What most of the world doesn’t know is that not all musicians write their own music. Most of these stars that we adore so much are gifted men and women who work behind the scenes to give them the well-written material they sing or rap. These men and women work tirelessly to make sure that the wordplay is just right and the style is decently tailored to fit the artist that needs the song.
These gifted writers never get the recognition they deserve for their work. Frequently the songs they write become highly successful and they never get the credit for their work. A songwriter’s name will hardly appear in the song or even in the video. The songwriter remains unknown and unimportant to the audience. The person that makes and gives the audience the star goes unnoticed.
I get impressed and shocked when an artist wins an award for a song and during their acceptance speech they thank the writer. I first saw this with Beyoncé when she won an award for “Irreplaceable” and she said thanked Ne-Yo for writing such an incredible song. Wow! How noble. She shared her moment with the most important part of the song–the writer.
Musicians are just puppets of songwriters; this is the reality that is often unheeded. Some musicians would not be as successful as they are if the songwriters had not put together beautiful lyrics and created the perfect melodies to match them. Some of them would not even be successful at all. The writer presented them with the right song, which launched their career. In other words, without the songwriter, that artist would not exist.
It is not a rare occurrence that you find an artist who makes one hit and disappears after that. When you research such musicians, you are likely to find that they had a hit song only because someone else wrote it for them. When they decided to write their own music, it wasn’t as successful as the hit song that the gifted writer wrote for them. This occurs because just as singing or rapping is an artist’s niche, writing great song is a songwriter’s niche.
Musicians and songwriters all need each other. Most writers can’t sing or rap but they can write hit songs. Therefore, they need the musicians because they are paid for these songs. The musicians should learn to appreciate and acknowledge the songwriters because if they didn’t need your money, you’d have no career, much less the money. Songwriters make the star and logically this makes the writer the real star.