This wasn’t true in the 70s, when Brian’s role with the band was diminished. Even at their creative height in the 60s, Brian often worked with a lyricist collaborator (Mike Love, Tony Asher, Van Dyke Parks).
And Brian never played all the instruments personally, but at least on Pet Sounds, he did carefully oversee all the session musicians who did. The other Beach Boys didn’t contribute much to that album except vocals.
Dave Mustaine wrote the vast majority of Megadeth’s music by himself (not to mention a lot of non-insignificant contributions to Metallica’s early material ;)).
With that in-mind, I’ll withdraw my first 2 suggestions. NIN and LCD Soundsystem are really just one dude.
I wouldn’t think that Lenny Kravitz qualifies for the inverse reason… b/c he’s already named his band after him. There’s not really any other expectation than “it’s all Lenny”.
To expand on this, there are levels of collaboration. Examples:
Queen, with four songwriters - each of them was responsible for at least one big hit - showed how it functioned as a band. Freddie, for example, would write a melody and lyrics - most often on piano but occasionally guitar - and present it to the others. If the rest thought it was worth recording each of them would begin contributing ideas to the song to flesh it out. However, Freddie would still get songwriting credit and royalties.
Rush, on the other hand, were more oddly collaborationist. When set to record an album - pre-Internet - Peart would write lyrics in isolation while the other two would work out music together without input from Peart. When ready, they’d get together and try to decide which words went with which sets of music and try to combine the two creative outputs. It’s an odd system but it seemed to work for them.
I’m pretty sure my post said this very thing.
Ben Folds wrote most of the stuff for Ben Folds Five. The band name isn’t really the same as “Lenny Kravitz” - they were indeed a band just the others guys didn’t write songs. There were a few songs written by their drummer, over their 3 albums, but I think Ben collaborated more with his friend Anna Goldman than he did with the band mates.
Hence post-band solo artist Ben Folds.
This one, definitely.
On their first album, the songs were written by both Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood.
Wood left the band after that first album, and the only other song ever recorded by ELO that wasn’t written by Jeff Lynne was Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven.”
A side note but I remember hearing about a guy who was making a movie all by himself. He had written the script of course. And he was acting and directing. But he was also operating the camera. And he was doing it all solo. He was performing all the roles. He’d set up the camera where he wanted it and then start it running. He would then walk around in front of the camera to deliver his lines. Later he would edit the footage to cut out the parts of him walking in and out of the shot and cut together the footage of him performing as different characters to form a scene.
The Foo Fighters’ debut album was just Dave Grohl. He wrote all the songs, and played all the instruments. It wasn’t until after that album came out that he got a band to join him on tour, and then in the studio for the rest of the band’s output. I’m not sure if he still writes all the songs or not.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Does Alicia Keys play the instruments on her albums? I think she only plays piano, so I doubt it. How about Adele, Bieber, Bowie, Ed Sheeran, etc, all listed with top-selling albums in 2016? Looking at Bowie’s Blackstar, he played multiple instruments but still had credits for others on bass, guitar, keyboard, woodwinds, and drums/percussion.
I think the norm is more that solo vocalists only play at most an instrument or two in studio, and sometimes don’t play any. Also, I think many younger solo artists don’t always write their own material, at least not until they become successful enough to demand it.
The Who - No
Pink Floyd - No
The Kinks - No
CSN - WTF Huh?
Beach Boys - Hell no. They had 4 or 5 people who wrote.
Bread - No (James Griffin)
The Stones - Close. One Bill Wyman song officially released. But Jagger and Richards were huns and wouldn’t let anyone get their name on the records. Like Mick Taylor, Ronnie Wood, or Marianne Faithful for instance.
Wilco - Has had at least one non Tweedy song, but close.
This is basically the same deal with Robert Smith and The Cure, I gather.
Yes, he writes all their songs with the rest of the band collaborating on working out the parts during recording.
In the Ozzy years of Black Sabbath the bassist, Geezer Butler, wrote almost all of the lyrics. In the Dio years Ronnie apparently wrote the lyrics.
In the interview at the link below, there is the following bit:
"GB: Oh yeah. I hated writing lyrics in the end. It really got to me. I felt like I was becoming taken for granted. In the first place, Ozzy used to come up with a few things and then we used to work together a lot. But I felt like, toward the end, it was like, Geezer writes the lyrics and that’s it, and I didn’t like that. I felt, if somebody’s got a good idea, they should come up with it, and not leave it up to me all the time. It’s sort of like leaving it to Tony to come up with all the music and nobody helping out – that kind of thing.
WW: So you didn’t feel like someone was stepping on your toes?
GB: Not at all. I was so relieved when Ronnie came and said that he wrote lyrics. It was brilliant for me (laughs)."
In the Ozzy years of Black Sabbath their bassist, Geezer Butler, wrote the lyrics. When Ozzy was fired and Ronnie took over the vocals, he also became the lyricist. From a 2007 interview from the following link: http://www.westword.com/music/qanda-with-geezer-butler-of-heaven-and-hell-black-sabbath-5673701
*GB: Oh yeah. I hated writing lyrics in the end. It really got to me. I felt like I was becoming taken for granted. In the first place, Ozzy used to come up with a few things and then we used to work together a lot. But I felt like, toward the end, it was like, Geezer writes the lyrics and that’s it, and I didn’t like that. I felt, if somebody’s got a good idea, they should come up with it, and not leave it up to me all the time. It’s sort of like leaving it to Tony to come up with all the music and nobody helping out – that kind of thing.
WW: So you didn’t feel like someone was stepping on your toes?
GB: Not at all. I was so relieved when Ronnie came and said that he wrote lyrics. It was brilliant for me (laughs).*
Sorry, I just realized that the OP was about the music, not the lyrics.
Mike Åkerfeldt writes all the music for Opeth.
Steven Wilson wrote 90% of the songs for Porcupine Tree, with maybe one or two band collaborations per album.
Ian Anderson certainly was a songwriting tyrant in Jethro Tull. Aside from cover songs, and a few tracks on their debut which were written by Mick Abrahams (who then quit the band due to “musical difference”) there are only a handful of Jethro Tull songs for which Ian Anderson doesn’t receive sole credit. Ironically, one of these is their most well-known song, “Aqualung” – his ex-wife wrote the lyrics.
Nah, the OP did mention lyrics as well as music.
Though I did get the impression that the OP was particularly interested in bands where one member dictated to the others exactly what and how to play (not just songwriting, but the kind of thing a composer or orchestrator does when he writes out parts for all the members of an orchestra or ensemble).
Minus the drums. (This is the story for Siamese Dream.) Gish had a D’Arcy song on it “Daydream,” and James Iha has a number of writing credits. So not 100% Corgan, but the vast majority of the Pumpkins work was his songwriting credit.
One person being the main songwriting force in a band is common.
Procol Harum.
Keith Reid was listed as songwriter and wrote the lyrics on every song they records other than instrumentals and covers.
In addition, Gary Brooker was credited as songwriter (and wrote the words) on all but 11 of the 80 songs they recorded before their breakup. He was the only songwriter credited (with Reid) on their last four albums.
Not strictly accurate, but not an entirely crazy response either. Exapno Mapcase specifically referenced instrumentation not lyrics and on the first album Stephen Stills played everything except drums and a few rhythm guitar parts ( and he even played all of those on his own songs ). It became a bit more egalitarian on subsequent albums.