You could state that there's as much art to matching the right music to the right artist as there is in creating the music itself. In an ideal world, A&R's do their best to find the right match and publishers do their best to get the music in the right place, at the right time.
In reality, music finds artists and artists find music in various ways. Certain songs find their match really quickly and you could say they even become unmatched together. I mean, honestly, "End Of The Road" is forever tied to Boyz II Men due to the fact that they brought it number one for countless consecutive weeks and what would "Toxic" be without Britney Spears. If Cathy Dennis herself (the writer) had released it, it wouldn’t have had the impact it had without the impact of Britney’s stardom and video.
But other songs have a full journey of their own before finding the right match that works for them. They are the ones in which the covers overtake the original version and become bigger hits. So much so, they feel like they are the original. But in contradiction to what you may think, Adele's "Make You Feel My Love" wasn't originally an Adele song, “Torn” wasn’t originally recorded by Natalia Imbruglia and "Dancing On My Own" is not an original Calum Scott song. Ok, the latter you may have known about because Robyn's version has had a bit of an uplift since Calum's version hit the airwaves (and it is damn good, too).
Over the years, it has always felt like a slight disappointment to me to find out that a big hit song wasn't actually an original song for an artist. Usually because they were the ones that made it so iconic to me, but there really is no avoiding it. Some songs just need a few tries before they hit on and luckily these songs have gotten the chances to prove themselves worthy by finding the right combination.
As a songwriter, it’s good to keep this in mind. Along the way, you encounter a lot of feedback for your song and believe me, some people don’t hold back or give you positive criticism. They just tell you how they see it. You have to stay open minded to what people tell you, but sometimes it is just a matter of finding the right artist for your song.
