Music app: Songs not sorting correctly by artist

I want to list songs by artist in iTunes. I click on the "Artist" column when the "Songs" label is highlighted in the sidebar. Most of the list is sorted. But not all. For instance, seeing a group of songs by "Aaron Copeland" come after a group of songs by "Wynton Marsalis" makes no sense (screengrab provided if that helps).


Re-doing the sort (ascending or descending) does nothing to change the presentation order. Using Sequoia, 15.6.1, with Music/iTunes, 1.5.6.11. Any suggestions to fix this? Thanks for any help.

Mac Pro (2023)

Posted on Dec 30, 2025 12:14 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 31, 2025 2:02 AM

Right-click on the column headings and expose the columns for Sort Album Artist, Album Artist, and Sort Artist. Artist is already shown. Sorting is based on the first non-empty value in that order of priority. I.e. Album Artist normally trumps Artist, and the sort values trump the display values. You could be seeing this order because one or more of Sort Album Artist, Album Artist, or Sort Artist is set to Wynton Marsalis.


tt2

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 31, 2025 2:02 AM in response to Ionbug

Right-click on the column headings and expose the columns for Sort Album Artist, Album Artist, and Sort Artist. Artist is already shown. Sorting is based on the first non-empty value in that order of priority. I.e. Album Artist normally trumps Artist, and the sort values trump the display values. You could be seeing this order because one or more of Sort Album Artist, Album Artist, or Sort Artist is set to Wynton Marsalis.


tt2

Music app: Songs not sorting correctly by artist

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