Right. “I told you to get Whitney’s song. This is not her song. It’s Dolly Parton’s song.” It’s like people thinking Springsteen did Jersey Girl or Manilow Wrote the Songs. When I pointed out the Dolly Parton wrote the damn song, she was nonplussed.
Dolly has such a beautiful voice,which is sometimes forgotten,overlooked or not noticed due to her other assets,but man can she sing!
I once saw an interview with her about I Will Always Love You after Whitney’s(not as good, IMHO) version came out.The interviewer asked Dolly if she was bothered by the all the attention Whitney was getting and people calling it Whitneys song,Dolly responded by saying something along the lines of “As much money as I’ve made off that song,she can have it …I dont mind” then she laughed that Dolly laugh…I swear I could see the $$$ in her eyes.
It bothers me greatly. It’s not an issue of “They didn’t write the song!”, it’s an issue of “They didn’t * even* write the song!”.
It the singer is someone like Whitney Houston, Dolly Parton, or another skilled singer, I don’t mind. I can’t stand when it’s a pop star that IMHO has zero talent (That’s almost all of them). In that case, they have no more reason to be on the radio than I do.
Parton is a very sharp cookie. She came from nothing and now has her own theme park. I’m not a big fan of her work as a performer (I think her voice is kind of thin and reedy) but she has my total respect as a self-made woman and professional.
Maybe, maybe not. How would you look in a set of promotional photos wearing hot pants and a tight t-shirt? 
Retrospectively. Marmalade had a #1 hit in 1968 with Obla-di-obla-da. Now I don’t know who the hell Marmalade is and neither do you, but ephemeral pop music hasn’t changed all that much. Consider the big groups in the 60s who made hits of others’ songs - The Carpenters, the Mammas and the Pappas, the Byrds, Joan Baez.
It wasn’t until the Beatles third release, A Hard Day’s Night, that an album was completely Lennon/McCartney tunes. They even returned to form later that same year with the half-and-half Beatles for Sale - more or less With the Beatles part 2.
One of the best singers in Spanish is María Dolores Pradera. As far as I know, she’s never written a song. She sings about drinking himself to death and you almost expect her to fall off her nonexistant chair onto the nonexistant wooden floor of the nonexistant taberna where his lover told him goodbye.
One of the worst singers in Spanish is Julio Iglesias. As far as I know, he’s never written a song. His version of Cucurrucucú Paloma has about as much passion as the gas guy reading numbers off a row of meters…
Rosana made her first record in a friend’s studio, using songs she’d written that had been deemed “not commercial enough” by the companies that distribute them to singers. In her second, she has the same song twice: once by herself, one with María Dolores Pradera. Watching Rosana in the interviews, she was more aflutter about being able to sing with María Dolores Pradera than about having a second record out 
I could give you quite a few examples of people who sing their own songs and whose songs are, uhm, how to put this… ah, here. Shall we say, good for a summer night but that’s it? Not safe for work if you’re prone to the giggles 
and yet, a Serious Philosopher would be able to moan for hours about “intergenerational conflicts.”*
*The song’s name is “Daddy, I’s gonna build a pen;” Daddy’s a plants-farmer and Sonny wants to have animals instead.
It doesn’t necessarily bother me, but they do get more respect from me if they can do two things well (or more than two, if they’re also a good pianist or guitarist or producer or whatever) than if they can only do one thing well.
And I think one advantage of a singer writing his/her own material is motivational: when he’s writing the songs, he’s thinking, “I’m going to have to get up there and sing this, so I’d better make sure it’s something I can be proud of,” or, “I want to write some really good songs for me to perform”; and when he’s singing, he’s thinking, “I’d better make sure I do justice to my song.”
I wonder what it tells us that, in bands that have more than one lead vocalist/songwriter (e.g. the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, the Moody Blues), each songwriter tends (in general, though not always) to sing their own songs, not each other’s.
Doesn’t bother me. They’re singers, not writers. The voice is why I like them, not the words. Half the love songs out there are interchangeable, and they all really say the same thing. How many times can you rhyme ‘you’ with ‘true’?
Rap, however, is different. But maybe that doesn’t count in this thread…
Sure, there are exceptions (the entire bubblegum movement of the 60s, for instance, were not written by the various groups). But the Beatles were primarily singing their own songs, and most of their hits were self-penned; they tended to record other songs to fill out albums and LPs. All their #1s were written by Lennon-McCartney except for “Something.”
The Mamas and the Papas primarily wrote their own hits, too: California Dreaming; Monday, Monday; I Saw Her Again; Creeque Alley, Twelve Thirty; Words of Love. They had a couple of covers once their career got established, but it’s the originals that made them successful.
The Byrds started out with Dylan covers, but most of their work was original: Eight Miles High, Turn! Turn! Turn!, Mr. Spaceman, Goin’ Back, Chestnut Mare. Doing Dylan is a free pass anyway.
Joan Baez was a folksinger, where it was more acceptable to sing other people’s songs (and though successful, she was not a hitmaker). That leaves the Carpenters, who were never taken all that seriously as musicians until after Karen’s tragic death.
OTOH, you had groups like the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Talking Heads, The Clash, Squeeze, The Sex Pistols, etc. who stuck with doing their own material. The first tier of music in the 60s-80s were groups who did primarily original material.
And I do remember Marmalade – because of their hit “Reflections of My Life” (penned by group member William Campbell).
Unless they lie about it, like Natalie Imbruglia initially claiming she wrote “Torn” or Led Zeppelin giving themselves writing credit for all the old blues tunes they covered, it doesn’t bother me at all.
What about bands where the primary songwriter isn’t the singer? Like The Who (Townshend writes the lyrics, Daltry sings), Oasis (Liam sings, Noel writes), Depeche Mode (Martin Gore writes, Dave Gahan sings), or The Cars (2 singers, Benjamin Orr for stuff that required actual singing ability and Ric Ocasek for the quirky goofy songs, but Ocasek did all the writing). Os is this another thread?
Plus, wasn’t her version played on the jukebox in the movie, and that’s where Whitney’s character got the idea? So yeah, it wasn’t as big a hit, but a nod was made to its origin.
This question always makes me think the same thing; Paul Williams.
Decent songwriter, but the man can’t sing. And shouldn’t try.
Moved from IMHO to CS.
Did Elvis Presley write any songs?
He’s not that bad, for a Muppet.
“Turn! Turn! Turn!” is, of course, not a Byrds original, but a Pete Seeger song with lyrics adapted from the Bible. “Chestnut Mare” is technically an original, but co-written by a non-band member (lyrics by Jacques Levy).
Give the *Phantom of the Paradise * soundtrack a listen.
Elvis received a handful of songwriting credits, but he admitted, “Ah never wrote a song in mah life.”
It’s just that, because Elvis was so popular, the Colonel could lean on a young, unknown songwriter like Otis Blackwell, and say, “Tell you what- Elvis likes your song, and wants to record it, but you’re going to have to cut him in on 50% of the songwriting royalties.” The songwriter would figure “Half of a lot is better than 100% of nothing,” and would agree.
Johnny Carson got Paul Anka to give him co-writing credit for the “Tonight” theme. Same principle. Anka figured he’d rather have 50% of a fortune (he says that, toward the end of Carson’s term on “Tonight,” that theme song alone was worth about 700 grand a year to him) than all the royalties to a tune nobody would ever hear…
It depends. All of my top favorite artists are singer/songwriter/musicians (with the occasional cover tune), but I still like people like Holly Cole and the classic artists discussed in this thread.
One of the times we were lucky enough to see Kirsty MacColl in concert, she performed her song “They Don’t Know” and yelled out “GOD BLESS TRACY ULLMAN!” who, of course, had a major hit with it, one that paid a lot of bills and rent for Kirsty over the years.
Sometimes that happens and the original credits are lost to history. I have no cite for this, but my belief is that a hungry songwriter named Dave Stamper wrote the huge hit/classic song “Shine On Harvest Moon” while he was a Vaudeville piano accompanist to a star (at that time) named Nora Bayes, who recorded and had a hit with it. However, being hungry and not thinking of the future, Stamper sold the rights to the song to Bayes and her husband Jack Norworth. Now, every place you look, Norworth and Bayes are credited as writing the song, and Stamper never got what was really due him, credit-wise or financially. Of course, now it can never be proven. It’s a damned shame.