Artists who write songs

Duchamp could've produced "What About Us?".

Julian Schnabel (that is his name, right? that friend of Basquiat?) did an album on Island about six years back. It sucked.

http://www.fun-1.com/Dream/angus.htm

Julian Schnabel appears to be a fine director, based on When Night Falls. I think he also directed Basquiat?

He might well be. His music left something to be desired, though.

John Squire - should have stuck to painting

who could forget vincent gallo. if you consider a director an artist.

His album is probably the best thing he's done

You guys entirely missed the joke. Yeah, it wasn't a gutbuster or anything, but still.

Damien Hirst was some part of Fat Les, but I don't suppose he wrote the songs.

Oh. Actually I think I got the joke initially but was confused by all these songwriting painters

Julian Schnabel, Jean Michel Basquiat and Vincent Gallo were in a band together, Gray, around 1981.

London based Ken Ardley Playboys (includes Bob and Roberta Smith and Victor Mount)

Liverpool based Rooney (John Peel is a fan)

Manchester based Die Kunst featuring the delights of Martin Vincent (Man from Delmonte)

Ross Sinclair went the other way when he moved on from the Soup Dragons drummer and then pursued a career as an artist.

Owada featuring the current Turner prize winner Martin Creed

Ed Barton is another

I made a little list a few years back of London artists doing music:

Owada (Martin Creed), Floppy (Georgina Starr), Big Bottom (Angela Bulloch, Cerith Wyn Evans) and Lowest Expectations (Angus Fairhurst). Go back to the 70s and there were people like Art and Language. There are even some terrible protest songs by Joseph Beuys.

Now I'd add New Yorkers like Hiroshi Sunairi and Fischerspooner (who were represented by a gallery, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, before signing to any label). And of course Komar and Melamid, who made 'America's Most Wanted' song using polling techniques. (It's unlistenable.)

IMO the only one of these who has really made an interesting contribution (by doing something like conceptual art in the song format, rather than just turning his hand to songs as we already know them) is Martin Creed with Owada. There are no other songs like this. They sound like scratchy guitar rock, but the lyrics are sort of Michael Craig Martin conceptual things drawing attention in a shockingly programmatic way to the thisness of the material: Creed shouts the chords as he plays them, counts, runs through the alphabet, or adumbrates the song structure as he reaches pivotal points.

If we extend the question to include (arty) fashion photographers, I'd heartily recommend Mark Borthwick's records, available from www.darla.com. Excellent.

wasn't Captain Beefheart also an artist?

yeah- big Macho AB EX paintings- think de kooning- Under his own name, Don Van Liet

art & language!! sample lyric:

"In spite of shared technology
The class-active history
Of the British motor industry
Is different from that of
the French.

'It's An Illusion', from Corrected Slogans by Art & Language and The Red Crayola, 1976

Beck does these weird Fluxus-inspired... uh... collage... things. So did his grampa Al. There was an art exhibit featuring both of their stuff a while ago. Kinda weird to think that Beck and Yoko Ono have similar artistic influences, but there you go.

It would be weirder if they didn't. Al Hansen, Fluxus artist, was Beck's grandfather.

Georgina Starr's musical projects have gotten much better.

i dig gus van sant's record and vincent gallo's record. mike alway could be considered there.