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1) Carrie Underwood - $500,000 Plus
2) Kelly Clarkson - $250,000 Plus
3) Daughtry - $150,000-$200,000
4) Fantasia - $100,000-$200,000
5) Clay Aiken - $100,000-$150,000
6) Jennifer Hudson - $100,000 Plus
7) Jordin Sparks - $75,000-$125,000
8) David Archuleta - $40,000 Plus
9) David Cook - $30,000-$50,000
10) Kellie Pickler - $30,000-$40,000
11) Taylor Hicks - $15,000-$30,000
12) Josh Gracin - $15,000-$25,000
13) Blake Lewis - $10,000 Plus
14) Bo Bice - $10,000 Plus

Sacha Skarbek, songwriter for James Blunt (US & UK No.1), Carrie Underwood (US No.1), Jason Mraz (US Top 5 & UK Top 10) - July 13, 2009

"When we finished writing ['You're Beautiful'] we looked at each other and went, 'Wow, actually that's pretty good.' But we certainly didn't think, 'Oh, here we are. There's our big hit!'"

With two Ivor Novello awards, a Grammy nomination and co-writer credit for international megahit 'You're Beautiful' under his belt, songwriter and producer Sacha Skarbek cuts an impressive figure in the industry.

No doubt it was this grand resume and the canon of songs he's written for the likes of Jason Mraz (US Top 5 & UK Top 10), Duffy (UK No.1 & US Top 5) and James Blunt (US & UK No.1) that prompted the British songwriter's recent invitation to the songwriting and country music capital of the USA to help Carrie Underwood (US No.1) bring her new opus to life.

London-based Skarbek sat down with HitQuarters to talk about the mechanics of collaborative songwriting, the difficulties of writing in the country music style, and the genesis of 'You're Beautiful'


You've recently been in the songwriting hub of Nashville working with Carrie Underwood. Was it easy for you as a Brit to adapt to a very American style of music?

Lyrically it wasn't the easiest thing, and I still struggle with it. I think on the one side not being a part of that scene gives you a more universal approach on what you write when you're there, but having said that you also don't necessarily understand what the people that listen to country music want to hear, and what their every day lives are like and what affects them.

But the great beauty of writing songs is writing one that moves somebody from Nashville to Japan to Australia to where ever it may be.

As a Nashville outsider, why do you think you were chosen to write for Carrie?

I think they were looking for something that maybe was a crossover into another market. It was an exciting session - I worked with a very talented Nashville writer (Ashley Gorley) on it. So it's myself, Ashley, and then Carrie. And you have to get to know each other fairly quickly.

Can you walk us through what would happen at a typical writing session?

As a writer on it, you would usually try to prepare some ideas - you don't want to go in there empty handed. Then you just throw a few of these ideas out there and see whether any of them are getting liked or not. Because you're writing a song that the artist is involved in, she's writing on it as well, so it's not the same as if she wasn't there.

In this case, we only had two days, but we managed to write three songs. That comes from being prepared, but also how much you're prepared to be flexible - you have to be able to move with your ideas, you cannot have them set in stone unless you're 100% confident about them.

If they love your chorus, OK great but the majority of the time that isn't the case - you'll be there and going, "OK, that's great, but that's not so good." And then between you, you're all trying to refine it. Sometimes you get to a thing whereby you say, "Shit, we have to scrap this. We're not going anywhere. Take a 10 minute break." And then you come back in and say, "OK, how about this idea?"

As someone that has worked a lot in collaboration, not only with artists but other top songwriters - including Greg Wells (read the HitQuarters interview with Greg here), Kara Dioguardi and Craig Wiseman - do you prefer writing together than solo?

I enjoy both processes. When you get the opportunity to write with another great songwriter and things work there's nothing more exciting about it. You feed off each other's energy. You're quite synchronized - it becomes almost like a dance. I recently worked with Jason Mraz, and the speed in which he was able to come up with lyrics and the way his mind works was a really refreshing and interesting experience for me, and I found that I learned an enormous amount from sessions like that.

But it doesn't always work. I have a couple of very close friends that are very successful songwriters, but for some reason the chemistry never seems to work in the songwriting department.