Quality is more important than Quantity.

Kate, release something NOW!!!

id say that bjork, burt bacharach, bob dylan and stevie wonder have all displayed longevity, diversity and quality that is on par with princes...and im sure they have just as much music "in the vault"...

deep answer b-knight and true. i know guys who do a lot of music who have palyed in local bands for their entire career
but nobody knows but their local fans they are prolific.

somebody made a point about stevie and mccartney not writing as mnay good songs as prince. that's a sujective answer.(smile as everything is on this thang)

i think the question dealt with somebody who wrote a lot of
material. a lot of the classical greats from 200 years ago
were prolific as were jazz composers like THE dUKE.

b-knight breakin' down the ratio of songs "50 etc etc was a
point i never thought of.

if you want to go by amount of material in the pop field
(r&b,rock,blues,reggae)
here's the ones who i know for sure have a trememdous body
of work:

willie dixon:chess records writer,producer bassist
smokey robinson: old smoke has credits out of this world
curtis mayfield: (my personal fave of all time)
frank zappa
elton john (most with bernie taupin)
john lennon & paul mccartney
james brown (although his name is on some he didn't write)
stevie wonder
prince
george clinton (usually collaborating with p-funk folk like
bootsy & bernie worrell)
bob marley (and he only lived 36 years!)
elvis costello
joni mitchell
carole king
leiber & stoller

i'm sure there's more ...just the ones who have at least
a few years of time...
youngca...

youngca said:

[color=blue:88626d96ac:b51b3c4008]That's a great list, man. Peeps need to investigate some of those names and get some musical education up in herre!

Personally I think that the Lennon & McCartney team never wrote a bad song. Now when I say Lennon & McCartney I meant just John & Paul writing songs together. George and Ringo don`t count.

iwishyouheaven said:

[color=blue:e898806504:638152b4f4]To TRULY get a REAL answer to this question, you would have to listen to names without saying "Who?"
There are tons of artists who have never had national hits who have thousands of songs. I guarentee, at least one or some live in whatever city you're in. Think of this for a moment. Suppose Prince DIDN'T get a record deal. Suppose he just sang and played guitar in different projects around town, BUT the whole time he was still writing songs. Suppose he only wrote 50 songs a year? He'd still have 1,000 songs by now but you just wouldn't have heard any of them. See how easy it is to get to that number? 50 songs a year. That's around 5 songs a month. Prince, unlike many other artists, had more creative freedom. He released/releases a LOT of what he wrote/writes. WB let him release a lot, too. He IS very prolific, but there are others. The answers may be at the U.S. Copyright Office. I suspect you'd see a LOT of names you don't know, though.

Sdldawn said:

No. How can you be so sure? Do you know many songs Prince has written that weren't released? He writes hundreds of songs for each album to choose from.

Sdldawn said:

No. How can you be so sure? Do you know many songs Prince has written that weren't released? He writes hundreds of songs for each album to choose from.