Are musicians who don't write their own music actually musicians, or are they mere puppets of record labels, dancing for executives as surely as they dance for the public? We're not quite sure. But, we do know that lots of famous musicians are a step away from being cover artists. For every respected singer-songwriter like Tracy Chapman , history-defining band like The Beatles or superb modern band like Italian blues-and-psychedelia-laced doom outfit Messa (this is a deep cut, people), there's a whole industry within the music industry of artists performing music written by other people. This includes some of the biggest classics of the past century.

By now, lots of us know that some artists, like Lady Gaga and Sia, once wrote music for others before breaking out on their own. In their

See Full Page