to create the soul of the song, the bones."

Despite the work that goes into creating the tracks fans hear, HALIENE has had to repeatedly fight for adequate compensation. She explained to RA, in theoretical terms, how labels sometimes try to break down the percentages of a song.

"The DJ owns this label, so they're already making their percentage of owning said label, and then on top of that they are taking 50 percent of the master," she said. "And then I'm getting, like, 20 percent after the label takes their other 30 percent. I'm not doing correct math here, but you can see how it just gets cut, cut, cut all the way down to the singer/songwriter getting like five percent and the DJ getting like 70 something percent."

According to Werner, a "standard breakdown" for a collaboration awards 50 percent of the publishing to the lyrics and melody, and 50 percent to the production. But, according to many of the singer/songwriters RA spoke with, this type of breakdown is not typically a given in dance music.

In addition to these predatory pay structures—and despite the conversations and legislations surrounding Wash's case—some dance music vocalists are still facing deals where they remain uncredited. dolltr!ck, a DJ, producer, audio engineer and singer/songwriter who has lent her voice to a variety of tracks by other musicians, said that when she was first starting out she took on a ghostwriting role, sometimes writing a topline before the producer ultimately found another vocalist to sing it.

"I would still get paid for it, which is great, but my name wouldn't be on the credits for writing," she said. "It was more of a dark side of it. But at the time, I didn't really know a lot of what I was getting into anyway. It just seemed like a really good opportunity to build a little bit of experience, build a bit of my portfolio."

Venessa Michaels and Luck

Though uncredited work seems to be less common now than it was in dance music's nascent years, today's singer/songwriters are sometimes not given equal billing on tracks. Instead, they're commonly noted as a "featured artist." This type of a credit, according to HALIENE, has not been the most beneficial for growing her fan base; on Spotify—which is the platform the majority of the world now streams their music—tracks have not surfaced on the featured artist's profile until recently, which has lost singers years' worth of valuable follows and listens.

"We all started fighting for … being one of the main artists on a song," she said. "I think now it's become much more standard, which is amazing. I rarely see a singer that is just featured and [the song] is not on their profile, because we're all fighting for it."

On top of joining forces to lobby for credit and fair pay, vocalists say they are often met with disparaging comments, a lack of support and—given the fact that many vocalists are women and the majority of DJs and producers are men—the gendered dynamics that typically come with these challenging industry imbalances.

dolltr!ck told RA that, despite her extensive discography and demonstrable technical chops, she is still the product of skepticism when it comes to the caliber of her tracks, and she often has to fend off comments surrounding whether she produced them herself. Additionally, she recalled times when, while working as a vocalist for other artists, she's been spoken about by male producers as if she wasn't present in the room.

"I used to laugh it off, but now I call them out for it," she said. "I'm like ‘How is it OK for you to say this in front of anyone, or even at all? I'm here in the room with you.' But even if I wasn't here, you would still be saying this sort of terrible trash to each other about vocalists and how to direct us like we're animals or something like that."

Both Werner and HALIENE said they've been propositioned at work. HALIENE added that, when she released Heavenly in August 2022, she sent it out to many of the DJ and producers she'd worked with in the past. Of those she sent it to, she received congratulations from just two.

In a genre that undervalues the efforts of vocalists, it may be ironic to hear that, according to Darlington, the melody of the song—which is often heavily contributed by the singer/songwriter—is likely the only portion that can actually be copyrighted.

"There's only so much you can copyright in a track. You can't copyright an underlying beat, you can't really copyright harmony. You can copyright lyrics and melodies," they explained. "And yet, because of the nature of legality and also just straight up ignoring the contributions and what was the important bit of the track, you have a moment where people really have to come forward and be more in charge."

In March 2022, Linney, a vocalist who has worked with artists including Gareth Emery, Tritonal, ARMNHMR and more, released a video on TikTok and Twitter detailing some of the disparaging comments and unfair payment offers she's received throughout her tenure in dance music. The video was met with an outpouring of support from not only Linney's fans, but from other vocalists who commiserated and hoped to show support.

Though Linney's story went viral, she's not the first (or likely the last) who will tell a similar tale. dolltr!ck, who, in addition to her work as a professional musician, is also an Assistant Professor at the Berklee College of Music, said that she tries to champion vocalists for the benefit of her students so that the next generation can receive more considerate and fair treatment than the last. She shares her thoughts on social media, she said, especially for those students that may harbor unfair feelings towards vocalists or display sexist attitudes.

"I felt that, if there's a way for me to shed light on this before [my students] fall too deep and become these producer bros that are not who people want to collaborate with, maybe I can help inform their perspective," she said.

HALIENE

Starting these conversations is one way that vocalists are pushing for change, but they're also taking the reins of their own careers by increasingly investing in solo work, and—when they do collaborate with DJs and producers—being picky about who benefits from their time, energy and creative output.

"There comes a point where you're just like, ‘OK, this is enough already. I want to do my own thing, get 100 percent of the master versus 10 percent or 20 percent,'" HALIENE said. "Now, granted, there are a great many artists, especially now since I've grown so much, that give me my equal share of the master. That's more the norm for me now, but when you're smaller, it's pretty hard to fight for that."

After many years of an uphill battle, though, there are signs that these efforts are paying off—and perhaps real change is being made. HALIENE has carved out a place for vocalists to perform solo sets at major dance music-specific festivals, and has nurtured a fanbase for her solo work and a community for other singer/songwriters in the genre. dolltr!ck has not only become a role model for other young women breaking into the dance music industry, but has taken it upon herself to educate her students, specifically those who might not understand her perspective. Werner is working on putting together a series of live shows—which will bring together between eight and ten vocalists from the '90s and early 2000s—aimed at highlighting the contributions of singer/songwriters to the trance genre, specifically.

New partnerships are also emerging that are more reminiscent of Grey's work with Inner City. These collaborations appear to be fair both creatively and financially, as well as nurturing of each contributor's artistry, instead of leaving one counterpart feeling taken advantage of. One such partnership exists between Michaels and Luck, who not only frequently collaborate on projects, but—as two female artists—very much go against the grain of the traditional male DJ/female singer trope.

"I could go and work with anyone, but at the end of the day I saw Venessa Michaels and I was like, 'I'm gonna champion you,'" Luck said. "You champion me, I'll champion you. I saw the gift that was in her and she saw the gift that was in me."

Michaels agreed with a passionate nod, voicing her gratitude for both the friendship and creative collaboration she's found with Luck. "It's not like one person's doing the most," Michaels said of their collaborations. "Some days I'll write a melody and she'll write the lyrics to it, or she'll write a melody in the same song and I'll write the lyrics to that melody. And then if I'm making the beats, she will be like, ‘Can you throw this in?,' like [we're] co-producing it."

Through increased conversation and consistent demands for respect, vocalists are taking definitive action to seize control of their careers. And it appears the industry—some corners of it, at least—are listening. Especially for those singer/songwriters just starting out, though, the road is not without bumps and potholes. It's a weathered road, and, as many more storied vocalists say, one they don't regret traveling.

"I think that, as much as we deal with labels that don't respect us, and sometimes, sadly, artists that don't respect us, my personal feeling on it is, while it is frustrating, there is a lot to be gained," HALIENE said. "My career is definitely proof of that."