Music
Meet the musicians providing hits for other performers
Some of the songwriters employed to pen inescapable hits for the world's biggest artists have shelved their own solo careers to do so. Here are a few of them.
There are, of course, plenty of artists around who write their own songs. But, according to analysis by UK music industry magazine Music Week, it takes an average of 4.53 writers to create the biggest hit singles. Drake’s One Dance needed eight writers, while Mark Ronson's Uptown Funk has 13 different credits.
Behind-the-scenes songwriters are important figures, then. The men and women in the boiler room of modern pop music. Some of them, like Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga and Tove Lo, eventually turn their songwriting chops into solo fame, as did Carole King and many a Motown writer back in the day. But many more remain behind the scenes, like Eg White, Max Martin, Emily Warren, Julia Michaels, Jake Gosling and Starrah. The list goes on.
There are also a number of modern pop songwriters who know what it's like to chase stardom, but who are equally happy to step out of the limelight and write songs for others. Or at least share the limelight with them. Here are a few artists-turned-songwriters providing the hits for other performers.
Tobias Esso Jr
Canadian musician and songwriter Tobias Esso Jr has only released one album of his own so far – 2015’s critically acclaimed Goon. But it was one of that album’s standout moments, the intimate torch song How Could You Babe, that inadvertently ended a solo career he didn’t much want anyway.
After Adele heard that track, she invited Tobias to write songs for her world-conquering 2015 album, 25. The result was When We Were Young, and the start of a major gig as a songwriter that enabled him to keep making music without feeling the discomfort of hearing his own voice. “I just said, ‘I gotta hang this up.’ It was a heavy, heavy suit I wanted to take off,” a secretive Jesso Jr told Billboard recently.
As well as writing for Adele, he’s since also penned songs for Sia, the controversial rapper XXXTentacion, who died in 2018, Niall Horan, Shawn Mendes, Florence + The Machine and many, many more.
Joel Potts
As the main songwriter for chart-topping UK indie-pop band Athlete, Joel Potts won an Ivor Novello award for that band's big breakthrough hit Wires in 2006. It helped mark out Potts as a skilled songwriter, and after Athlete’s short-lived fame fizzled out, allowed him the opportunity to start penning songs with other artists.
He’s since written for London Grammar, James Bay, Shura, You Me At Six and Tom Grennan, but it’s his songs with George Ezra that have really hit the mark. Potts won another Ivor Novello for Ezra’s breakout single Budapest, and was involved in most of the songs on his latest album, Staying At Tamara's – including Shotgun.
But writing and co-writing for other performers isn’t right for every solo artist or band member. ”I think if you have such a massive ego that you need to force yourself to the front, you’re going to struggle,” he told the Guardian a few years ago.
Jack Antonoff
New Jersey born Jack Antonoff isn't just Lena Dunham's ex, he's also a former member of anthemic indie-pop band Fun. – remember their big, Grammy-winning hit We Are Young? – and currently releases music as Bleachers.
But it's Antonoff's work behind the scenes that takes up most of his time these days. With that Grammy gong for We Are Young under his belt, Antonoff was invited to co-write with Carly Rae Jepsen, Tegan and Sara, and, most importantly, Taylor Swift.
His songwriting relationship with Swift continues to this day, but Antonoff also brought his golden touch to songs on Lorde's Melodrama album and St. Vincent's Masseduction album. He's currently one of Lana Del Rey's wingmen on her next album, Norman F***ing Rockwell.
Tom Hull
Tom Hull was once a scruffy UK indie-pop urchin better known as Kid Harpoon, but he's much better known now as an international hitmaker for Shakira and Rihanna, Jessie Ware, Florence Welch, HAIM, Lily Allen and Skrillex.
As members of a close-knit group of indie artists in London during the mid-to-late-'00s, Hull became close pals with Florence Welch, and when she and her Machine hit the big time Welch asked Hull to write songs with her. His work on Florence's Ceremonials album opened the door, and since 2011 he's also written for Meghan Trainor, Years And Years, Lykke Li and Harry Styles.
Becoming a pop songwriter allowed Hull to escape the sombre, downbeat music of his own solo career and go for the jugular instead. Indeed, he told Jessie Ware to “forget the minimal electronic stuff, let’s make some f**king big pop tunes”.
Sia
OK, so Australian pop all-rounder and abstract wig fancier Sia Furler is pretty famous in her own right these days, but it took a while for success to come. In fact, it wasn't until her sixth album, 1000 Forms Of Fear, in 2014, that she broke through internationally.
Always a reluctant star – hence all the masks, wigs and mystery she shrouds herself in – after Sia was asked to write songs for Christina Aguilera's 2010 Bionic album she quit as a performer in 2012 to write songs for Beyoncé, Kylie Minogue, Flo Rida and Rihanna.
Buoyed by the success of her songwriting credits – her co-writes have sold well over 25m copies – Sia returned as the chart-topping, masked solo performer we now know today. But she hasn't stopped penning hits for other artists: she's recently written for Fall Out Boy, Paloma Faith, ZAYN, Camila Cabello and Katy Perry.
