Songwriters & composers

The people writing songs and musical scores.

People in Songwriters & composers

55 profiles

Composer

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Creating the musical Hamilton.

Singer

Freddie Mercury

Fronting Queen and writing Bohemian Rhapsody.

Singer

David Bowie

Creating Ziggy Stardust and repeatedly reinventing his music.

Composer

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Composing The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro.

Singer

Nina Simone

Bringing classical piano and civil-rights conviction into soul music.

Singer

Beyoncé

Making Crazy in Love, Single Ladies and Lemonade.

Singer

Rod Stewart

Singing Maggie May, Sailing and Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?

Singer

Dolly Parton

Writing and singing Jolene, I Will Always Love You and 9 to 5.

Singer

Neil Diamond

Writing and singing Sweet Caroline and America.

Composer

Franz Schubert

Composing Winterreise, the Unfinished Symphony and hundreds of songs.

Singer

Shakira

Singing Hips Don’t Lie, Whenever, Wherever and Waka Waka.

Composer

Felix Mendelssohn

Composing the Wedding March and reviving Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

Singer

Bob Marley

Bringing reggae to a worldwide audience with the Wailers.

Singer

Peter Gabriel

Singing Sledgehammer and co-founding the WOMAD festival.

Singer

The Weeknd

Singing Blinding Lights, Starboy and Can’t Feel My Face.

Composer

Gioachino Rossini

Composing The Barber of Seville and William Tell.

Composer

Antonio Vivaldi

Composing The Four Seasons.

Composer

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Composing The Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Evita.

Singer

Lady Gaga

Singing Bad Romance, Born This Way and Shallow.

Composer

Vangelis

Composing the scores for Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner.

Pianist

Herbie Hancock

Bringing jazz piano into new conversations with funk and electronic music.

Composer

Duke Ellington

Composing for a jazz orchestra as a palette of individual voices.

Singer

James Brown

Helping create funk through rhythm-driven songs and explosive stage performances.

Singer

Stevie Wonder

Creating soul albums including Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life.

Singer

Bob Dylan

Expanding popular songwriting with poetic, political and surreal lyrics.

Trumpeter

Miles Davis

Leading jazz in new directions through Kind of Blue and electric fusion.

Clarinetist

Benny Goodman

Leading a defining swing orchestra and prominent racially integrated jazz groups.

Singer

Prince

Fusing funk, rock and pop in Purple Rain and a vast self-directed catalogue.

Songwriter

Cole Porter

Writing witty, sophisticated songs for musicals including Anything Goes and Kiss Me, Kate.

Pianist

Chick Corea

Bridging acoustic jazz and electric fusion with Return to Forever.

Singer

Paul McCartney

Writing Beatles songs and continuing with Wings and a long solo career.

Composer

Gustav Mahler

Writing symphonies that combine orchestral drama, song and vast emotional contrasts.

Rapper

M.I.A.

Combining rap, electronic music and a refugee’s perspective in Paper Planes.

Singer

Madonna

Continually reinventing pop music, performance and image.

Composer

Claude Debussy

Expanding musical colour through works such as La mer and Clair de lune.

Composer

Leonard Bernstein

Composing West Side Story and bringing orchestral music to television audiences.

Singer

Michael Jackson

Making Thriller and redefining the pop music video.

Singer

Gloria Estefan

Bringing Latin rhythms into international pop with Miami Sound Machine.

Singer

Buddy Holly

Helping establish the guitar-band sound of rock and roll.

Musician

B. B. King

Giving electric blues a distinctive singing guitar voice.

Singer

Hank Williams

Writing country standards including I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.

Musician

John Coltrane

Expanding jazz saxophone through Giant Steps and A Love Supreme.

Composer

Dmitri Shostakovich

Writing symphonies and quartets under the pressures of Soviet rule.

Musician

John Lennon

Co-founding the Beatles, writing with Paul McCartney and recording Imagine.

Musician

Chuck Berry

Helping define rock and roll with guitar riffs, teenage stories and songs such as Johnny B. Goode.

Composer

Franz Liszt

Transforming virtuoso piano performance and composing works that stretched the instrument’s expressive possibilities.

Violinist

Niccolò Paganini

Pushing violin technique to spectacular extremes in performances and the 24 Caprices.

Composer

Ennio Morricone

Writing film scores whose whistles, voices and melodies became inseparable from the scenes.

Singer

Miley Cyrus

Moving from Hannah Montana stardom to a solo career spanning pop, country and rock.

Guitarist

Jimi Hendrix

Transforming electric-guitar playing through distortion, feedback and inventive performance.

Rapper

Jay-Z

Building a defining hip-hop catalogue with Reasonable Doubt, The Blueprint and The Black Album.

Pianist

Dave Brubeck

Leading the quartet behind Take Five and the rhythmically adventurous album Time Out.

Singer

Taylor Swift

Turning personal storytelling into global country and pop success, from Fearless to the Eras Tour.

Singer

Annie Lennox

Fronting Eurythmics and singing Sweet Dreams, Why and Walking on Broken Glass.

Composer

A. R. Rahman

Reshaping Indian film music with Roja and Bombay, then winning two Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire.