A singer collaborating with a songwriting team is nothing new in the music world, but it's striking to see just how rare a solo-written hit has become over the past few decades.
This visualization from Word.Tips, who analyzed the writing credits on every song on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End charts between 1970 and 2023, reveals the dramatic decline of solo-written hit songs.
Across the 1970s, the average number of solo-written songs per chart was 16, compared to just three when looking at the past decade.
In 1988, there were 22 solo singer-written songs in the top 100, as well as an average of two writers for every song. By 2020, the number of solo-written hits had fallen to just one โ while the average size of the songwriting team behind a Hot 100 track more than doubled to 4.5.
The number of solo-written Hot 100 songs saw a pronounced uptick in 2022, thanks in part to releases from Bad Bunny, Kate Bush's "Running up That Hill" returning to the charts after featuring in "Stranger Things" and Zach Bryan's hit country track "Something in the Orange."
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Via Voronoi.