I do NOT mean to offend you, but this whole thread is based on an incorrect theory.A songwriter writes songs.I don't care if they write a song with the help of 10 other peope, they are still songwriters because they had a part in writing a song.And hardly anyone writes ALL of their songs by themselves.Not even Adele who is one of the most celebrated songwriters of the year.Check the credits, she is a co-writer as well, but that doesn't make her less of a songwriter.

Change a word, take a third....

in reality, we dont know and i suspect arent told the whole truth regarding credits for writing songs...

Words to "you need me, I don't need you"

I sing, I write my own tune
And I write my own verse, hell
Don't need another wordsmith to make the tune sell
Call yourself a singer-writer
You're just bluffing
Names on the credits
Said you didn't write nothing
I sing fast
I know that all my shit's cool
I will blast
And I didn't go to Brit School

Straight from the horse's mouth or in this case Ed Sheeran. He works in the business he'll know that being a co-writer means you probably met the actual writer in a lift once or perhaps you didn't even see them at all.

Just because an artist co-writes a song doesn't make it any less valuable than sole writing. For all you know they could have thought you the songs theme, the chorus, the basic melody, the best/most meaningful lines, and were just helped by the rest. By demeaning co-writing it sounds like the artist just saw there and went "Yeah thats good" when someone else wrote something, whereas they are likely to have been bouncing ideas off one another to lead to a better song.

The only female one is Taylor Swift.

Your comments in your opening post regarding taylor swift being a manufactured songwriter have come out of some fairytale. You need to get your facts right before creating a thead that contains such incorrect information.

Speaking of fairytales and incorrect facts...Taylor Swift is the only current female musician to write her own music...? Really?

OP, off the top of my head, Laura Marling writes all of her own stuff, and has done since she was 16.

I was talking about big stars, of course there are tons of lightweights who write their own music. its when female stars get big that they end up having to co-write with proven song writers for many reasons, hence my comment that Taylor is maybe the only big female star who writes her own music.

Had to google Laura Marling, never heard of her.

So anyone who hasn't sold millions of albums is a "lightweight"? Interesting.

And respectfully, you explicitly stated that Taylor is the only female singer-songwriter who actually writes her own songs, not the only "big star" to do so.

I think its impossible to tell really, unless you're actually sitting in the studio with an artist, watching them write. For instance I think Siobhan Donaghy is a talented writer. But then she has co-writers on all her tracks, so maybe they're the ones with the real talent, who knows?

And I actually have a lot of respect for someone like Britney Spears. She could easily pay to get writing credits on all her songs, but I think she has a bit more integrity than that.

Alicia Keys does have solo writing credits on her albums..she wrote most of the songs on her own for her debut..including her best song 'fallin'

So female stars need help, but males apparently don't? That seems just a bit sexist.

According to many interviews with her producers in various sources, Gaga writes the vast majority, if not all, of her lyrics. She works with producers on the music, but she literally co-produces everything and is heavily involved in the entire production. She doesn't just sit around and wait for a producer to hand her something thats finished. Thats why they had a "studio" bus following the tour around last year. I'm sure the producers would have been happier sitting at home in their own cozy studios. Now, you may argue with the quality of her songwriting, but you can't argue that Gaga doesn't do her own work. She was a songwriter for Interscope before she was a star. All this is well documented in interviews with people whose names are not Lady Gaga.

Fernando Garibay is on record in an interview saying that Gaga gives more songwriting points to the producers than she really needs too, because she appreciates what they are doing.

Adele is certainly doing a lot of writing as well.

And to add another point to this discussion, some people are good songwriters. Some people are great performers. Some performers are marginal songwriters, but do it anyway. Some songwriters are marginal singers, yet sing anyway. There is a spectrum from "pure songwriter" to "pure performer" with many steps in between, and there is no judgement to be made on whether a good "singer songwriter" is somehow better than "just a singer." Are we going to downgrade the talents of Ella Fitzgerald or Liza Minelli or Sinatra or Maria Carey or Barbara Streisand, or Elvis, because they didn't actually write the songs?

and god knows Bob Dylans considerable songwriting skills did nothing to help his singing.

Mariah Carey has co-written everything she has ever recorded bar covers and collaborations.

ok, good to know. For some reason I thought otherwise.

This, I'm pretty sure the 'co-write' credits on some of her songs are actually the producers, who need to be listed as they provide beats, etc for her. She's a brilliant pianist and lyricist.

I assumed the OP was talking about artists in the spotlight rather then obscure artists otherwise this thread would be pointless as everyone knows there are hundreds of artists that are not big chart stars who write their own music. Most of these obscure artists are also real musicians who have to write their own music as the dont have the luxury of having big named session writers writing them hits like most chart artists do.
Big Artists, especially females who write their own songs are rare hence why I mentioned Taylor as she is the only one I can think of.
I would much rather listen to some of these obscure artists then chart artists anyday, thats why I love local BBC radio as often you have some of these lesser known local artists doing sessions acoustically on the radio, some great female musicians knocking about, many sounding like one of my all time favourite female artists Jewel, who is sensational.

Taylor Swift makes me want to puke. I'm not surprised at all she writes them herself. Squeaky clean soundbites for the American mid west squeaky clean God-fearing folk.

Mainly because there are too many idiots around who will dismiss an artist simply because they don't use the title...

As I've said on numerous occasions, you don't expect an opera singer to have written an opera, so why this nonsense in pop?


IMO it's far more than that...

A songwriter should have other people queueing around the corner to sing their songs.. if there's no queue you can take it that their songs aren't very good and writing crap does not qualify you as a songwriter.

I think with an opera singer, their talent is obvious. In pop, whether the singer has talent or not is more subjective, so there's this "currency" of being able to write. It shouldn't be necessary for a pop star to be able to write their own music, but the market is so competitive, the star needs the credibility factor as well as the X factor.

I don't think there's anything wrong with co writing, but there seems to be a need to portray the co writing as sole writing on the part of the singer for much the same reason (credibility factor). I think the songs an artist writes on their own is a good indication of how much input they have on their work, because with just about all of them claiming credit for their songs it's sometimes very hard to tell.

Sadly unless we are there when the song is being written, then we have no idea how much someone has actually been involved in the songwriting (regarding co-writing).

For me i don't care if an artist never writes solo for hit songs, as those songs tend to be the weakest tracks anyways in terms of artistry (here im talking about mainstream pop). But an artist who claims to be a songwriter but has never been credited with a song on their own, something isn't right there. If you can write songs then there must be the odd occasion atleast when you have a few self-written songs. The term songwriter is used loosely.

Most artists i follow write solo..Laura Marling, Amy Macdonald, Kate Bush etc (apart from certain bands where it's a full band effort). But as someone who likes Avril Lavigne too, i certainly know she has predominantly been a co-writer referred to as a songwriter. But then she is credited with writing half of her latest album and producing on her own too, which are some of her best songs. And a few other songs too from UMS, Which again are some of her best songs..

So it seems you have prolific songwriters and then those who can write songs on their own but aren't prolific enough to do it on all their songs.

Then you have the co-writers only, and like has been said no one can know for sure what their involvement is.

I must admit i have always been a geek for knowing songwriting credits, to the annoyance of most people i know i tend to have a look at the credits when a new album comes out by 'biggish' artists...especially when it someones who has been talking about how they wrote the album and then find out all the songs are credited with a host of other people.

Except that "their" songs might be written by someone else anyway...


I guess I did this too, though nowadays I'm too old to care as much as in the past. But I still think that when a new artist comes along and we are told what a unique talent this person is, not enough people scrutinise the hype.

Amy Winehouse has a load of solo writing credits on her Back to Black album if I remember correctly.

And this was a hugely acclaimed album, much more so than Taylor Swift.

The way I see it, mainstream pop artists are rarely sole songwriters simply because of the way pop music works - because it's a largely commercial exercise run by the record labels, these labels involve co-writers/producers in the process so they can make sure they get the end product that they want. Because of this I don't really think it matters, it's just a feature of the genre that there are usually co-writers etc involved.

Outside of mainstream pop, there are loads of examples of genuine singer/songwriters because the labels don't tend to get as directly involved in the "creative" process.

Dolly Parton writes a lot of her own songs and music, always has, compared to the likes of Cher or Streisand (other long running divas, who alas, don't).