Abstract: The construction and renewal of "authenticity" is the driving force for the development of the music industry. Given the prevalent impression of the singular authorial role seemingly integrating all the author voices, which conjures up heightened authenticity, "singer-songwriter" has always been an effective strategy in the production and consumption of popular music. Through a comparative analysis of Keightley's "two schools of philosophy" and Frith's "three discourses" in understanding musical authenticity, this paper concludes that the nature of authenticity is a matter of value judgment concerning aesthetics and sociology. By analyzing the thickening process of author voices in the formation of "singer-songwriters", the paper presents the aesthetic/sociological tensions embedded in the ideology of authenticity and reveals that the stable and hierarchical judgment of authorship in record time faces new challenges in digital era. The final part introduces Negus' "unbundling" concept to shed light on this issue and offers a wider perspective in the understanding of "authorship".

Key words: singer-songwriter, authenticity, authorship, "unbundling", musician IP, popular music