The purpose of the research presented on this website is to supply information about the development of ghostwriting. Ghostwriting has been a part of music from the beginning of time, especially in regards to the genres of R&B/Hip-Hop. We, as researchers for the information presented on this website, defined a ghostwriter as an individual who wrote the lyrics for a song and does not receive acknowledgement by the public eye. The lack of common knowledge regarding an individual that wrote a song, who is not the singer, was a major influence in the development of our research.

 

We were inspired by both discussions within our "History of Rock n’ Roll" class about songwriters who do not receive acknowledgements and a project done by one of our group researchers, Carley Carder. From this interest, we began to discuss how we wanted to gather more research on ghostwriting, but we lacked the specificity of a genre to analyze. We also didn’t know exactly how to define a ghostwriter.

 

As we continued with our research into ghostwriting, we began to specify what we wanted our research to encompass. The research on this website has been gathered using Billboard Charts from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The Billboard Charts were used for our research because of their prestige and accurate time frame. We chose to focus on R&B and Hip-Hop, which are combined into one singular chart that we were able to track across the decades. Our research begins with the 1980s due to the beginnings of Hip-Hop being around the very same time. Also factoring into our decision to start with the 1980s, was the 1979 release of the song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang. The song was ghostwritten by Grandmaster Caz and solidified the role of ghostwriting in Hip-Hop for decades to come.

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To further our research we looked at each year and pulled the top track for every other week. This totaled 260 songs analyzed for each decade (See our raw data sheets under the Sources tab). Once the songs had been gathered, the researchers had to discover who the songwriter was for each track and if that individual(s) was in fact a ghostwriter. If the songwriter was determined a ghostwriter (recall the definition of a ghostwriter above), the investigation continued to see if the song went platinum after its release.

 

After we had collected a list of songs that went both platinum and were written by ghostwriters,  we decided to select a few ghostwriters to do further research on (see Decades tab). These songs were found to be platinum according to The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which is meant to recognize the success of those in the music industry through the tracking of songs that have gone either gold or platinum.  A timeline is also presented with music videos of those songs written by the selected ghostwriters that went platinum. Our research clearly shows that ghostwriting is a common occurrence among a vast array of songs that are popular and have the potential of becoming platinum records, such as the ones presented on this website. Ghostwriting is not simply a phantom of the past, but a custom in the music industry that continues on from decade to decade.

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We found that when ghostwriting is used, having an "authentic" status is lost for the artists. This is especially true for Hip-Hop artists, who are known for singing about their personal lives and experiences.