10 Huge Bands Whose Singer Isn't the Primary Lyricist

Although singers are usually seen as the focal point of most bands, there are quite a few really big groups where the singer didn't actually write a lot of the words to their songs — someone else in the band did.

Take Motley Crue, for example. One of the main elements of the band's sound is Vince Neil's voice, however, he didn't pen the lyrics to Crue's songs — Nikki Sixx did. The whole point of a band is combining the talents of multiple people, and in Crue's case, Sixx's strength was his songwriting, Neil's was his singing and Tommy Lee and Mick Mars' were their instrumental abilities.

There are a couple of other really popular bands that had a similar dynamic, such as Alice in Chains and Slayer. Though Layne Staley later contributed a lot of lyrics, especially to Alice's self-titled third album, Jerry Cantrell has penned the majority of their discography, especially their three most recent records with William DuVall. In Slayer's case, Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King wrote most of Slayer's lyrics, with Tom Araya contributing some throughout their catalog.

READ MORE: 25 Bands Whose Singer Is the Only Original Member Left

Scroll through the images below to see 10 huge rock and metal bands whose singer wasn't the primary lyricist. If the vocalist did contribute some songwriting, we made note of it underneath.