Bands that you suspect used ghostwriters

[the_man_incognito]

Modern country is just hair metal with a twang.

I say the same exact thing when describing modern country

[Bono Nettencourt]

Same fanbase fs

[the_man_incognito]

Poison's first album was a low budget rush job on an indie label.
Mötley's first was self released.
Makes zero sense that they would pay ghost writers or musicians back then.
They just got lazy or ran out of ideas after a couple of albums.

Poison flat-out lifted other people's songs for their debut album.

From only 4 years before:

https://youtu.be/ADWG6EXrbcE?si=edrf5c6yVKgoJH_W

They're lucky that Nielsen was too coked-out to care at the time.

For years, I've heard people say TDtM is a rip off of ST.
The songs don't sound anything alike and besides have a repeating half step slid (ST is based on that half step slide...TDtM just ends with it), they aren't that similar), I don't hear the 'rip off' part of the song...
I think layman might be fooled since that use of a half step riff wasn't as prevalent as so many of the other cliche's at the time...

[DonJuanDeMarco]

Poison has come up many times here. I think they just ripped songs off good enough to call them their own!

CC brought in Talk Dirty to Me from his previous band.
I Want Action was a re-written We Go Rocking.
Let it Play is Sweet Home Alabama
Unskinny Bop is I Know a Little
Something to Believe In is Sweet Melissa
Every Rose is kinda Can’t You See

For what it’s worth…Bret started out good with Songs of Life, Country Demo and Freedom of Sound. But after Rock of Love, he just got lost in his own ego and writes what comes across as parody.

[Bono Nettencourt]

Poison flat-out lifted other people's songs for their debut album.

From only 4 years before:

https://youtu.be/ADWG6EXrbcE?si=edrf5c6yVKgoJH_W

They're lucky that Nielsen was too coked-out to care at the time.

For years, I've heard people say TDtM is a rip off of ST.
The songs don't sound anything alike and besides have a repeating half step slid (ST is based on that half step slide...TDtM just ends with it), they aren't that similar), I don't hear the 'rip off' part of the song...
I think layman might be fooled since that use of a half step riff wasn't as prevalent as so many of the other cliche's at the time...

It's not just that it's a half-step chord slide, it's done in the exact same rhythm and at the same points in the song...

[LitaStrauss]

Listen to the first four Poison albums, which includes Crack A Smile.
Now listen to Hollyweird and any Bret Michaels solo song or album.

No way the same guy wrote those albums.

I've always thought that but after all these decades, nobody has ever come out to say they had ghost writers. Somebody would have said something by now. I think once Bret reached a certain level of fame and money, he got lazy and just became a different person. He didn't have the passion for songwriting anymore, or maybe he never had it that much. He had a certain amount of years of being creative and that was it. He certainly seems like somebody who is more interested in fame than being a songwriter who loves the craft.

[Bono Nettencourt]

Listen to the first four Poison albums, which includes Crack A Smile.
Now listen to Hollyweird and any Bret Michaels solo song or album.

No way the same guy wrote those albums.

I've always thought that but after all these decades, nobody has ever come out to say they had ghost writers. Somebody would have said something by now. I think once Bret reached a certain level of fame and money, he got lazy and just became a different person. He had a certain amount of years of being creative and that was it.

Well put. I think you could say that about most any band. They all hit a wall eventually, some sooner than others. Running out of good ideas doesn't necessarily mean that they were stolen. For a lot of bands, what they wrote in their pre-label days was their best stuff, then when they had to come up with a full album's worth of brand-new material, they struggled. Cheap Trick is a prime example.

[the_man_incognito]

From only 4 years before:

https://youtu.be/ADWG6EXrbcE?si=edrf5c6yVKgoJH_W

They're lucky that Nielsen was too coked-out to care at the time.

For years, I've heard people say TDtM is a rip off of ST.
The songs don't sound anything alike and besides have a repeating half step slid (ST is based on that half step slide...TDtM just ends with it), they aren't that similar), I don't hear the 'rip off' part of the song...
I think layman might be fooled since that use of a half step riff wasn't as prevalent as so many of the other cliche's at the time...

It's not just that it's a half-step chord slide, it's done in the exact same rhythm and at the same points in the song...

OK..so he may have been influenced by it, but it's not a blatant rip off...

And if you believe the wiki, CC didn't even write TDtM:

"The exact origins of the song are unclear. The song, an ode to teenage love inspired by an Eddie Cochran riff,[2] was brought to Poison by guitarist C.C. DeVille when auditioning for the band in 1985. DeVille had refused to learn the band's material for the audition and instead insisted that they play a song he claimed to have written while with his previous band The Screaming Mimis, which turned out to be a primitive early version of "Talk Dirty To Me". Though the band was turned off by DeVille's brash personality, they saw tremendous potential in the song and hired the guitarist largely to get it into their repertoire.[6]

The song's origins became murky when a defunct glam metal band called Kid Rocker sued Poison in 2011, claiming the song had in fact been written by them in the early 1980s. Kid Rocker were a Chicago band who, like Poison, moved to Los Angeles in search of fame. They signed with Atlantic Records in 1984 and had been a fixture on the Sunset Strip club scene at that time before breaking up.[7] According to the lawsuit, DeVille had auditioned for Kid Rocker in 1984 and "Talk Dirty To Me" was one of their songs that DeVille had been asked to learn for the audition. Former Kid Rocker members Billy McCarthy (later of D'Molls) and James Stonich also alleged in the suit that the Poison songs "I Won't Forget You", "Fallen Angel" and "Ride The Wind" were also written by them and later stolen by DeVille. Lawyers for Poison dismissed the suit as "baseless", noting that if the allegation was true, the plaintiffs would be extremely unlikely to wait 25 years to seek remedy to the situation.[8] The judge ultimately ruled in Poison's favor on April 8, 2013, ruling that the statute of limitations on copyright infringement had long since run out.[9]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_Dirty_to_Me

[LitaStrauss]

Lots of bands from that era "borrowed" things from other bands. "Down Boys" by Warrant is "Bye Bye Love" by The Cars, and "Hollywood" by Warrant is "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction. There was lots of ripping off going on.

[Bono Nettencourt]

Lol. Warrant copied real alternative for their faux alternative album. Not surprised.

[CrankerBait]

Aside from producers adding their input - and, keep in mind that Mutt Lange, Bob Ezrin and a few others got credits for their songwriting - I think most of the outside songwriters who worked for bands like Aerosmith, KISS, Bryan Adams were credited.

I've wondered whether a band like U2 would choose not to credit certain musical ideas for Brian Eno or Daniel Lanois, but with a joint understanding that they would already be getting a ton of cash from production royalties.

Probably there have been lots of cases of people having big chunks of their songs nicked by others, but that would be plagiarism, not ghostwriting.

There are plenty of cases where band members didn't get the credit they deserved for parts they wrote for songs, but I wouldn't call most of those guys "ghostwriters" either.

[Rocker4Real]

Desmond Child said Bon Jovi management called and offered to pay him off for "Bad Name". You gotta wonder how many other times that happened and the writer just took the payout.

[itdoesntmatter]

Desmond Child said Bon Jovi management called and offered to pay him off for "Bad Name". You gotta wonder how many other times that happened and the writer just took the payout.

I know that pop stars like Beyoncé have done that. Wouldn’t be surprised if it happened more back in the day. Also heard of a few others that will/would get at least 50% on any song from an outside songwriter, or they won’t cut the song.

[Bono Nettencourt]

Desmond Child said Bon Jovi management called and offered to pay him off for "Bad Name". You gotta wonder how many other times that happened and the writer just took the payout.

He played the long game. He was smart.

[Ozzy Stradlin]

Hole.

I’m quite sure Cobain ghost-wrote a lot of Live Through This, and Billy Corgan has said that he ghost-wrote most of Celebrity Skin.

[Love_Industry]

Listen to the first four Poison albums, which includes Crack A Smile.
Now listen to Hollyweird and any Bret Michaels solo song or album.

No way the same guy wrote those albums.

I've always thought that but after all these decades, nobody has ever come out to say they had ghost writers. Somebody would have said something by now. I think once Bret reached a certain level of fame and money, he got lazy and just became a different person. He had a certain amount of years of being creative and that was it.

Well put. I think you could say that about most any band. They all hit a wall eventually, some sooner than others. Running out of good ideas doesn't necessarily mean that they were stolen. For a lot of bands, what they wrote in their pre-label days was their best stuff, then when they had to come up with a full album's worth of brand-new material, they struggled. Cheap Trick is a prime example.

Billy McCarthy (Billy Dior of D'Molls) who was with CC in Screaming Mimis before Poison (and also in the band Kid Rocker with Ronnie Younkins of Kix) had this to say about Poison's songwriting:
"CC Deville, who is sole developer of the bulk of top-ten singles in Poison?s catalogue, yet credits the entire band of Poison as songwriters. That's because CC conceives a song and Brett, Bobby and Rikki sew it up by lending their twist to it. "
https://poisonfanclub.net/news/billy-mc ... mimi-tdtm/

So without CC, they have the guys who wrote Rock Like a Rocker trying to come up with songs. And let me guess, Bobby and Rikki stopped caring after Crack a Smile so whatever they added isn't there anymore either. Also note how the albums without CC didn't sound like classic Poison songwise - CAS and Native Tongue are more like Poison covering songs written by someone else which it essentially is if CC was the main songwriter.

[Bono Nettencourt]

Or, they were a band that were lucky to get further on their image than their talent during an era when that was trendy. See also Motley Crue.

[DonJuanDeMarco]

Here is the clip of Talk DIrty to Me. I would love to hear what Bret has to say about this. If C.C. really wrote it, OK.. but if it was stolen from another band, that's insane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-37vf5lHmg

[Bono Nettencourt]

Here is the clip of Talk DIrty to Me. I would love to hear what Bret has to say about this. If C.C. really wrote it, OK.. but if it was stolen from another band, that's insane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-37vf5lHmg

Indeed.

https://youtu.be/uVgLbD98j2g?si=d62U6a35e6qytQM1