Not much has been said here about "songs that create a character" as in musical theatre - I don't watch much musical theatre - it's not my favorite genre - but I was once very impressed by a production of "A Little Night Music" by Stephen Sondheim. I was impressed by the fact that - unlike every other musical I had seen - the songs were integrated with the plot. Some exposition occurred in the songs. You learned things from the songs about the characters and their relationships. To give an example, one man, while going to bed, sings a song in which he reveals that his marriage has not been consummated, and he considers the pros and cons of trying once again to seduce his wife, and ends up deciding to just go to sleep. Then the wife sings a song - both are sort of soliloquies - in which she reveals how guilty she feels about depriving her husband, and how frightened she is of losing her virginity. Talk about keeping an audience spellbound! Before hearing these songs, the audience had no way of knowing this couple had a sexual problem! I was blown away!

For "songwriter as character" there's also Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines - not that I care much for it myself, but it IS contemporary.

An interesting sidelight: I understand the reason Paul Simon's "One Trick Pony" album was a commercial failure was that he was trying to write songs to go with the movie by that name, and he wanted them to sound like they were written by the character he played. Unfortunately, the character was a rather morose loser, and the songs show it. In other words, realism went too far!