Quote:
Originally posted by Dale
But to me, (and I'm not alone here), an artist and a singer are two completely polarised concepts. A singer sings: they get given a song and told to put their vocals on it and then its put on an album. That's Rihanna. An artist is somebody who puts effort into the creation of a song, including writing lyrics, helping compose melodies etc, effectively co-producing tracks. That's Shakira.
Granted, you don't need to be that involved to be considered an "artist", but to say Rihanna is more of an artist than Shakira when all she does is put her vocals on a track is sacrilege. She may have writing credits on the likes of the Madhouse intro to Rated R, but that's not as impressive as having writing credits on just about every song on your albums like Shakira does.
We're not discussing actors or authors, so that's irrelevant.
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Being an artist doesn't just mean that you write your own songs. If an artist doesn't write their own material, there is still other ways for them to be talented - such as vocal talent, musical ability, or their ability to entertain. Whitney may not have written her songs but she has an amazing voice, and I'd much rather listen to her over someone who writes their songs.
Do you seriously listen to a song, then sit down on the computer and find out whether they wrote it or not to see if you should respect them? Why does it matter so much?
What about people who write their own lyrics, but don't compose their own music? Or modern opera singers who perform old compositions - they spend years training their voice, do they suck just because they didn't write the masterpiece they're performing?
In the end, it doesn't matter. It's just music. If you like a song, listen to it. If you don't, don't. Simple!
