I’m pretty sure that Kate Bush song uses a number of instrumentalists in the song who aren’t her. Not a source I’d count on for anything serious but wikipedia seems to say that that song had a number of guys involved in its recording of various instruments, plus one of them did work arranging the instrumental parts which is an important part of song-writing on the broader scale.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wutheri ... hts_(song)
And I figure other sources like RateYourMusic, and Discogs would back up the personnel behind the song, though it does seem she did write all the melodies herself as far as I can tell. Though best source would be the actual liner notes probably, though I know sometimes bands do falsely credit members and such, the liner/CD sleeve notes would at least give the “official declaration” as far as who was involved in that song.
Like, not to rain on a parade, but I personally find the concept of this thread very limiting. Funny enough, there are some “one-man black metal bands” which have pretty much produced loads of songs conceived by and performed by one respective person per band. Though, it would be impossible for them to play it live as multi-tracking is necessary for one person to record a song in that type of music. And many of them use drum machines rather than acoustic/live drum recordings, so if you wouldn’t count electronics/sampled audio then I guess they wouldn’t count really.
But tbh while I would argue it’s indicative of a good song that will appeal more than average to some people if the song-writer is they themselves inspired by the quality of their music, I think it’s entirely acceptable and possible for that writer to employ or even collaborate with other musicians/writers in creating something they’re both happy with. It really comes down to making something they’re proud of, rather than making a product to sell that gives me a feeling of authenticity in an artist’s work. Of course, I often am unaware of an artist’s intentions with their art, but there are some more obvious examples of “made-to-sell” music than others which while often not 100% guaranteed is made as a product with little other substantive value, can often be quite suspect and likely to be a type of “inauthentic entertainment/art”. Best example I can think of is when Kiss admitted to going disco basically because that’s what was trending, but I can really only confidently call them out for that because iirc they basically admitted to it, whereas them going disco at that time was really suspect but not an outright admission in itself. And just fyi I never liked Kiss, I just find them a good example of that whole inauthentic money driven music enterprise type of “band”.
And to be clear, I think I’d like to be involved in a thread here with a similar concept, it’s just this thread’s very specific and strict concept leaves me kinda stumped. Like I recall seeing this months ago and basically thinking about a reply for a bit but just giving up because the scope of music that this thread can cover while staying on-topic is actually really limited and pretty much strictly “singer-songwriter” and a lot of artists even called that got help with arrangements and an instrument here or there from time to time, so it’s even more limited than that.
And yeah, the reason why my post is so long isn’t to criticize nearly as much as it’s to express that I would like some kind of semi-active thread to do with music here, but I really doubt this will be one that’ll work for me. (And I definitely like this forum still for more than just the fun section, but I feel the “fun” section helps me be more active here regularly, so it’s kinda like “come for the fun, stay for the philosophical discussion and how to be morally pragmatic/practical and effective/efficient in all that sort of stuff”