Artists who you don't believe actually write their songs

Any song Britney Spears claims to have written or co written

Alanis Morrisette

Most of them.

Even oldies that claim they did so.

obligatory Courtney Love

(I believe she writes her own lyrics. they're very feminine rage and consistent)

r3 Agreed. . . but much of it goes to the ignorance of the public as well.

Like the over inflated value of the lead singer...

Mariah Carey

Sondheim

Beyonce has to be one of the very worst offenders. I'm surprised she wasn't denied an Oscar nomination for that King Richard song for not actually writing it, like she was for "Listen" from Dreamgirls.

Harry Styles

Rihanna

MIlli Vanilli

Madonna

Beyonce

Michael Jackson

Barbra Streisand

Beyonce owns this thread.

Taylor Swift. Daddy’s money bought her writing team.

Madonna has been extorting writing credits for years.

The only reason I believe Taylor writes is because her lyrics are so lame.

Now we got PRUH-BLUMS! And I don't think we can SOLVE UHM! So take a look what you DU-UUUN. So baby now we got bad blood. HEY!

Hey kids spelling is fun! You can't spell awesome without ME!

We are never ever ever ever ever ever ever (times infinity) getting back together!

You're so gorgeous I can't say anything to your face Cuz look at your face

Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate!

These are all her actual lyrics. It fits perfectly with her pre-teen personality.

With Ed Sheeran's reputation you would think he writes everything on his own but checking the credits of his latest album a shitton of people are credited on every song.

Harry Styles. He is a phony.

We all know Radiohead didn't really write the music to Creep. They stole it from the Hollies. There is so much of the "tweaking" of songs in popular music, it's ridiculous.

Guns and Roses didn't write Sweet Child of Mine either, they stole it from Australian Crawl "Unpublished Critics" etc.

In short - MANY.

For some odd reason I think Britney might not actually write her own music.

Any pop singer since 1990.

R2 Alanis’ songwriting is way too recognizable to be written by anyone else.

Gwen Stefani

Most of these people write some lame lyrics and then take all the credit.

Katy Perry

Shania Twain

Carrie Underwood

Shit.

I can't even sing my own songs, much less write them.

By the way, Gloria Swanson was 50 when she did "Sunset Boulevard."

I'm 52.

Maybe I'll keep flashing my pussy until 70. But it's not really MY pussy.

Alanis' music is written by Glen Ballard who wrote that awful Wilson Phillips song.

In regards to Rihanna, its been exposed that she hires songwriters and lets them stay in her basement while she parties upstairs. She doesn't even give them food.

All of them

Sondheim’s songs are unmistakably by him.

Madonna changes a word or two in someone else's songs and then claims songwriting credits.

R33 Beyonce does the same.

To be fair, some of these people never claimed to write their own songs.

[quote]cough*bobdylan*cough Also to be fair, he had to plagiarize poetry, literature, and other people' songs by hand, long before copy/paste was a thing, so at least some work was involved in his case.

Led Zeppelin plagiarized a lot of stuff

I would believe Mariah Carey writes her own songs for the same reasons stated about Taylor Swift. Very simple lyrics. However - I give her or anyone else who actually composes a song, a lot of credit.

Vanishing is a beautiful song, though.

With regards to Ballard and Alanis, I suspect he wrote the music and she wrote the lyrics. I think a lot of artists mentioned here, like Alanis, write the lyrics for their songs but don't write the music and probably also have the person or someone else manipulate said lyrics to fit the harmony.

That makes sense, R38. Harmony, I think you meant melody.

Shania never "wrote" any hits until she met Mutt Lange

bump

Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson write their songs. But with some help involves, so it is not like they sit in front of piano and then make up a song. They come up with the melody and lyrics and then their team work out the background and make some twist here and there. So they write their song mostly.

Beyonce cannot write let alone writing a song. Maroon 5, a self-proclaimed band, never wrote any song.

Bon Jovi

R35, para ti

Levy's contributions were never a secret, r44. Every Dylan fan knows he cowrote most of the Desire album with Bob and was given songwriting credits then. Bob already paid him a percentage of the royalties- it's his widow who is pushing for more now, because Dylan made a huge chunk of change selling off his catalog recently.

"... the agreement drafted between Dylan and Levy in 1975 made it clear that he was not a participant in ownership of the material, and that his profit participation would consist of a share of songwriting royalties." Dylan never said he wrote those songs by himself, nor did he refuse to pay Levy.

His Nobel Prize speech was a plagiarist's wet dream, however.

Here's the article I lifted the quote from, r44.

Drake uses ghostwriters and so does Cardi B.

Timberfake

Every song that Alanis wrote the lyrics for is basically a list song, so I can believe she wrote the lyrics. They're all the same.

[quote]I would believe Mariah Carey writes her own songs for the same reasons stated about Taylor Swift. Very simple lyrics. However - I give her or anyone else who actually composes a song, a lot of credit.

Mariah Carey has been very vocal about her songwriting process from the beginning and subsequent interviews with her and her partners (e.g. Walter Afan-whatever who is whining about the Xmas song)......

She writes the lyrics and the melodies mostly but works out the chord progressions with a piano player. Often they do it together with the pianist sitting at the piano while she sings/humms the melody and they come up with the proper chords to fit under neath it. She has said she can play piano but not well so it's easier to do it this way. She also has been very transparent from her first album in terms of credits; I can't think of any song she tool full credit for and until she got into trying to be "hip" and collabing with tons of modern writers, almost all her 90s hits were just her and 1 other person or 1 duo team (first Ben Margueles, then Narada, then C&C, then Jam & Lewis).

And her lyrics are not "simple". She actually is known to use SAT type words even sometimes surreptitiously in her lyrics.

but all of Mariah's songs suck so do Taylor Swift's

"Mariah Carey has been very vocal about her songwriting process from the beginning and subsequent interviews with her and her partners (e.g. Walter Afan-whatever who is whining about the Xmas song)"

This is where the lambs pretend to not the name of the guy who REALLY wrote that song...

^^^ Even Walter says he just did the backing track. He never claims he "wrote the song", but that he co-wrote it, which Mariah properly credits him with on the album and on the copyright.

R45 yeah, his weren't on that particular album.

What about the others? People are easy to pay off just to get their work known.

Whole bands get credited when maybe one guy has any ability to even come close to writing a song. And there are bands I strongly suspect paid someone like Prince to write their music for at least a few songs per album.

Justin Bieber

Most modern rappers have ghost writers.

"...I swore I wouldn't tell. But most of y'all sharing bars like you got the bottom bunk in a two-man cell." -- Kendrick "I write all my own shit" Lamar, [italic]King Kunta[/italic]

The lambs are lying

"I write my own songs" usually means "I write songs with Max Martin and 10001 professional dong doctors"

If you look at the writing credits and the star's name is listed along with, like, 8 other names that's usually a good sign

R38 There is nothing to suggest that. The creation of Jagged Little Pill is well documented. The album is something like 70% the demos. Alanis and Ballard would come into the studio. Alanis would usually have the bones of an idea for a song, and they would bang it out together over the course of the day, and then record a quick and dirty demo. The vocals on the albums is 95% from the demo recordings. Then Ballard brought in people like Flea and Dave Navarro to lay down a few instrumental tracks on certain songs.

Alanis was an unknown 19 year old and Ballard a successful producer and songwriter. There was no reason to create a false image of Alanis as more involved than she was. She had no clout, not even a record deal. Everything anyone involved in the production of that album has said about the writing of it is consistent with Alanis and Ballard writing the music together.

It should also be noted that Alanis hasn’t worked with Ballard since the follow up to JLP.

[quote]yeah, his weren't on that particular album.

Yeah, they were, and Levy never claimed otherwise.

Certain music groups will make sure that every member of the group gets a co-writing credit, even if some of them don't write on a particular song, just to keep everything "fair". The Spice Girls did this with all of their material, they'd be credited as "Spice Girls", or all five of their individual names, on their songwriting credits. They weren't musicians, so the would collaborate with producers/songwriters and each group member would chip in with ideas, lyrics, melodies etc. and then share the credit.

Did you even read the article you posted R57? Walter A says is:

[quote]conflicting with his account of their composing the music together while he played the piano.

He admits she wrote the music with at the piano as I described above. (and as I noted she credited him as co-writer on the album and with the copyright office so he gets 50% of the $s).

The article is about how in more recent interviews she talks about writing it herself and "omitting" his part. Both can be true. She probably came up with the main riff on her Casio keyboard and then later fleshed it out with Walter at the piano, and as he says in another article, he then created all the other parts on synthesizers and drum machines.

Your own article proves she writes her own songs with a co-writer as I stated.

The opposite of this thread, but I always thought that Billy Idol had really good songwriters.

It turns out wrote many of his songs which happen to be my favorites. I’ve been a huge fan and didn’t know this for many years.

R57 Mariah is a cunt. She probably fell out with him and then proceeded to "I don't know him". Still, that's a shady act.

Shame on Mariah. Still a big fan though.

Beyoncé Knowles

Half of the time, her backing track does the singing too

R62, there's nothing in there about her fucking Casio keyboard, she probably just made that up. But St. Mariah would never lie, right?

In the case of "Wild Horses," the Rolling Stones.