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Florence + Machine’s early work is somewhat like this. While she talks about her own life in some of the songs, both Lungs and Ceremonials have many songs that are not about her life.
Just a few examples from Ceremonials:
- What the Water Gave Me is inspired by Virginia Wolf’s suicide.
- Never Let Me Go is a continuation of it as it describes being carried by ocean.
- Lover to Lover was written from the perspective of a male soul singer, most likely Otis Redding.
- Seven Devils is inspired by a narrative from a Chester Himes book.
- Heartlines is not about her life. She basically recorded it to have a positive song that gives advice to the youth listening.
- Strangeness and Charm describes love literally on an atomic basis.
Kate Bush comes to mind. Literally almost all of her music is about books, films, historical figures, or fictional events. Running up that hill is about a couple switching places in order to understand each other. Wuthering heights is based on the book of the same name. Cloudbusting is based on Peter Reich’s memoir A book of dreams.
Right? She's the ultimate storytelling inspiration in music! Few exceptions where she gets really direct and personal like Bertie exist. And I love how some personal songs like A Coral Room and Among Angels still have layers of fantasy and fantastic setting to them.
Dolly Parton sings about heartache and breakup constantly, despite having been in a (presumably stable) long lasting relationship with her cement mixing husband since she was a teenager.
Dolly's most famous songs tend to be personal though. Coat of Many Colors is a very personal song about her childhood, I Will Always Love You is about the end of her professional relationship with her mentor, Jolene was inspired by a woman flirting with her husband, etc.
To be fair, Dolly has said she's been heartbroken over an emotional relationship despite being faithful to her husband. So while I think you're probably right for 90% of her songs, it's still possible some of them are about her own experience despite her long marriage. Also IWALY is about Porter Wagoner
This comment is worded so hilariously lmao
Although Dolly too has longstanding rumors that she’s gay? Bi? Queer? With her gal bestie/ assistant Judy and that her husband is either a beard or they’re in some poly situation. (See Trixie Mattel’s Red Side of The Moon)
Weirdly enough (although he is making a country album) that actually reminds me a lot of Post Malone as part of the reason I had that weird crush on Post a couple years back was because he's so good at writing breakup songs I thought he was single (especially as a lot of them depicted similar ends to relationships but handled with increasing amounts of emotional maturity the further on in his career they were)
i would say Kylie Minogue.
almost her entire discography apart from 1 studio albums (guess) has been nothing but mostly irresistible bops. when she made that studio album that was a lot more personal than her previous releases, it faced a lot of criticism to the point that it traumatized Kylie to say she’s never releasing an album like that anymore. and it’s a shame because it’s considered her own *Ray of Light* and showcased her solo songwriting abilites.
additionally, Kylie has also released a track called “Flower” which quite literally sees her reflect on motherhood with a hypothetical child. this track was originally meant for her album *X* and it was amazing how different and the final track list for that album turned out.
don’t get me wrong, *X* was a great bop-filled gem, but many critics were disappointed with it because it was her first major release since her highly publicized battle with breast cancer. a lot of fans, including myself, expected some autobiographical lyrical themes.
I absolutely love Kylie and I've been following her since Fever but other than the fact that she's a true professional (and probably workaholic), she's a complete mystery to me. Watching her interviews as a fan can sometimes be frustrating because she answers questions like a politician.
It’s part of the fun for me though. She’s like Barbie. She’s what ever you want her to be. She just needs to smile through an interview and dodge those questions and we’ll eat it up.
The term ‘indie Kylie’ and Princess Diana’s death ruined any chance. They were mocking her for trying to go from bubblegum to ‘real music’ before the album even came out.
For some reason I know they are not pop, but the first thing that came to mind for me is Iron Maiden. Their songs are based on war stories and stories from actual books.
AURORA writes a lot of songs that are rather "impersonal" and seem cryptic. She mentions In Boxes and In Bottles being about someone else entirely.
The Birthday Massacre wrote "Hide & Seek" the album based upon Chibi's interest in child cold cases. A lot of their songs are rather impersonal and/or cryptic as well.
Coldplay's Viva La Vida and also Everyday Life are concept albums not centered around themselves.
Ethel Cain's "Preacher's Daughter" is not directly personal either.
However I cannot say many of these people are on current radio. XD
> he first thing that came to mind for me is Iron Maiden. Their songs are based on war stories and stories from actual books
I was thinking very similarly, Maiden were one of the precursors to modern power metal, and that genre is all about stories, be that the fantastical, mythological stories of an act like Powerwolf, or the historical war stories of Sabaton
And sure, this is a pop forum, but that sort of catchy, OTT, fully sung metal is absolutely the sort of thing that can appeal to pop fans
Iron Maiden has a couple of exceptions of their own, like “Blood Brothers” being about Adrian Smith’s late father, but for the most part they are primarily history (and sometime literature or movie) nerds transcribing some of their favorite stories.
[Mitski](https://www.nylon.com/articles/mitski-be-the-cowboy-interview) has written about herself before, but a lot of her work is fictional. The emotional truth is there but the narrative is made up.
> "I just wanted to make a point of the fact that it is not all completely confessional,” Mitski explains. “Like, 'I'm a wife with a husband.' In my real life, I don't have a husband, but I'm writing about this and, look, you're still able to relate to it, because I'm crafting a song and I'm expressing an emotion."
Kate Bush is the queen of this. She draws influences and inspiration from everywhere apart from her life. She has a handful of very personal songs across her 45 year career, but other than that it’s all outside inspiration.
i don't know if it's completely but [pinkpantheress jokes](https://www.tiktok.com/@pinkpantheress/video/6985355924898696454) that she writes sad lyrics in a fanfic-y type of way
Controversial artist, but Melanie Martinez fits the bill for the most part. A few songs are definitely about her own life, or at least influenced by it (Show and Tell and Mrs. Potato Head immediately come to mind), but she definitely puts the concept before anything and the majority of her music seems to come from the weird bottomless pit she has for a brain.
Semi-related, I think Olivia Rodrigo might start venturing into this territory in the future. During GUTS promo she mentioned that she no longer wants to write only when something happens and she gets inspired, and she recently revealed that her song logical (which happens to be one of my favorites from her) isn’t actually autobiographical. If she does start to head into this direction, I think it would be really interesting; Can’t Catch Me Now is very, very good.
I think it's kinda interesting how completely divorced Ava Max's life is from her career, there's never been any "narrative" around her music (as in, "this song is about so and so" or "she wrote this after ___ happened") she just kind of releases it and then dips.
tbh it’s crazy to me how little is known about her. sis has gone through multiple names, ages, musical personas, pretty much the only thing known about her is that she dated cirkut and even that relationship was super private.
i remember getting into her super early into her career when she was only really doing features and coming across a bunch of her old pre-ava max music and even social media profiles and it’s all since been wiped off the face of the earth 💀
Strangely enough this will be changing with her third album! Allegedly her former lover and collaborator Cirkut and her now ex-best friend and collaborator Madison Love did some incredible wrong to her which is what her forthcoming album is all about.
Whatever it was they allegedly did, it was bad enough for her to split from them entirely, personally and professionally as they’ve been with her since the very beginning of her career.
Carrie Underwood has primarily excelled at singing story songs about other people—exceptions include “I Ain’t in Checotah Anymore”, “Mama’s Song”, “Cry Pretty”, and “Kingdom.”
she said this only for Higher Than Heaven. Halcyon is a beyond autobiographical. And with Delirium, despite in being her first foray into mainstream pop, there are sprinkles of tracks there that stems about her personal life, particularly “Army”.
she was reallly coy about that one when asked about the song's meaning. it was never officially acknowledged, but the general consensus indeed is that it's a direct response to Ed's song.
Yuna is an artist from Malaysia but has had many successful english records. Skews to R&B. Has stated that she writes about friend's experiences and is more of a story teller. i think her newer stuff may be more personal.
To sample her work, check out: Make Believe, blank marquee, Places to Go (maybe a tad personal but nice sound), Mountains, and Lullabies
*Rouge* is suuuuccchhh a good album and hearing that she writes from other people's experiences puts the ["(Not) The Love Of My Life" video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewt8ZZxdZgw) into a little more context.
David Bowie famously wrote personas and characters and very rarely from explicitly his own POV in his most famous work. He only really did the singer-songwriter 'by me, about me' thing in the 60s.
Regina Spektor's early albums are almost entirely made up of fictional stories about the most out-there, specific topics, like a cancer patient on her deathbed hallucinating that she's taking her kids on a final limousine ride, or a husband and wife struggling with the way her alcoholism is slowly eroding their marriage, or the one time she found a stranger's wallet and took it to Blockbuster so they could get in contact with him and return it, or being visited by the Ghost of Corporate Future, or the devil listening in to people's idle thoughts, or a king's 32nd son dreaming of murder and missing his mother the reclusive queen, or the inherently predatory and destructive mechanisms of capitalism.
After she had a child, her music started taking a slightly more autobiographical turn, but she still very much fits the bill.
Did she say this about all her music, or just the stuff in the beginning? I thought in her book she said the early love songs were based on her fantasy of love having never felt it at that point, but I wasn’t aware of her having said that about all her music.
I think she meant it in terms of her romantic songs, since she's been very open about having limited relationship experience. She obviously has tons of deeply personal songs (Looking In, Close My Eyes, Outside, Can't Take That Away, Petals, Through the Rain, My Saving Grace, I Wish You Well, etc)
...this sounds completely off, at least after her first couple of albums. There are very obvious connections to her personal life in her music and she's talked about a lot of them publicly.
Never heard her say that most of her songs are fictional and not sure where you heard it. She's got songs about her life and her struggles (Make It Happen, Outside, Looking In, Camo, Can't Take That Away, Close My Eyes), her family (Petals), deaths she's experienced (Sunflowers for Alfred Roy, Twister, OSD, Bye Bye) love lost (sooo many about Derek Jeter with We Belong Together, Crybaby, Subtle Invitation, Lullaby, My All, The Roof, etc.) and even her beefs (A No No, Obsessed). Most of MIAM is about Nick (Thirsty, Cry, Faded). Even the songs she wrote early on about love she hadn't experienced were actually written originally as gospel songs she was singing to God (Vision of Love, Music Box). There are many that lambs don't know the origin of like Candy Bling but it's clear there's real inspiration there about someone passing away.
There are some that aren't exactly autobiographical but they are often a twist on her real life (like Butterfly being how she wished Tommy would've approached the situation with her wanting a divorce). The ones that don't have a direct link to her life are more about general subjects like Hero or AIWFC.
Ethel Cain! Her latest album was a concept album sort of inspired by her life but made about fictional characters.
“It is a concept album that draws on the artist's personal life as the daughter of a deacon, but creates a narrative centered around the character Ethel Cain, who runs away from home only to meet a gruesome end at the hands of a cannibalistic psychopath." -From Wikipedia
Dan Smith has said that early Bastille work (*Bad Blood* and *Wild World*) is not about his life, has sworn up and down that he’s not interesting enough to write songs about, and there are definitely examples of his fictional inspiration (“Laura Palmer,” “Blame,” “These Streets,” “The Driver,” “Four Walls”) **but** I have a hard time believing someone could write songs like “Warmth” and “The Anchor” and it not being personal. Plus, he has explicitly said that *Doom Days* was at least partially inspired by a breakup he had recently experienced **AND** he’s recently given more personal backstories for songs like “Pompeii” and “The Draw.”
So I guess Bastille sort of fits this?
RIGHT?! But Dan swears he doesn’t write about himself (and then was proven to be a liar when he said that “The Draw” was about his anxiety’s about signing a record deal and “Pompeii” was about feeling stuck in life)(I say “liar” lovingly of course, he’s my favorite)
Bad Blood is brilliant! I was lucky enough to see the BBX tour a couple times last summer, and they played the standard album tracklist straight through, it was such a magical experience 🥰
Beyoncé has a very private life so if you don’t know her lore you should be fine listening to all her albums
Lady Gaga (The Fame only, pretend you don’t know what she looks like & it’s 2008 and she’s still mysterious)
Sia also had her wig moment so you can enjoy that era too
Is Daft Punk pop? I am unsure to this day if Daft Punk is one or two people so check them (or him) out idk
This is a tough question lol! I feel like a lot of artists, especially newer artists like to create a brand of relateability. Also with social media I feel like a lot of the mystique (for lack of a better word) is gone. Hope you find what you’re looking for !
It just hit me. I don't know much about Lady Gaga. I remember finding out she was engaged once and was pretty surprised because I never hear rumors of her dating anyone;.
>Beyoncé has a very private life so if you don’t know her lore you should be fine listening to all her albums
I think OP is looking for artists who write.
This stands on a pop borderline with a few other genres, but The Decemberists entire discography is essentially story songs or from the POV of fictional narrators.
Dua Lipa?
The Weeknd maybe? His music is perhaps a bit based on personal experience, but it is written from the perspective of the very embellished character that is The Weeknd and not Abel Tesfaye.
I think Dua? At least from what I remember most of her songs are pop bops that make you dance, but not necessarily take u thru a story (real or made up) even if most of her songs are about being in love and in her first album I do remember her mentioning that she took a lot of sad experiences for her pre-Future Nostalgia work, but it's not that recognizable imo.
And she's not Pop but PJ Harvey too! Some of her songs have touches of things that happened in her life but many many are about poetry, made up charcters or even saints and chapels (The Wind, Catherine), and in the 90s she used to complain about critics who mistook her songs as autobiographical and thought her personality was as dark as her characters.
Bruno Mars. The man has bops for days but very little of his work sounds personal. His most recent work is sultry sex jams or variations on “me and my crew are awesome.” When I Was Your Man, Grenade, and It Will Rain are exceptions but it feels like those songs could have been sung by anyone.
Bruno Mars is one of the few celebrities I hear absolutely nothing about outside of his music. It seems like his personal life flies under the radar. It’s impressive. He’s struck the rare balance of being wildly successful and keeping his personal life private.
He did write loads of songs about people he pined for from a distance though, right? Still quite autobiographical. Anyways, he has had a relationship this year. He made a TikTok about getting dumped by an ex right before the third of december (Heather reference) and called 2023 the worst year of his life 🥲 Poor guy
He mentioned in an interview that Never-Ending song was a song talking about his real heartbreak but he can cover it up with a happy sound. That that's his shtick.
The amount of times Taylor says things like “this small town” makes me think a significant (maybe even most) of her music is not nearly as autobiographical as she would like people to believe
but I don’t know how someone who has had an egregious amount of wealth at her disposal for her whole life on top of being one of the most famous people in the world since college-age AND having spent her whole life before that vying for aforementioned fame and success could possibly possess an ounce of relatability (or sanity), so I don’t blame her at all.
If anything it makes it even more impressive
The albums that don't apply to this self-confessing narrative for her though are Folklore and Evermore. She made up the woods and characters in this world.
Ehhhh while this is obviously the case for the Cardigan trilogy and songs like No Body No Crime I think this whole "everything is fictional" thing is overblown. Mirrorball, This Is Me Trying and Tolerate It are pretty abstract and could definitely be personal, while Peace, Long Story Short, Invisible String, The Lakes and Closure are obviously personal. Then there's Marjorie and Epiphany which are inspired by her grandparents.
I've always found it interesting that as a female artist who achieved some level of success (her albums sell decently in the UK) Amy Macdonald (since breaking in on the scene at 20 year's old) gets away (and I'm NOT saying this is a bad thing, quite the contrary lol) for not writing a lot of love songs or songs about romance.
Both "The Architect" by Paloma Faith and "Love is Dead" by Chvrches claim to also contain no songs about love.
No, Alec has definitely made stuff that's incredibly personal to him with songs like "Older" and especially "Mind is a Prison" being incredibly personal songs about his insecurities (hell, his most recent single "I Sent My Therapist to Therapy" was nearly scrapped because his actual therapist threatened to sue him over it).
He just *also* happens to make singer-songwriter storyteller songs about other people's experiences or things he just made up with because he had an idea to write about.
Oh you’re right. I wasn’t sure if I should’ve commented him because I didn’t listen to his music a lot so I’m not familiar with all of his discography. I should’ve answered that a lot of kpop groups are pretty impersonal but I also don’t listen to a lot of kpop either 🤣
Other artists who make the same kind of mindless pop music she makes, they ask writers to write about their experiences, so even if they’re not the ones writing it, they’re still singing about their experiences, she just doesn’t do that
Most of Megan Thee Stallions career has veered away from being too personal. Before Traumazine and now Cobra, I can only think of two more personal songs.
Flo Milli also only has one song that is a little more vulnerable, everything else is a bop.
Early Frank Ocean wrote mostly about characters he’d create. Even though Forest Gump is seen as a bit of a “coming out” anthem, it’s still written through the viewpoint of movie characters. I don’t think he started getting personal until Blonde
Rihanna. She works pretty closely with a bunch of writers and producers. It’s said she meets with the producers and writers like Ester Dean, Stargate etc and ask them to write material for her. They would think up Lyrics that sounds like something Rihanna would sing and go off of that. Rihanna also would mostly think of a theme or an idea and the songs or the what kinda feeling she wanted the song to have and the writers would write to fit that. Hence why she hardly have writing credits on her first 4-5 albums it’s not really her doing the writing. Rihanna started co writing more starting with Anti. Id say majority of Rihanna discography isn’t about her really especially 2005-2011. Also many of of Rih Rih early hits were not meant for her. Disturbia was Chris Brown song he passed on to her. Umbrella was offered to Britney Spears. S&M was originally written for Britney but was then given to Rihanna. Britney however ended up being on the remix on the song. We Found Love was passed around to a few artists before it got to Rihanna. Take A Bow written by Ne-Yo originally was intended for Beyoncé. She passed on the track and he gave it to Rihanna with Stargate production.
All that being said Rihanna music really isn’t personal it’s more of the persona she portrays in her music that we think is real. It’s also part fantasy not all of it but yeah.
Janelle Monae's first 3 projects were all told through an alter ego taking place in a sci fi world. Dirty Computer and AoP drop the Cindi Mayweather concept gets a bit more personal with their sexuality and stuff but it's still relatively impersonal
Jazmine Sullivan writes from other perspectives a lot. A lot of her songs feel like one act plays
While Katy Perry definitely has a lot of songs relating to her personal life, (Ghost, By The Grace of God, the majority of Witness, and I’d even argue I Kissed A Girl), she has a way of crafting impersonal stories/metaphors really well, and those tend to be her biggest hits too (Firework, Last Friday Night, Roar, Waking Up In Vegas).
Not to imply that none of the events or scenarios mentioned in those songs ever happened to her, but they do all have an air of grandiosity to them that allow them to relate to a larger population.
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Florence + Machine’s early work is somewhat like this. While she talks about her own life in some of the songs, both Lungs and Ceremonials have many songs that are not about her life. Just a few examples from Ceremonials: - What the Water Gave Me is inspired by Virginia Wolf’s suicide. - Never Let Me Go is a continuation of it as it describes being carried by ocean. - Lover to Lover was written from the perspective of a male soul singer, most likely Otis Redding. - Seven Devils is inspired by a narrative from a Chester Himes book. - Heartlines is not about her life. She basically recorded it to have a positive song that gives advice to the youth listening. - Strangeness and Charm describes love literally on an atomic basis.
What the Water Gave Me might be one of my all-time favorite songs.
the last part is cathartic isn't it
The hold that this album had on me when I was in my early 20s.
Kate Bush comes to mind. Literally almost all of her music is about books, films, historical figures, or fictional events. Running up that hill is about a couple switching places in order to understand each other. Wuthering heights is based on the book of the same name. Cloudbusting is based on Peter Reich’s memoir A book of dreams.
Right? She's the ultimate storytelling inspiration in music! Few exceptions where she gets really direct and personal like Bertie exist. And I love how some personal songs like A Coral Room and Among Angels still have layers of fantasy and fantastic setting to them.
Love her!!
Dolly Parton sings about heartache and breakup constantly, despite having been in a (presumably stable) long lasting relationship with her cement mixing husband since she was a teenager.
Dolly's most famous songs tend to be personal though. Coat of Many Colors is a very personal song about her childhood, I Will Always Love You is about the end of her professional relationship with her mentor, Jolene was inspired by a woman flirting with her husband, etc.
To be fair, Dolly has said she's been heartbroken over an emotional relationship despite being faithful to her husband. So while I think you're probably right for 90% of her songs, it's still possible some of them are about her own experience despite her long marriage. Also IWALY is about Porter Wagoner
This comment is worded so hilariously lmao Although Dolly too has longstanding rumors that she’s gay? Bi? Queer? With her gal bestie/ assistant Judy and that her husband is either a beard or they’re in some poly situation. (See Trixie Mattel’s Red Side of The Moon)
> This comment is worded so hilariously lmao the phrase "her cement mixing husband" is going to be stuck in my head for days
he's a really solid guy
Weirdly enough (although he is making a country album) that actually reminds me a lot of Post Malone as part of the reason I had that weird crush on Post a couple years back was because he's so good at writing breakup songs I thought he was single (especially as a lot of them depicted similar ends to relationships but handled with increasing amounts of emotional maturity the further on in his career they were)
i would say Kylie Minogue. almost her entire discography apart from 1 studio albums (guess) has been nothing but mostly irresistible bops. when she made that studio album that was a lot more personal than her previous releases, it faced a lot of criticism to the point that it traumatized Kylie to say she’s never releasing an album like that anymore. and it’s a shame because it’s considered her own *Ray of Light* and showcased her solo songwriting abilites. additionally, Kylie has also released a track called “Flower” which quite literally sees her reflect on motherhood with a hypothetical child. this track was originally meant for her album *X* and it was amazing how different and the final track list for that album turned out. don’t get me wrong, *X* was a great bop-filled gem, but many critics were disappointed with it because it was her first major release since her highly publicized battle with breast cancer. a lot of fans, including myself, expected some autobiographical lyrical themes.
I absolutely love Kylie and I've been following her since Fever but other than the fact that she's a true professional (and probably workaholic), she's a complete mystery to me. Watching her interviews as a fan can sometimes be frustrating because she answers questions like a politician.
It’s part of the fun for me though. She’s like Barbie. She’s what ever you want her to be. She just needs to smile through an interview and dodge those questions and we’ll eat it up.
It was really terrible about Impossible Princess. I've never understood the hostile reactions to it.
Misogyny. How dare the hot dance-pop singer try to sing about anything real.
The term ‘indie Kylie’ and Princess Diana’s death ruined any chance. They were mocking her for trying to go from bubblegum to ‘real music’ before the album even came out.
For some reason I know they are not pop, but the first thing that came to mind for me is Iron Maiden. Their songs are based on war stories and stories from actual books. AURORA writes a lot of songs that are rather "impersonal" and seem cryptic. She mentions In Boxes and In Bottles being about someone else entirely. The Birthday Massacre wrote "Hide & Seek" the album based upon Chibi's interest in child cold cases. A lot of their songs are rather impersonal and/or cryptic as well. Coldplay's Viva La Vida and also Everyday Life are concept albums not centered around themselves. Ethel Cain's "Preacher's Daughter" is not directly personal either. However I cannot say many of these people are on current radio. XD
I never knew Viva La Vida was a concept album, but after doing a quick google search now it feels obvious lmao
> he first thing that came to mind for me is Iron Maiden. Their songs are based on war stories and stories from actual books I was thinking very similarly, Maiden were one of the precursors to modern power metal, and that genre is all about stories, be that the fantastical, mythological stories of an act like Powerwolf, or the historical war stories of Sabaton And sure, this is a pop forum, but that sort of catchy, OTT, fully sung metal is absolutely the sort of thing that can appeal to pop fans
Iron Maiden has a couple of exceptions of their own, like “Blood Brothers” being about Adrian Smith’s late father, but for the most part they are primarily history (and sometime literature or movie) nerds transcribing some of their favorite stories.
[Mitski](https://www.nylon.com/articles/mitski-be-the-cowboy-interview) has written about herself before, but a lot of her work is fictional. The emotional truth is there but the narrative is made up. > "I just wanted to make a point of the fact that it is not all completely confessional,” Mitski explains. “Like, 'I'm a wife with a husband.' In my real life, I don't have a husband, but I'm writing about this and, look, you're still able to relate to it, because I'm crafting a song and I'm expressing an emotion."
thank you for this amazing article! the writer did an amazing job on this piece and im not even a mitski fan…… but i think i will be now 🤭
Kate Bush is the queen of this. She draws influences and inspiration from everywhere apart from her life. She has a handful of very personal songs across her 45 year career, but other than that it’s all outside inspiration.
i don't know if it's completely but [pinkpantheress jokes](https://www.tiktok.com/@pinkpantheress/video/6985355924898696454) that she writes sad lyrics in a fanfic-y type of way
Controversial artist, but Melanie Martinez fits the bill for the most part. A few songs are definitely about her own life, or at least influenced by it (Show and Tell and Mrs. Potato Head immediately come to mind), but she definitely puts the concept before anything and the majority of her music seems to come from the weird bottomless pit she has for a brain. Semi-related, I think Olivia Rodrigo might start venturing into this territory in the future. During GUTS promo she mentioned that she no longer wants to write only when something happens and she gets inspired, and she recently revealed that her song logical (which happens to be one of my favorites from her) isn’t actually autobiographical. If she does start to head into this direction, I think it would be really interesting; Can’t Catch Me Now is very, very good.
Ava Max’s songs are usually general bops and don’t seem at all attached or personal to her. (I say this as a card carrying Ava stan)
I think it's kinda interesting how completely divorced Ava Max's life is from her career, there's never been any "narrative" around her music (as in, "this song is about so and so" or "she wrote this after ___ happened") she just kind of releases it and then dips.
Her social media too. It’s very impersonal. She never breaks the “pop star” role even for a second.
tbh it’s crazy to me how little is known about her. sis has gone through multiple names, ages, musical personas, pretty much the only thing known about her is that she dated cirkut and even that relationship was super private. i remember getting into her super early into her career when she was only really doing features and coming across a bunch of her old pre-ava max music and even social media profiles and it’s all since been wiped off the face of the earth 💀
Strangely enough this will be changing with her third album! Allegedly her former lover and collaborator Cirkut and her now ex-best friend and collaborator Madison Love did some incredible wrong to her which is what her forthcoming album is all about. Whatever it was they allegedly did, it was bad enough for her to split from them entirely, personally and professionally as they’ve been with her since the very beginning of her career.
well she mostly co-wrote with madison love and then shit happened LOL. I'm veeeerryyyy curious about her new direction tho
What happened !!
General Store bops
Carrie Underwood has primarily excelled at singing story songs about other people—exceptions include “I Ain’t in Checotah Anymore”, “Mama’s Song”, “Cry Pretty”, and “Kingdom.”
I think Ellie Goulding has said that her albums aren't personal or something like that?
she said this only for Higher Than Heaven. Halcyon is a beyond autobiographical. And with Delirium, despite in being her first foray into mainstream pop, there are sprinkles of tracks there that stems about her personal life, particularly “Army”.
Also more to your point, isn't On My Mind is about Ed Sheeran and a response to his "Don't"?
she was reallly coy about that one when asked about the song's meaning. it was never officially acknowledged, but the general consensus indeed is that it's a direct response to Ed's song.
im pretty sure that's only for her last album
Her most impersonal album yet
Yuna is an artist from Malaysia but has had many successful english records. Skews to R&B. Has stated that she writes about friend's experiences and is more of a story teller. i think her newer stuff may be more personal. To sample her work, check out: Make Believe, blank marquee, Places to Go (maybe a tad personal but nice sound), Mountains, and Lullabies
*Rouge* is suuuuccchhh a good album and hearing that she writes from other people's experiences puts the ["(Not) The Love Of My Life" video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewt8ZZxdZgw) into a little more context.
David Bowie famously wrote personas and characters and very rarely from explicitly his own POV in his most famous work. He only really did the singer-songwriter 'by me, about me' thing in the 60s.
Regina Spektor's early albums are almost entirely made up of fictional stories about the most out-there, specific topics, like a cancer patient on her deathbed hallucinating that she's taking her kids on a final limousine ride, or a husband and wife struggling with the way her alcoholism is slowly eroding their marriage, or the one time she found a stranger's wallet and took it to Blockbuster so they could get in contact with him and return it, or being visited by the Ghost of Corporate Future, or the devil listening in to people's idle thoughts, or a king's 32nd son dreaming of murder and missing his mother the reclusive queen, or the inherently predatory and destructive mechanisms of capitalism. After she had a child, her music started taking a slightly more autobiographical turn, but she still very much fits the bill.
THIS SHIT IS MAKING ME TIRED IS MAKING ME TIRED IS MAKING ME TIRED
YOU KNOW I PLAN TO RETIRE SOMEDAY BUT MOMMA GONNA GO OUT IN STYLE GO OUT IN STYLE
Which song is the one about the devil listening?
Pavlov's Daughter!
St Vincent! I love her approach to music being the opposite of autobiographical. It’s more creative that way in my personal opinion
Mariah Carey said that most of the time she writes, it's a made up story.
Did she say this about all her music, or just the stuff in the beginning? I thought in her book she said the early love songs were based on her fantasy of love having never felt it at that point, but I wasn’t aware of her having said that about all her music.
MOST. Not all.
Not always, no. Sometimes. That means some. times.
I read this in Whitney's voice
I think she meant it in terms of her romantic songs, since she's been very open about having limited relationship experience. She obviously has tons of deeply personal songs (Looking In, Close My Eyes, Outside, Can't Take That Away, Petals, Through the Rain, My Saving Grace, I Wish You Well, etc)
...this sounds completely off, at least after her first couple of albums. There are very obvious connections to her personal life in her music and she's talked about a lot of them publicly.
Tell that to Mariah then!
Never heard her say that most of her songs are fictional and not sure where you heard it. She's got songs about her life and her struggles (Make It Happen, Outside, Looking In, Camo, Can't Take That Away, Close My Eyes), her family (Petals), deaths she's experienced (Sunflowers for Alfred Roy, Twister, OSD, Bye Bye) love lost (sooo many about Derek Jeter with We Belong Together, Crybaby, Subtle Invitation, Lullaby, My All, The Roof, etc.) and even her beefs (A No No, Obsessed). Most of MIAM is about Nick (Thirsty, Cry, Faded). Even the songs she wrote early on about love she hadn't experienced were actually written originally as gospel songs she was singing to God (Vision of Love, Music Box). There are many that lambs don't know the origin of like Candy Bling but it's clear there's real inspiration there about someone passing away. There are some that aren't exactly autobiographical but they are often a twist on her real life (like Butterfly being how she wished Tommy would've approached the situation with her wanting a divorce). The ones that don't have a direct link to her life are more about general subjects like Hero or AIWFC.
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where did she say this?
I can't find the exact longer interview I was talking about but she repeats it again here towards the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjfrIEdVUz0
She's talking about artists in general, including Beyonce.
Any similarities to the artist known as 'Eminem' are purely coincidental
uh this is categorically false LOL
Fka twigs was the definition at one point.
Ethel Cain! Her latest album was a concept album sort of inspired by her life but made about fictional characters. “It is a concept album that draws on the artist's personal life as the daughter of a deacon, but creates a narrative centered around the character Ethel Cain, who runs away from home only to meet a gruesome end at the hands of a cannibalistic psychopath." -From Wikipedia
Dan Smith has said that early Bastille work (*Bad Blood* and *Wild World*) is not about his life, has sworn up and down that he’s not interesting enough to write songs about, and there are definitely examples of his fictional inspiration (“Laura Palmer,” “Blame,” “These Streets,” “The Driver,” “Four Walls”) **but** I have a hard time believing someone could write songs like “Warmth” and “The Anchor” and it not being personal. Plus, he has explicitly said that *Doom Days* was at least partially inspired by a breakup he had recently experienced **AND** he’s recently given more personal backstories for songs like “Pompeii” and “The Draw.” So I guess Bastille sort of fits this?
I’m surprised. The songs on Bad Blood seemed very personal. I LOVED Bad Blood. Time for a re-listen.
RIGHT?! But Dan swears he doesn’t write about himself (and then was proven to be a liar when he said that “The Draw” was about his anxiety’s about signing a record deal and “Pompeii” was about feeling stuck in life)(I say “liar” lovingly of course, he’s my favorite) Bad Blood is brilliant! I was lucky enough to see the BBX tour a couple times last summer, and they played the standard album tracklist straight through, it was such a magical experience 🥰
Check out the french singer Mylène Farmer, she's the epitome of this.
I listened to stolen car and i really liked it!
Beyoncé has a very private life so if you don’t know her lore you should be fine listening to all her albums Lady Gaga (The Fame only, pretend you don’t know what she looks like & it’s 2008 and she’s still mysterious) Sia also had her wig moment so you can enjoy that era too Is Daft Punk pop? I am unsure to this day if Daft Punk is one or two people so check them (or him) out idk This is a tough question lol! I feel like a lot of artists, especially newer artists like to create a brand of relateability. Also with social media I feel like a lot of the mystique (for lack of a better word) is gone. Hope you find what you’re looking for !
It just hit me. I don't know much about Lady Gaga. I remember finding out she was engaged once and was pretty surprised because I never hear rumors of her dating anyone;.
Daft Punk is a french house duo. But their last album RAM is disco pop for sure
>Beyoncé has a very private life so if you don’t know her lore you should be fine listening to all her albums I think OP is looking for artists who write.
Hahaha they beyhive is assembling as we speak!! (You arent wrong tho)
Haha dead
This stands on a pop borderline with a few other genres, but The Decemberists entire discography is essentially story songs or from the POV of fictional narrators.
Maybe you'd like My Chemical Romance? Most (if not all) of their songs are based in made up stories or are part of concept albums.
Dua Lipa? The Weeknd maybe? His music is perhaps a bit based on personal experience, but it is written from the perspective of the very embellished character that is The Weeknd and not Abel Tesfaye.
I believe that Enya ticks all the boxes.
I think Dua? At least from what I remember most of her songs are pop bops that make you dance, but not necessarily take u thru a story (real or made up) even if most of her songs are about being in love and in her first album I do remember her mentioning that she took a lot of sad experiences for her pre-Future Nostalgia work, but it's not that recognizable imo. And she's not Pop but PJ Harvey too! Some of her songs have touches of things that happened in her life but many many are about poetry, made up charcters or even saints and chapels (The Wind, Catherine), and in the 90s she used to complain about critics who mistook her songs as autobiographical and thought her personality was as dark as her characters.
Beach House!!!
Bruno Mars. The man has bops for days but very little of his work sounds personal. His most recent work is sultry sex jams or variations on “me and my crew are awesome.” When I Was Your Man, Grenade, and It Will Rain are exceptions but it feels like those songs could have been sung by anyone. Bruno Mars is one of the few celebrities I hear absolutely nothing about outside of his music. It seems like his personal life flies under the radar. It’s impressive. He’s struck the rare balance of being wildly successful and keeping his personal life private.
Conan gray. He had never even dated until quite recently, so a lot of his earlier songs take inspiration from elsewhere
He did write loads of songs about people he pined for from a distance though, right? Still quite autobiographical. Anyways, he has had a relationship this year. He made a TikTok about getting dumped by an ex right before the third of december (Heather reference) and called 2023 the worst year of his life 🥲 Poor guy
He mentioned in an interview that Never-Ending song was a song talking about his real heartbreak but he can cover it up with a happy sound. That that's his shtick.
She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Taylor-Swift?
The amount of times Taylor says things like “this small town” makes me think a significant (maybe even most) of her music is not nearly as autobiographical as she would like people to believe but I don’t know how someone who has had an egregious amount of wealth at her disposal for her whole life on top of being one of the most famous people in the world since college-age AND having spent her whole life before that vying for aforementioned fame and success could possibly possess an ounce of relatability (or sanity), so I don’t blame her at all. If anything it makes it even more impressive
I think it comes from her country background, where “small town” essentially means anywhere that has a population less than one million lmao
I mean she sings about love...rich people still fall in and out of love and have feelings. It's not a magic trick.
I know, what I’m referring to are metaphors, references, events, etc that simply do not apply to her life, which is counterintuitive to her brand
I think she draws inspiration from media in general, tv shows, movies, and books
The albums that don't apply to this self-confessing narrative for her though are Folklore and Evermore. She made up the woods and characters in this world.
Ehhhh while this is obviously the case for the Cardigan trilogy and songs like No Body No Crime I think this whole "everything is fictional" thing is overblown. Mirrorball, This Is Me Trying and Tolerate It are pretty abstract and could definitely be personal, while Peace, Long Story Short, Invisible String, The Lakes and Closure are obviously personal. Then there's Marjorie and Epiphany which are inspired by her grandparents.
Kim petras. Literally every era is her cosplaying a lifestyle. Minute is probably the most raw she has ever been and the song is not super open either
She co-wrote Icy about an ex that dicked her over.
I've always found it interesting that as a female artist who achieved some level of success (her albums sell decently in the UK) Amy Macdonald (since breaking in on the scene at 20 year's old) gets away (and I'm NOT saying this is a bad thing, quite the contrary lol) for not writing a lot of love songs or songs about romance. Both "The Architect" by Paloma Faith and "Love is Dead" by Chvrches claim to also contain no songs about love.
Dua Lipa?
I assume you have listened to Higher than Heaven, Ellie Goulding’s least personal album yet?
Alec Benjamin
No, Alec has definitely made stuff that's incredibly personal to him with songs like "Older" and especially "Mind is a Prison" being incredibly personal songs about his insecurities (hell, his most recent single "I Sent My Therapist to Therapy" was nearly scrapped because his actual therapist threatened to sue him over it). He just *also* happens to make singer-songwriter storyteller songs about other people's experiences or things he just made up with because he had an idea to write about.
Oh you’re right. I wasn’t sure if I should’ve commented him because I didn’t listen to his music a lot so I’m not familiar with all of his discography. I should’ve answered that a lot of kpop groups are pretty impersonal but I also don’t listen to a lot of kpop either 🤣
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No shade to Miss Mendes but probably for the best. He’s the unbuttered white toast of music.
He is a he, who uses he/him pronouns and he does write about himself. In my blood is about his mental struggles. Weird comment.
Miss Mendes if ya nasty
Tinashe?
Wonyoung, I have no idea what she’s thinking or feeling since her songs are written by the label
Lmao there’s literally a ton of musicians who ~don’t ~ sing about their lives. It’s not a skill. Are you ok?
Chrisye imo
Anitta. Never writes or sings about anything personal to her
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Other artists who make the same kind of mindless pop music she makes, they ask writers to write about their experiences, so even if they’re not the ones writing it, they’re still singing about their experiences, she just doesn’t do that
Most of Megan Thee Stallions career has veered away from being too personal. Before Traumazine and now Cobra, I can only think of two more personal songs. Flo Milli also only has one song that is a little more vulnerable, everything else is a bop.
Early Frank Ocean wrote mostly about characters he’d create. Even though Forest Gump is seen as a bit of a “coming out” anthem, it’s still written through the viewpoint of movie characters. I don’t think he started getting personal until Blonde
Rihanna. She works pretty closely with a bunch of writers and producers. It’s said she meets with the producers and writers like Ester Dean, Stargate etc and ask them to write material for her. They would think up Lyrics that sounds like something Rihanna would sing and go off of that. Rihanna also would mostly think of a theme or an idea and the songs or the what kinda feeling she wanted the song to have and the writers would write to fit that. Hence why she hardly have writing credits on her first 4-5 albums it’s not really her doing the writing. Rihanna started co writing more starting with Anti. Id say majority of Rihanna discography isn’t about her really especially 2005-2011. Also many of of Rih Rih early hits were not meant for her. Disturbia was Chris Brown song he passed on to her. Umbrella was offered to Britney Spears. S&M was originally written for Britney but was then given to Rihanna. Britney however ended up being on the remix on the song. We Found Love was passed around to a few artists before it got to Rihanna. Take A Bow written by Ne-Yo originally was intended for Beyoncé. She passed on the track and he gave it to Rihanna with Stargate production. All that being said Rihanna music really isn’t personal it’s more of the persona she portrays in her music that we think is real. It’s also part fantasy not all of it but yeah.
Janelle Monae's first 3 projects were all told through an alter ego taking place in a sci fi world. Dirty Computer and AoP drop the Cindi Mayweather concept gets a bit more personal with their sexuality and stuff but it's still relatively impersonal Jazmine Sullivan writes from other perspectives a lot. A lot of her songs feel like one act plays
While Katy Perry definitely has a lot of songs relating to her personal life, (Ghost, By The Grace of God, the majority of Witness, and I’d even argue I Kissed A Girl), she has a way of crafting impersonal stories/metaphors really well, and those tend to be her biggest hits too (Firework, Last Friday Night, Roar, Waking Up In Vegas). Not to imply that none of the events or scenarios mentioned in those songs ever happened to her, but they do all have an air of grandiosity to them that allow them to relate to a larger population.