Musicians Who Wrote More No. 1 Hits Than They Ever Scored Themselves

There's more than one way to score a No. 1 hit — and a few famous musicians found that the path to multiple chart-toppers was by writing them, not performing them. For decades, major-label musicians have had the choice either to record and release their own compositions or to allow outside help to craft the most commercially potent songs possible. Writing and performing are two separate skill sets, and some musicians are lucky enough to possess both. They've endured as singers and band leaders, appearing on songs that have reached the Hot 100 multiple times while also farming out their material to be covered or interpreted by others. Yet try as they did to scale the charts as performers and get a No. 1 single, other acts reached the top more often as composers.

From the prolific songwriting team of James Harris and Terry Lewis to the numerous hits penned by Bob Dylan, these songwriters notched some hit singles by themselves — sometimes even hitting No. 1. But where they were really wildly successful and popular was by writing multiple No. 1 smashes that were performed by others.

Without brothers Maurice and Robin, the other permanent members of the Bee Gees, the powerfully piped Barry Gibb didn't fare so well. He took just one truly solo single into the Top 40, "Shine Shine," in 1984. But Gibb is simultaneously technically a one-hit wonder as well as one of the most objectively successful songwriters of all time. The Bee Gees is the act that scored the most No. 1 hits of the '70s, but never before or after that decade, and Gibb has a songwriting credit on all nine of those chart-toppers, which include "Stayin' Alive," "Tragedy," and "Jive Talkin'." 

When the Bee Gees' younger brother Andy Gibb emerged as a pop sensation in 1977, he landed three straight No. 1 hits. "I Just Want To Be Your Everything" was composed solely by Barry Gibb, while he and Andy collaborated on "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" and all four siblings had a hand in "Shadow Dancing." Other No. 1s written at least in part by Barry Gibb are the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack cut "If I Can't Have You" by Yvonne Elliman, the theme song from the 1978 movie "Grease," and the early 1980s soft rock smashes "Islands in the Stream" by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, and Barbra Streisand's "Woman in Love." All in all, Barry Gibb composed 17 No. 1 smashes.

Carole King spent much of the 1960s as an in-house songwriter for a music publisher, composing (often with her then-husband Gerry Goffin) tunes that were pitched to singers and groups throughout the music industry. She didn't emerge as a recording artist until 1971 with "Tapestry," a collection of era-appropriate singer-songwriter fare that spent 15 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 200 and generated the double A-side No. 1 hit single "It's Too Late" / "I Feel the Earth Move." That marked the first and only time King scaled the Hot 100 with her own material.

Before her mainstream performing career took off, it was a common occurrence for a song that King worked on to reach No. 1. The Shirelles' "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," a love song from 1960 that sounds even sweeter today, did it, and was soon followed by Bobby Vee's "Take Good Care of My Baby" in 1961 and Little Eva's "The Loco-Motion" in 1962. King (and Goffin) wrote Steve Lawrence's 1963 No. 1 "Go Away Little Girl," which would once more head all the way up the charts in 1971 when Donny Osmond covered it. James Taylor's only No. 1 hit is a 1971 cover of King's "Tapestry" cut "You've Got a Friend," while in 1974, Grand Funk's hard rock reboot of "The Loco-Motion" topped the charts all over again. That makes seven King No. 1s for other acts.

In the late 1970s, James Harris III (aka Jimmy Jam) and Terry Lewis were members of the Minneapolis band Flyte Tyme, which evolved into the Time, formed by Prince. Harris and Lewis played keyboard and bass, respectively, on the Time's self-titled 1981 debut and 1982's "What Time is It?" and helped send the singles "Get It Up," "Cool (Part 1)," and "777-9311" into the Top 10 of the R&B chart. The duo began to write for other acts, and while entrenched with the S.O.S. Band in 1983 and stuck in Atlanta due to a blizzard, Prince fired the pair. From that point, Harris and Lewis became an in-demand behind-the-scenes team.

Nine of Janet Jackson's 10 career No. 1 hits were written by Harris and Lewis, including "That's the Way Love Goes," "Together Again," and "Escapade." The unit also co-wrote, either as a duo or as individual contributers, a slew of No. 1 hits by other artists, including the Human League's "Human," Karyn White's "Romantic," Boyz II Men's "On Bended Knee" and "4 Seasons of Loneliness," and the Mariah Carey, Joe, and 98 Degrees collaboration "Thank God I Found You." That means the pair's compositions made it to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 no fewer than 14 times.

In his seven-plus-decade career, Nobel Prize-winning lyricist, folk-rocker, and boomer icon Bob Dylan has never had a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2020, he finally topped one list for the first time, when "Murder Most Foul," an epic, 17-minute meditation on the John F. Kennedy assassination, crawled its way to the No. 1 spot on the obscure and relatively minor Rock Digital Song Sales chart. Fortunately for Dylan, he's enough of an influential figure and esteemed songwriter that his compositions turned into No. 1 hits when interpreted by other musicians, even if most of them were on genre-specific charts. 

The soaring folk-rock hybrid "Mr. Tambourine Man" was a pop-chart-topping smash in 1965 for the Byrds. Back in 1963, Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" was the vehicle for Peter, Paul & Mary to hit No. 1 on the easy listening chart, while Steve Wonder's 1966 cover ascended the entirety of the R&B chart. And there's Olivia Newton-John, who enjoyed a No. 1 easy-listening cut in 1971 with Dylan's "If Not for You."

Oddly, Dylan has twice topped the country chart by proxy. He wrote Garth Brooks' 1998 No. 1 "To Make You Feel My Love," and is credited on Darius Rucker's 2013 smash "Wagon Wheel." That makes seven No. 1 hits for Dylan overall, only one of which was performed by him.