Pop music has a habit of hiding its best-kept secrets in plain sight. A song you’ve hummed along to for years might carry a songwriting credit that belongs to someone whose face you’d never expect to see behind the curtain. Some of the biggest names in music didn’t just perform hits, they quietly built entire second careers writing them for other people, sometimes under a fake name just to keep the illusion intact.
What follows are nine cases where a household name handed off a song, sometimes for personal reasons, sometimes for business, and let another artist take it to the top of the charts.
1. Dolly Parton wrote a ballad that became someone else’s signature
Dolly Parton wrote “I Will Always Love You” in 1973 as a farewell to her business partner Porter Wagoner, and she recorded it herself twice before Whitney Houston ever touched it. When Houston’s version appeared in the 1992 film The Bodyguard, it became one of the best-selling singles of all time, and for many listeners it completely replaced the idea that the song had ever belonged to anyone else.
Parton has spoken openly about the financial windfall the Houston version brought her, but plenty of casual fans still assume Whitney wrote her own signature ballad. It’s a rare case where the original writer stayed visible in credits yet still got quietly erased from public memory by the sheer size of the cover.
2. Prince hid behind fake names to write for other artists
Prince didn’t just write for other performers, he built an entire wardrobe of pseudonyms to do it. As “Christopher,” a nod to a character he played in Under the Cherry Moon, he wrote “Manic Monday” and recorded it as a duet for Apollonia 6’s self-titled album before eventually offering the single to the Bangles. The song reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1986.
As “Alexander Nevermind,” he wrote “Sugar Walls” for Sheena Easton’s 1984 album, which reached number one on the Dance chart and number three on the R&B chart. He also wrote “Nothing Compares 2 U” for his side project The Family in 1985, a song Sinéad O’Connor turned into a global hit five years later with an emotional reworking of the lyrics.
3. Sia stayed behind the scenes for some of pop’s biggest anthems
Long before Sia became known for performing with a wig over her face, she was already one of the most in-demand songwriters in pop, penning tracks for artists who got all the spotlight. She co-wrote “Diamonds” for Rihanna, “Pretty Hurts” for Beyoncé, and “Wild Ones” for Flo Rida, three songs that dominated radio for months without most listeners ever connecting them back to her.
Sia has said in interviews that she often prefers writing for others because it removes the pressure of performing, and her catalog backs that up. Her decision to eventually step into the spotlight herself, on songs like “Chandelier,” only came after years of quietly shaping other people’s biggest moments.
4. Kesha wrote hits for Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears before her own breakthrough
Before “Tik Tok” made her a star, Kesha was already writing songs for other pop acts. She co-wrote Cyrus’ song “The Time of Our Lives”, the title track of Miley Cyrus’s 2009 debut EP, a project that also spawned the far bigger hit “Party in the U.S.A.” from a different writing team.
Kesha also contributed to Britney Spears’ “Til the World Ends” from the Femme Fatale album, a song that later got its own Kesha-sung version as a bonus track. It’s a good reminder that pre-fame songwriters often work quietly on multiple projects at once, years before audiences learn their names.
5. Lady Gaga gave away a song that became one of her own biggest hits
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In one of the stranger twists on this list, Lady Gaga originally wrote “Telephone” for someone else entirely. Gaga originally wrote the song for Britney Spears, who recorded a demo. The song was pitched to Spears’s camp as a possible bonus track for the Circus album, but it was ultimately rejected, as Spears already had recorded “Phonography,” another phone-themed song, included on the album.
Gaga kept the song for herself, added Beyoncé as a guest vocalist, and released it in 2010 as one of her signature singles. She also wrote for New Kids on the Block during this era, contributing “Full Service” to their 2008 comeback album, and penned “Quicksand” as a co-write for Britney Spears’s Circus.
6. Ed Sheeran quietly wrote songs that defined other artists’ careers
Ed Sheeran built a reputation early on for writing hits that ended up in other people’s mouths rather than his own. He co-wrote “Love Yourself” with Benny Blanco, a track that became a massive Justin Bieber single after Bieber’s team picked it up, and he also co-wrote One Direction’s “Little Things” with Fiona Bevan.
Sheeran has talked in interviews about writing songs quickly and not being precious about who ends up recording them, which explains why his songwriting credits stretch well beyond his own discography. Both songs became defining hits for their respective artists, even though Sheeran’s fingerprints are all over the melodies and lyrics.
7. Bruno Mars was a hit songwriter before he was a pop star
Before “Just the Way You Are” made him a household name, Bruno Mars was part of a production and songwriting trio called The Smeezingtons, working with Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine. The Smeezingtons were booked for a week of writing sessions for Lupe Fiasco, B.o.B and Travie McCoy, and Bruno Mars and Philip Lawrence usually hummed melodies while developing songs like “Nothin’ on You” and “Billionaire.”
Mars sang the hooks on both of those tracks, which helped launch his solo career, but the writing credit was the real engine behind his rise. He also co-wrote CeeLo Green’s “Forget You,” a song that was written as a collaboration among Green, Bruno Mars, his production team the Smeezingtons, and Brody Brown, and it climbed into the top of charts across multiple countries in 2010.
8. Meghan Trainor was a professional songwriter years before “All About That Bass”
Meghan Trainor’s breakout as a performer in 2014 obscured the fact that she’d already been writing for other artists for years. At 18, Trainor signed a songwriting deal with Big Yellow Dog Music, penning tracks for Rascal Flatts and Disney star Sabrina Carpenter.
She co-wrote “I Like the Sound of That” for Rascal Flatts alongside Dan + Shay’s Shay Mooney, and later contributed to Jennifer Lopez’s “Ain’t Your Mama,” a song originally meant for Trainor’s 2014 album Title before J. Lo got a hold of it. She has also written for Fifth Harmony, Little Mix, and John Legend, building a songwriting resume that runs parallel to her performing career.
9. Missy Elliott shaped hits for Whitney Houston and Aaliyah from behind the boards
Missy Elliott is remembered as one of hip hop’s most inventive solo artists, but for much of the 1990s she was equally busy writing and producing for other singers. She contributed to Whitney Houston’s “My Love Is Your Love” album, helping craft the sound of “It’s Not Right but It’s Okay,” a single that became one of Houston’s biggest hits of that era.
Elliott’s work with Aaliyah went even deeper, shaping much of the sound on “One in a Million” alongside producer Timbaland, and she also wrote for groups like 702 and SWV during the same stretch. Her influence on late-1990s R&B often gets credited to the artists who sang the songs, even though Elliott’s writing was frequently the backbone underneath.
Songwriting credits rarely get the same attention as chart positions or award nominations, which is exactly why stories like these tend to surprise people. A hit song can carry an entirely different history than the one listeners assume just from hearing a familiar voice on the radio. The next time a track feels oddly personal or unexpectedly clever, it might be worth checking who actually wrote it before assuming the singer did.
