Does an artist have to write their own songs to be good?

[Doc Holliday]

I think there's a difference between an artist (in the musical sense) and a musician.

I believe an artist is someone who is creative. Therefore, they create. They make their own stuff. They write their music based on... whatever. They tell a story. Whether it's about love, past experiences, trauma, angst, etc. They, again, create.

Then you have a musician who is more or less just someone who plays an instrument or sings. They have musical ability but lack the writing ability. They typical tend to be the kinds of folk who have their music written for them and they just merely perform it, or do covers.

That's my opinion anyway.

I agree with the sentiment of the post completely, but I've always had the two terms switched in my mind, I dunno why, I just feel like 'Musician' is a far more honourable term in todays music where everyone is just considered someone's favourite 'artist'

 

[Donald Trump]

Writing lyrics doesn't really matter or make a difference when it comes to pop, because they all basicallly write the same stuff -- it only really makes a difference in rock -- because they deal with realistic problems and thing in life.

I completely disagree. There's endless amounts of vacuous rock shit. ACDC, Van Halen, GNR, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi etc all have terrible lyrics. There's punk songs, folk songs, rap songs, blues songs, and pop songs with good lyrics.
Perhaps completely is a bit far. I think most lyrics are shit.
I don't think it would be very difficult to write lyrics for Brittney etc, I'm fairly sure I could do it.

I don't think pop stars should be considered musicians, but then again, I don't like pop.