Sorting in Itunes

See Grouping tracks into albums for general background. In some views Album Artist may have priority over Artist. Tracks marked as a compilation may not be listed with others by the same artist.

I have verified that the sorting field in the song info is the same for all of the songs by the same artist

Sort values should not be used to try to merge different primary values, but perhaps that isn't quite what you meant. There are a number of different sort values that may influence the display order of content. Generally I'd suggest using Album by Artist in the Songs view.

tt2

Nothing is ever easy. If you use the songs layout and enable the columns for track number, disc number, name, sort name, album, sort album, artist, sort artist, album artist, and sort album artist side by side then you should be able to see what values are affecting your desired order and make any corrections that might be necessary.

tt2