Which is correct here: “who has” or “with”?

Question

Which of these sentences is correct?

I'm a musician with an unhealthy addiction.

OR

I'm a musician who has an unhealthy addiction.

Or are they both correct? Any help would be really appreciated!

Answer 1

They're both fine. You could switch it up and use both for the sake of repetition and variation. One just uses a relative clause to describe the speaker where the other uses a prepositional phrase.

MUSICIAN: I am a musician who has an unhealthy addiction--I write so much music that I don't get any sleep.

2ND MUSICIAN: I am also a musician with an unhealthy addiction--I write so much music that I forget to eat.

Since the relative pronoun is redundant and is not really doing much of anything outside of the structure of the sentence, the preposition strikes me as a better place to start for style points. While it would be more concise and maybe a little more natural to use the with, in the examples above, I start with the who so that the second speaker isn't upstaging the first.

This might be a good time to review other types of relative clauses:

Non-restrictive clause: The musician, who has an unhealthy addition, is adamant about following his 12 step program.

Restrictive clause: The musician who has an unhealthy addition will crash and burn.