NYT 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters

Yeah ok

Individual ballots from musicians/industry folks are interesting:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/27/magazine/critics-pick-greatest-american-songwriters.html

(For instance, Dua Lipa submitted only one name: Patti Smith.)

Surprised that Tom Waits didn't end up on the list, with the number of people who had him on their ballots.

Also kind of shocked that Jagger/Richards didn't end up on a single ballot.

It's American songwriters which tbf i also missed

when i glanced at that article on the nyt website and saw mariah carey front and knew immediately ILX would be polling this.

not to knock her, but when every song post-Butterfly generally has 2-3 writers attached to it, you kinda lose that songwriter label in my book.

i would've put joanna newsom on there

Dammit, searched for this and didn't see it. Mods please feel free to delete my post.

No Randy Newman, jeesh.

Billy Bragg agrees with that (Joanna Newsom).

Jeff Tweedy is one of three who voted for Jeff Tweedy.

David Byrne put Olivia Rodrigo, though she has few solo credits.

Billy Joel got votes but didn't make it.

Looked at the individual ballots, which I found interesting. Stephin Merritt isn't mentioned by anyone, yet he's (rightfully) on the list. Am I missing something? I guess that's just a sampling of the ballots?

also, if they're going to lump josh osborne, brandy clark and shane mcanally as one, it's completely unforgiveable to not include the wu-tang clan in the list.

It's American songwriters which tbf i also missed

ohhh that makes so much more sense now. I woke up and immediately read the article pre-coffee.

I guess that's just a sampling of the ballots?

yeah there were 250 ballots, which were then aggregated and whittled down by NYT critics. sounds like the critics automatically included the very top vote-getters and then collectively decided on the rest.

More about the.methodology:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/27/magazine/greatest-living-songwriters-methodology.html

*extremely gigantic eyeroll*

respect to jeff tweedy for voting for himself

not too offensive of a list, but this made me go back to check if jimmy webb was still alive and turns out, he is.

Dammit, searched for this and didn't see it. Mods please feel free to delete my post.

― TO BE A JAZZ SINGER YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO SCAT (Jazzbo), Tuesday, 28 April 2026 14:59 (twenty-three minutes ago)

Locked it for you.

berry gordy's list also had tow major snubs imo: gamble & huff, mike stoller

*two

I know this is a popularity contest as much as anything but David Berman is the first person I would make sure was on there.

i have some tragic news

not to knock her, but when every song post-Butterfly generally has 2-3 writers attached to it, you kinda lose that songwriter label in my book.

― My homies buttthole surfers' record sounds like a f (Western® with Bacon Flavor),

So if you co-write songs you're less of a songwriter?

As I said on the other thread:

Would be more interested in Greatest Active American Songwriters. The Greatest People Who Did Their Great-Ass Shit 60 Years Ago just isn't that compelling of an article premise.

― peace, man, Tuesday, April 28, 2026 10:21 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

That being said, Joni Mitchell not being included on the main list or any of the nomination lists is appalling. She's American enough.

xp yeah Alfred i was going to ramble about "what is a songwriter?" but I'm not hopped up enough for that yet, your question is more concise and yeah please let's not reduce this to lovers in their garrets ffs

"Loners in their garrets" I thought i typed but that is a pleasing typo

I'm not gonna argue that anybody should be excluded from the list (I have never heard a Young Thug song) but yeah, Tom Waits feels like a major omission. Would also argue for Dwight Yoakam.

lol what a shitty fucking list. the NYT is such a piece of shit

"Loners in their garrets" I thought i typed but that is a pleasing typo

― einmal ist keinmal (Noodle Vague),

love the typo!

Jody Rosen said on Bsky:

"We felt it was maybe not the best moment, geopolitically speaking, for a bunch of Americans to lay claim to a Canadian just because she's awesome."

https://bsky.app/profile/jodyrosen.bsky.social/post/3mkkkvssfqs2h

the sad thing for me is that a lot of current and former ILX0rs have more interesting and valuable critical insights and _used_ to be able to, like, share those insights professionally, but now it's all down to the fucking New York Times and Jeff Tweedy saying "I think Jeff Tweedy is one of the Greatest American Songwriters" which I read as the equivalent of a cocked eyebrow, I mean list like these are always sus, but folks here could at least make canon-building clickbait like this _interesting_.

the fucking _new york times_. fuck. god, america sucks right now. who the fuck cares about who the greatest living american _anything_ is in 2026? david berman is a more authentic reflection of 2026 america than bob dylan is.

one thing to note is that both this list and the NYT's 100 greatest films of the 21st century list were based primarily on votes from industry insiders. NYT staff then used those votes to produce a final list, which obviously entailed making some editorial decisions in favor of some selections over others. but I have to imagine they would be different lists if they were based only on the critics' own picks.

I think what imago was trying to point out upthread is that David Berman is not a living songwriter. He died, lads, he died.

I liked Jay-Z's insights shared in that video.

So if you co-write songs you're less of a songwriter?

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 28 April 2026 15:37 (twenty-four minutes ago)

I'm going to say no, but I do think it's harder to know what parts someone is responsible for if they're always working with a songwriting team. Maybe they wrote most of their songs, maybe they changed a couple of words, it's just more difficult to tell.

(NB I think Mariah Carey's songs suck ass so I don't care if she writes with a team, my comment is meant more generally)

She writes the melodies and always writes the lyrics, which one can tell because she's (in)famous for the polysyllabic drop.

re: solo songwriters vs co-songwriters, I wonder if Donald Fagen and Walter Becker would have made the list as duo if Becker wasn't dead?

should be on the list: Rickie Lee Jones, August Darnell

Personally, I think it's funny that this list has managed to rile up dudes who are annoyed at the omission of rootsy folk-influenced songwriters like Jason Isbell. Sure, Isbell is a good songwriter from what I have heard, but it's a style of songwriting that some people treat as objectively superior to other styles and whose belief in the greatness of musicians who employ it is often largely based on that notion. These people might begrudgingly admit that Mariah Carey has some catchy tunes, but she cannot be a great musical artist in their eyes because she is not a great songwriter as they define it. Including her on this list undermines their premise.

having jermaine dupri vote on the best living songwriters in america and then leaving him off the list for young thug and lana del rey is some sick shit

xp yeah jay all of that is true but it's 2026 and we're far too tired to keep arguing this nonsense surely?

Anyway in re the vote it's ridiculous I refuse to pick one unless there's a particular choice that will get maximum rise out of the Campaign For Real Songwriting

Though there's about 10 of these I don't know well, I'd vote Lana Del Rey for consistency or Dylan for scope.
I'd have put George Clinton on the list or, if I was looking to cause arguments, the Friedbergers.

Or the Maels.

The results are kind of hilarious. Can see fans of X singer-songwriter melting down over Bad Bunny, etc.

probably will vote for stevie, but only because it feels weird to vote for the hollands without dozier

On Bluesky, Ann Powers mentioned Trent Reznor as an omission.

john fogerty

I mean, seriously. I don't even know what the standard/criteria is. Overall career/impact? Lyricists? Teams? Do they have to be active? What about other producer/writers like Timbaland or Pharrell? Lots of Americana or folk-adjacent acts, plus survivors like Paul Westerberg or whomever? Chrissie Hynde? Jimmy Webb? What about Madonna? Tom Waits? Etc.

Basically, lists are dumb.

A lot of votes for Tom Waits and Billy Joel on those ballots, but they didn’t make it for whatever reason. At least one for Westerburg too. A lot of the criteria seems to be ‘people I’d like to work with.’

So if you co-write songs you're less of a songwriter?

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 28 April 2026 15:37 (twenty-four minutes ago)

I'm going to say no, but I do think it's harder to know what parts someone is responsible for if they're always working with a songwriting team. Maybe they wrote most of their songs, maybe they changed a couple of words, it's just more difficult to tell.

(NB I think Mariah Carey's songs suck ass so I don't care if she writes with a team, my comment is meant more generally)

― emil.y, Tuesday, April 28, 2026 11:06 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was thinking more along the lines of reading the credits on an album. maybe an artist is writing 95% of the song before going into recording- but when i see 6 other names attached to every track it just dilutes the narrative for me.

Missy Elliott/Timbaland would've been a solid combo.

I think what imago was trying to point out upthread is that David Berman is not a living songwriter. He died, lads, he died.

― emil.y, Tuesday, April 28, 2026 8:01 AM (two hours ago)

i'm aware that david berman is dead. the comment was intended to convey my feelings about america in 2026.

i guess the big difference between berman and america is that berman's death wasn't _murder_-suicide.

voted Young Thug

i assume d'angelo got removed from this after he died (they sent ballots out over a year ago) and a result of not replacing him w/ i.e. badu, maxwell etc neo-soul is more or less totally absent from this list which given its prominence in contemporary culture feels like a real oversight

Yeah, the 36 posted ballots include votes for D'Angelo, Brian Wilson, Sly Stone, Tom Lehrer, Alan Bergman, Billy Steinberg, and Afrika Bambaataa. Although D'Angelo appears on only one public ballot: Justin Vernon's.

saying Joni is "American enough" is weird, and you can't make this kind of list that way

haven't you heard about the tariffs

"Sly Stone is alive enough"

otoh if Canadians were included we might have a Drake placement

There is a town in north Ontario
But I moved away from there long long ago

Isn't Neil Young officially an American citizen now?

And yeah, where is Randy Newman?

Maybe Tom Waits should write a lyric as good as my pussy tastes like pepsi or whatever the fuck

Hey! Don't knock Dolly Parton!

snort

voted jam & lewis

"songwriter" as operationalized here feels like a bit of a dumb concept which they are awkwardly rubbing up against the boundaries of

feels like pollslop ragebait is starting to hit diminishing returns

^^ a man with sensitivity

I'm fully onboard with Stevie Wonder's greatness, but unless he's been stockpiling songs, I was under the impression he hasn't written a whole lot of new songs in decades, which makes his inclusion feel a little weird. He's alive and well, but still..

man sometimes you just see a post and you just keep on walking by

A number of people on the list haven't done much this century. I mean, even if Willie Nelson hadn't written a song since the 70s he'd still deserve to be there.

This seems like a bad idea for a list, somehow the criteria are both too broad and too narrow.

They really need to do a list for each state.

Yeah yeah, I understand. Usually when I see polls or surveys like this it's about a time frame, like this decade or the last ___ years, but I guess the point of "great living ___" is to celebrate them while they're still here.

i wish michael hurley were still alive so he could still be doing excellent work at 84 and still not show up on this list.

this seems like an excuse to be very pop-sophisticated and flatter the nytimes pop-sophisticated readers. it's a premium content listicle.

mariah carey's greatness is super obvious to me. taylor swift on the other hand.

tom waits does the boho caricature version of "my pussy tastes like pepsi" to be fair.

Taylor Swift is the Paul Whiteman of our era

I shouldn't have singled out Steview because jfc there are some terrible writers on this list, and plenty of ridiculous omissions mentioned upthread.

you know what you did

Waits is more “my hog tastes like Thunderbird”

fucking Stephen Merrit is right there xpost

you okay waterface?

maybe ai was worth it if we can make it do tom waits singing "my pussy tastes like pepsi"

I also think our own Sloop J0hn D deserves the token aging indie-rock whiteboy pick more than Mr. Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah but you can't really argue when Peter Gabriel covers one of your songs.

maybe ai was worth it if we can make it do tom waits singing "my pussy tastes like pepsi"

― dream mummy (map), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 4:47 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rbiKEhxjlM

you okay waterface?

I'm great I'm not the one dissing Stevie Wonder when Stephen Merrit is right there

Imagining 93-year-old Mike Stoller waking up at 6 a.m. to read the paper with his oatmeal, finding out Young Thug is a better songwriter than the guy who wrote "Hound Dog" and "Stand By Me," going to his giant Dell tower computer and listening to Thug's biggest solo hit which he opens by rhyming "a mile away" with "a mile away"

xpost more like Stevie Demerit amirite

young thug's best lyric is a mondegreen, that's kind of fun

i had to look it up and Peter Gabriel covered The Book of Love, real shocker there. wake me when he covers Underwear

Imagining 93-year-old Mike Stoller waking up at 6 a.m. to read the paper with his oatmeal, finding out Young Thug is a better songwriter than the guy who wrote "Hound Dog" and "Stand By Me," going to his giant Dell tower computer and listening to Thug's biggest solo hit which he opens by rhyming "a mile away" with "a mile away"

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 3:54 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe the guy who rhymed "cryin all the time" with "cryin all the time" wouldn't mind so much?

(this is a joke, i know how 12-bar blues works)

69 Love Songs is great, I'll take that over anything some of these picks made.

(not over Stevie Wonder, but feel free to rage anyway)

this is a considerably worse thread than that recent Rodrigo one, but I will say that Holiday and SITKOL might be my two favourite albums by any of those on this idiotic list

i feel sooooooo uhhh vindicated lol, that taylor swift talks about being really inspired by emo music lyrically

i know we're talking about the legitimacy of the list instead of the interviews but isn't it cool that we have these interviews

Voted Missy over Paul Simon. Missing Joanna Newsom and John Darnielle

very baffled that madonna isn't here given the rest of the list

badu & maxwell are indeed gigantic omissions

adrianne lenker, joanna newsom, sufjan stevens would all be on my list from indie singer-songwriter land

Taylor's relentless genius is one of the least controversial choices on this list. You write enough then you pile up a stack of nothing too but I think that's the opposite of the point.

I could have sworn I posted something but I’m not seeing it…. anyways, I missed the “living” bit so no Berman. I was also going to whine about Townes not being there. Bill Callahan isn’t as good as Berman but he at least deserves a mention. That man has a lot of very good songs.

I don’t see how Dylan isn’t tops. There’s other people on here I’d rather listen to but he’s monumental.

I would put Laurie Anderson on there.

i like swift well enough but she wouldn't be anywhere near my own list, i don't think she's near the top as a pop songwriter or as a more trad singer-songwriter typet

George Clinton voting for Garth Brooks is surprising. Also no asterisk for Joe Ely - I guess he was never on their radar.

lionel richie feels like a weird inclusion. admittedly i've never dug deep with him but my impression has always been more 'a few decent hits, a few awful hits' than all-time songwriter?

Bill Callahan isn’t as good as Berman but he at least deserves a mention.

Interestingly, he got four votes in the published ballots, from Meshell Ndegeocello, Jeff Parker, Jeff Tweedy, and Richard Russell.

baffled that lindsey buckingham isn't even on any ballots? nicks at least is on a few

this is really such a strange list because there's clearly a real attempt to have it be diverse in a way that makes the very odd blind spots and priorities stand out even more

i get the feeling they made a list of 25 or so genres and just penciled names in suggested by the ballots. hence there was only room for one each for poorly selling female and male indie singer and they chose fiona and merritt over neko case and darnielle.

actually does anyone else think it's a bit strange that this list is like, 67% "people who created a lot of massively bestselling songs" and only 33% "people that critics and other musicians think are great songwriters and who get covered a lot by other singers"?

like, it would be pretty funny to have a list of greatest living american writers and have it be so overwhelmingly leaning in the direction of what's bestselling and checking all these different types of genre fiction, against the more narrow consensus of what critics prefer. you'd have three stephanie meyers for every pynchon. or am i wrong? is jay-z really obviously better than black thought, ghostface, rakim - or just massively more popular?

biggest omissions i'd offer that aren't mentioned yet:
buckingham/nicks (xp i see they were just mentioned)
fogerty
rem

my suggestions that would never make it (besides neko who i find incredibly moving) would be danzig slightly over cervenka/doe for the punks, and herbie hancock for the jazz slot.

Where do people stand these days on Will Oldham? How about metal guys? If it's about body of work, what about LL Cool J? Chuck D? Dr. Dre?

I thought about Herbie for jazz, too. Not many of those genius cats left. I mean, Sonny Rollins! That's what I mean, did they even specify what they mean by "songwriter"? For sure, Isbell and the Truckers guys - why not them, did no one vote for them? Dan Penn? Al Green!!!!!!

this is really such a strange list because there's clearly a real attempt to have it be diverse in a way that makes the very odd blind spots and priorities stand out even more

― ufo, Tuesday, April 28, 2026 7:27 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Honestly, this criticism is valid for pretty much every major music listicle in the last, like, eight years or so.

yeah i was gonna say, weird yet boring lists like this kind of inevitable when you boil down individual tastes into overcooked bland sludge

the list is bad in a pretty similar way to what i'd expect from rolling stone to do these days yeah. it could certainly be a lot worse but it's not really an interesting sort of disagreeable either

Mariah saying “there was occasionally a thesaurus… I can get a little lofty with all that” was A+

Diane Warren HOw Do I Live.

i think the real story here is the reduction of the NYT’s cultural coverage to listicles

Diane Warren HOw Do I Live.

love the name, BTW

Maybe Tom Waits should write a lyric as good as my pussy tastes like pepsi or whatever the fuck

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 12:50 PM

that would be a weird thing for tom waits to write, as far as i know the man doesn't even _have_ a pussy

Waits is more “my hog tastes like Thunderbird”

― Strait of Merzbow (Eazy), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 1:41 PM (three hours ago)

idk, i think if tom waits were to sing about how his genitals tasted, he'd find some way to make it pretty fuckin' funny.

that said, just because two songwriters write about the taste of their genitals doesn't necessarily mean that there's any point in comparing the two. there's really only one wrong way to write about the taste of one's genitals, and that's the way greg lake wrote about the topic in 1978.

i wish michael hurley were still alive so he could still be doing excellent work at 84 and still not show up on this list.

― dream mummy (map), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 1:25 PM (three hours ago)

ok but i call dibs on him for the oregon list, new jersey doesn't get to claim him any more than they get to claim me.

Imagining 93-year-old Mike Stoller waking up at 6 a.m. to read the paper with his oatmeal, finding out Young Thug is a better songwriter than the guy who wrote "Hound Dog" and "Stand By Me," going to his giant Dell tower computer and listening to Thug's biggest solo hit which he opens by rhyming "a mile away" with "a mile away"

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 1:54 PM (three hours ago)

he's at _least_ as invested in who the new york times thinks are the greatest living songwriters as ray davies is in what moby thinks about his 50-year-old songs

I was very surprised that the New York Times, of all publications, didn't include any musical-theater specialists on the list.

(John Kander, people!)

lack of any metal despite the stylistic diversity is unsurprising for plenty of reasons but also feels sort of odd. i have no idea how to think about metal in terms of 'songwriting' though. who would they have even gone for if they had decided on a token metal pick?

del rey is another that doesn't deserve to be anywhere near this list, she's not bad but she's not anywhere near good enough to be on this, i guess some critics are still way overrating her?

young thug feels like a token younger generation of rap who isn't kendrick pick

jay-z kinda feels like he's on this list by default

bad bunny sort of feels like recency bias and i could see the case for him in the future but probably not quite yet. i also don't really have any real understanding of what his creative process is like exactly, there's so many credited co-writers & producers on his stuff these days

it's very easy to understand why merritt is the indie pick and i like him well enough but he's not right up the top for me or anything. their five essential songs of his are bizarre and lol at including rodrigo's cover

santos is the only one i'm completely unfamiliar with, does anyone who knows him want to give context as to how much sense he makes here?

i ended up voting for jam & lewis

who would they have even gone for if they had decided on a token metal pick?

Hetfield/Ulrich?

idk maybe these lists shouldn't be made by making sure every genre box is checked

i think this list pretty well demonstrates the problems with that sort of approach! i'm just idly wondering, if you were going to think about metal in terms of 'songwriting', what would that even look like?

it sort of feels like the list has over-corrected away from rock a little but it's much harder to think of many other names that are alive/american/popular enough to feel like they'd have a real chance of making it on to this so maybe not. like, buckingham & nicks are very obviously missing. reznor & rem are both arguable i guess. otherwise who else? donald fagen? i really love talking heads but i don't think byrne or even the whole band belong on this list exactly.

this all just comes back to songwriting being such a nebulous thing and the list has ended up in a weird place where it somehow feels both expansive and narrow?

is anyone willing to defend diane warren being on this? she's written a ton of hits but i don't think most are good

Tracy Chapman is an interesting one because it rests mostly on “Fast Car,” which is an easy pick for one of the great American songs, and the rest of the songs on her completely consistent first album.

Walt Whitman for "Song of Myself" He's not dead, and it's Spring, so get down to the riverside, strip naked and read that shit out loud!

Jonathan Richman!

Billy Bragg voted for Richman. Also James Taylor, which is surprising but makes sense.

Hall & Oates? Chrissy Hynde?

More likely Hall and not Oates?

did Linda Perry receive any votes? i know her name always came up in the 00s onward as some pop-songwriter guru.

only from dmc which i wasn't expecting

her actual output as a pop songwriter is not really very impressive in terms of hits or quality

DMC was a hero when I was a kid for wearing glasses and he’s a hero as an adult for putting Beck, Slick Rick and Tom Waits on his ballot

Stax songwriter David Porter is still alive

this is a great "ILX has grown up" thread

Almost grown

lionel richie feels like a weird inclusion. admittedly i've never dug deep with him but my impression has always been more 'a few decent hits, a few awful hits' than all-time songwriter?

I just want to point out that Lionel Richie wrote pretty much every big Commodores song, including “Brick House”, “Easy”, and “Three Times a Lady”, plus he wrote “Lady” for Kenny Rogers. There is a lot of gold in his catalogue.

lol that was supposed to be a quote, obv I’ve been playing too much Connections

yeah Lionel Richie absolutely deserves consideration

Not much ROCK in general. Sorta surprised there’s no Jack White or Dave Grohl in there.

Yeah, where is the guy from Geese?

xp this was the point i was trying to initially make wrt mariah carey. they're all clearly songwriters. if someone said "name a famous songwriter" to me - none of them would ever immediately jump to the front.

idk maybe these lists shouldn't be made

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 6:31 PM (yesterday)

ftfy

This stupid list has me thinking a lot about what I consider a songwriter and my mental image of “singer/songwriter.” And it gives us something to talk about besides our terrible world. So I like this dumbass list.

That's the spirit.

Can't believe they left off John Tavner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZJbwkYa4pk

btw the best living american songwriter is mark eitzel

otm

Wot no Todd Rundgren?

I take back Laurie Anderson and Bill Callahan in favor of Los Lobos.

Google says:

Isaac Brock, frontman of Modest Mouse, is widely considered a highly talented and influential songwriter, recognized for his poetic, philosophical lyrics and unique wordplay. He is acclaimed for his ability to craft existential, often sardonic, lyrics that explore themes of blue-collar life, nature, and modern society.

i'm just idly wondering, if you were going to think about metal in terms of 'songwriting', what would that even look like?

Lyrics, chord changes, melody, harmony. Not sure I understand the confusion here?

I don't particularly understand why after 20-25 years of the listicle economy, as many posters on ILx, more or less a nest of poptimists, ones I truly would expect to know better, are bellyaching about this shit. Nearly every one of you I would expect to understand that the the creators of this project, each of whom I would expect to be well known to every one of you, have a vested interest in not emphasizing old guy classic rock/ folkie shit, and then college rock/indie rock, or obvious roots shit, that say, Pazz and Jop voters who wrote for midwestern alt weeklies in the 70s-00s reflexively championed. It is individuals as such who are bitching the most, and so you keep really great company when you complain that Rundgren or Fagen or Eitzel or Callahan are missing: the career of Caramanica in particular is devoted to opposing guys like that.

Similarly, I notice that not only here but formerly steadily working music writer on social media people are very clearly unhappy that these particular individuals, and not them, have the imprimatur to make this call.

it really would have been far more useful if this thing was oriented around what has been produced in the past 25 years and avoided the likes Smokey (Gasms not withstanding), Diane Warren, or for that matter Jay Z. Does anyone think he's going to do a great recording again?

if you were going to think about metal in terms of 'songwriting', what would that even look like?

DIO

Not that I’d expect their inclusion but Rennie and Brett Sparks probably deserve to be on such a list.

"I notice that not only here but formerly steadily working music writers on social media are very clearly unhappy"

Does anyone think he's going to do a great recording again?

― veronica moser, Wednesday, April 29, 2026 10:13 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

as a someone who is ambivalent about 4:44 and that jay electronica album, jay-z is definitely capable of finding the holy ghost and making another great song or ten

if you were going to think about metal in terms of 'songwriting', what would that even look like?

DIO

this fucking website

listen i was just trying to think of someone who hadn't been mentioned on this thread yet who i thought of as a peerless songwriter still occasionally putting out remarkable work. eitzel rose to the top

Danzig!

Frank Black/Black Francis?

I for one would like to see more bellyaching.

Google again:

Will Oldham (often performing as Bonnie "Prince" Billy) is widely regarded as a masterful songwriter due to his ability to blend raw emotional vulnerability with poetic, often enigmatic lyrics. His work, spanning over three decades under various monikers (Palace Brothers, Palace Music, Bonnie "Prince" Billy), is revered for its sincerity, minimalist approach, and refusal to rely on traditional, pop-oriented formulas.

There's a whole magazine devoted to American Songwriters. Ann Wilson is on this month's cover.

If they just made the list bigger they could have made almost everyone happy that Veronica Moser and others have mentioned!

Yeah, there are at least 35 good songwriters in the country.

But a lot more dead ones, if you think about it.

If they just made the list bigger they could have made almost everyone happy

so you have a lot to learn about the point of these lists...

it really would have been far more useful if this thing was oriented around what has been produced in the past 25 years

the usefulness of any such thing notwithstanding, this is v v otm (and if you're *not* going to limit your list to those who have produced worthwhile work in the past quarter-century, what's even the point of using "living" as a criteria?)

what's even the point of using "living" as a criteria?

You can get an interview with them?

i enjoy the list and the bellyaching

and also

it *would* be really cool if they followed this up, like, today or tomorrow or next week with a list of the 30 best American songwriters *right now* ... doing so would perhaps take advantage of whatever small momentum this piece caused and shine a slightly brighter light on whoever they choose. (now who they choose would be a different issue.)

like it's a two-part project, is what i'm saying.

The main "type" of songwriter who didn't get a lot of live sorta overlaps with the Jason Isbell omission.

Whoever represents the Americana line of Townes - John Prine - Steve Earle. Greg Brown, Ray LaMontagne. Is Lucinda Williams close enough?

I dunno I hate lists but I at least approve of it being unranked.

That team of Nashville pros behind "Follow Your Arrow" and such seems like a messy inclusion.

Not to be all loners-in-garrets but that seems more a collective than a "songwriter"

Thinking that yeah, Randy Newman is a huge omission, by any standard. He is sort of an epitome of a Great American Songwriter, *and* he remains active.

Will Oldham (often performing as Bonnie "Prince" Billy) is widely regarded as a masterful songwriter due to his ability to blend raw emotional vulnerability with poetic, often enigmatic lyrics. His work, spanning over three decades under various monikers (Palace Brothers, Palace Music, Bonnie "Prince" Billy), is revered for its sincerity, minimalist approach, and refusal to rely on traditional, pop-oriented formulas.

this fucking website

most startling omission imo is beloved ilxor Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, who btw needs some help right now

https://www.gofundme.com/f/aid-for-chriss-car-repair-and-living-expenses

sounds like a good summary of Oldham to me, not sure why you would pick up on that tbh. it's good writing. xp

most startling omission imo is beloved ilxor Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, who btw needs some help right now

https://www.gofundme.com/f/aid-for-chriss-car-repair-and-living-expenses

― don't go freaking my heart (cat), Wednesday, April 29, 2026 11:14 AM

cat i just wanna say i appreciate the reminder, i do intend to help and i have ADHD and am really forgetful about this stuff, thanks for mentioning it

I for one would like to see more bellyaching.

― The Quaker Gurvitz Army (President Keyes), Wednesday, April 29, 2026 8:51 AM (two hours ago)

well i'm gonna take you seriously and bellyache

idk maybe these lists shouldn't be made by making sure every genre box is checked

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 6:31 PM (yesterday

ok i'm gonna lay it out. when i look at a list like this, i ask myself, who's the audience for this? who is it for? and it's not for people on ilm. we are just not the target audience for a list like this, sure, we can argue about it and say who should be on the list and who shouldn't be on the list. it's for your average new york times subscriber. when it comes to the topic of music specifically, ILM posters are not average new york times subscribers. when i think of the "average new york times subscriber", right or wrong, i think of my aunts and uncles, who are very kind, compassionate, liberal white people, who are boomers who worked hard and had careers as doctors and lawyers and stuff and are now retired and who want to be supportive, who want to be good allies, and honestly i'm not sure if they've heard of lana del rey. they've heard of bob dylan and bruce springsteen and willie nelson and smokey robinson and carole king and when they think about the great american songwriters they probably don't think about, like, bad bunny or young thug. and by making a list that has bad bunny and young thug alongside bob dylan and carole king, that sends a message that oh, these are people who deserve to be taken seriously as songwriters, as seriously as they take bob dylan and carole king.

one of the things that's really frustrating to me is that yeah people do get taken more seriously if they're boomers, particularly if they're guys, particularly if they're white. it's a real struggle to get the people who have the money and the power in this country to listen to anybody who's not an old white guy, even people who are in favor of diversity, even liberals. that's why i sometimes get frustrated about boomers or the new york times or cis white dudes, because people will _listen_ to them more than they listen to us. and that's not a _personal_ thing about _you_, it doesn't mean that you don't deserve to be listened to, because you do, or that you haven't been fucked over, because you have. it's just so hard to get anybody to listen to anything outside of the "default" experience of cis white men. and if my new york times-reading uncles and aunts see this listicle and it opens their minds to something they wouldn't have heard about otherwise, i mean, it's very very very little

and it's more than a lot of us get most of the time

Kate, did you read veronica moser's post earlier today?

He addressed your points.

who is it for? and it's not for people on ilm.

oh, I think putting The-Dream on the list was Carmanica trying to insure he wouldn't get dragged on ilx.

Perhaps inevitable that the debates this list prompts tend to boil down to “do I like this artist y/n” or “what does a ‘songwriter’ or a ‘good song’ look like based on received wisdom”?

It has made me think a bit more about what the term could or should mean and in particular how it intersects with genre forms and performative approaches.

If I try to think of pseudo-objective barometers they would perhaps be the presence of indicators of the songbook’s quality that are divisible from the artist’s own performance of them (and associated performative idiosyncrasies), so, songs becoming “standards” or amenable to cover versions, the artist writing songs for other performers etc.

This tends to prop up the status quo, genre-biased notions of what a songwriter “is” at the expense of genres which (at least in their popular conception) are tightly structured around performative style, though not always in the ways one might expect - Mariah Carey and The-Dream make a lot of sense based on that framing, whereas a Lana Del Rey or a Fiona Apple make somewhat less sense, given it is harder (at least in my head) to consider the quality of their songs as something distinct from their performance of them - there’s a reason that Fiona in particular often gets compared to rappers. And I wonder how much the occasional stylistic nods towards classicism in their work helps them to feel like they make sense as part of this list, in a “you could notionally imagine a Broadway musical structured around their songs” sense. But maybe that’s the point here (such that the list is more correct about this than I am): society separating the art from the artist is an ongoing historical process that happens in real time, and what feels true today may not feel true tomorrow; maybe Fiona Apple is one Broadway musical production away from being conceived of and discussed in the same terms as Joni Mitchell. Then again, maybe so is Jay-Z.

A lot of what you say there makes it all the weirder that Tom Waits didn't make the cut. Yes, his performance style is idiosyncratic to say the least, but his songs get covered a lot and the people who cover them don't do them in "Tom Waits voice," and he's very attached to classic forms, even if he deliberately yanks them out of shape.

I feel like there's no way he wouldn't have been on a list of 50 songwriters, maybe even 40.

Related to Waits and this list, I was thinking of the difference between a great songwriter who would write songs that almost no one would think to cover compared to someone making songs that are great because everyone wants to learn and do their own version of them. Waits certainly had songs that endure from others wanting to sing them (“Picture in a Frame” and “Jersey Girl” and “Downbound Train” and so on); Randy Newman and Paul Simon too. Similar to the MJ Lenderman wave all covering Welch and Rawlings’s “Wrecking Ball.”

Yeah, 100% the measure of a good songwriter is how often people cover your shit (or, in the case of rap music, how many people reference/interpolate your lines in their lyrics).

Tom Waits is undeniable!

And Randy Newman for that matter. Like even rappers don't quote Thug like they do, say, Rakim or Kanye West

thug's most quoted line is one that he didn't even technically say

Its really funny that if this was 2010 the list would be wall-to-wall Craig Finn/Bryan Dessner/Jason Isbell indie rocKKK messenger bag nerdball music with like Mariah Carey thrown in as a fun whOOaOOaaaa look-at-us curveball but now it's like Here's Everyone Who Makes Enormous Annoying Shopping-In-Target Pop Songs and your wild pitches are Stephin Merritt and Fiona Apple.

Not a statement about NYT Mag's choices, but more just The Way Things Are Now

One thought that I'm sure many have expressed--far too many people who wrote their greatest songs decades ago--and another that I'm guessing no one has: above and beyond my own fandom, I think Wussy's Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker should be on there.

If this were 2010, Ryan Adams and Kanye West would've been in there too.

(not my vote even then, but)

He addressed your points.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 29, 2026 12:13 PM (one hour ago)

oh yeah he totally did!

Its really funny that if this was 2010 the list would be wall-to-wall Craig Finn/Bryan Dessner/Jason Isbell indie rocKKK messenger bag nerdball music with like Mariah Carey thrown in as a fun whOOaOOaaaa look-at-us curveball but now it's like Here's Everyone Who Makes Enormous Annoying Shopping-In-Target Pop Songs and your wild pitches are Stephin Merritt and Fiona Apple.

Not a statement about NYT Mag's choices, but more just The Way Things Are Now

― EsBeeKid (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, April 29, 2026 1:37 PM (ten minutes ago)

ten years ago lin-manuel miranda would've been a fucking lock for this list

of course 2010 list would also have a lot of people who weren't dead then!

Was a little surprised he wasn't in there, as Broadway representation.

Ten years ago Alicia Keys might have made it.

ten years ago Sondheim was still alive though

ten years ago lin-manuel miranda would've been a fucking lock for this list

You can thank Donald Trump for this, sadly. Miranda the most nakedly Obama-coded Broadway composer ever, and nobody's gonna own up to ever having liked that entartete kunst shit in the Trump Reich.

But wait until the kids raised on Moana and Hamilton are old enough to vote.

Moana pwns, people need to stop fronting

Thinking that yeah, Randy Newman is a huge omission, by any standard. He is sort of an epitome of a Great American Songwriter, *and* he remains active.

In all honesty, it feels appropriate that he would be overlooked considering how often people misinterpret anything told through an unreliable narrator. tbf a lot of people did back then, but it's become even worse now.

the presence of indicators of the songbook’s quality that are divisible from the artist’s own performance of them (and associated performative idiosyncrasies), so, songs becoming “standards” or amenable to cover versions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97apN9L4C58

i don't think fiona apple or lana del rey are writing songs that are really unamenable to cover versions at all. where that sort of standard (which i think is a reasonable starting point for trying to talk about 'songwriting' as nebulous as it is) runs into trouble is rap for obvious reasons, but there's still plenty of melodic rap (such as "lifestyle") that lends itself well enough to even fairly stripped down covers, just it doesn't make sense to think about that as the only rap that's worthwhile in terms of 'songwriting'

I wasn’t saying that they’re unamenable but rather that they haven’t been presented to or received by the world as being explicitly amenable - which might change! A Fiona Apple musical is pretty viable IMO! Especially all the Sondheimy lyrics like “ I don't know what I'm doing, don't know, should I change my mind? I can't decide, there's too many variations to consider. No thing I do don't do no thing but bring me more to do. It's true, I do imbue my blue unto myself, I make it bitter.”

i think you could do a musical around the songs of either, but it probably wouldn't be a good idea. i don't think jukebox musicals are generally good ideas to begin with though

there are plenty of successful covers of both on youtube though

Anais Mitchell would have been a plausible inclusion for this list based on ‘The Brightness’ and ‘Hadestown’ alone.

xpost I agree re the jukebox musical but it’s a handy heuristic device for this thread I think

In all honesty, it feels appropriate that Randy Newman would be overlooked considering how often people misinterpret anything told through an unreliable narrator.

Maybe, but I'm pretty sure he was disqualified from this list due to his work as a slave trader.

I'd vote Lana Del Rey for consistency or Dylan for scope

Actually I ended up voting for her because I think she'll write more good songs in the future than he will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr2nuKFM33s

i wouldn't call del rey consistent

When I see Rick Beato doing takedowns of music listicles I feel like libs feel when its Tucker Carlson speaking out against Israel instead of their elected officials

idk this video is just beato going 'why isn't ryan tedder on the list. why isn't aerosmith on the list'

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/arts/music/amplifier-newsletter-greatest-american-songwriters.html

11 Great American Songwriters Who Didn’t Make Our List

By Lindsay Zoladz

A lot y'all have mentioned and one (I think) you haven't

Ach, paywalled.

Was flicking that barrier and going "Billy Ocean???"

Gift link

Maybe, but I'm pretty sure he was disqualified from this list due to his work as a slave trader.

― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, April 29, 2026 7:16 PM (yesterday)

how many people compiling the list were short people

Moana pwns, people need to stop fronting

― DJP, Wednesday, April 29, 2026 3:16 PM (yesterday)

yeah the younger people i know consider moana to be a fucking stone cold classic, i do think miranda's critical reputation is probably at about its nadir. i mean kids raised on moana _are_ old enough to vote (sorry ilx0rs, we're old), they're just not old enough to vote in NYT polls about the "greatest living american songwriters".

as for "hamilton":

You can thank Donald Trump for this, sadly. Miranda the most nakedly Obama-coded Broadway composer ever, and nobody's gonna own up to ever having liked that entartete kunst shit in the Trump Reich.

― wipes chooser (unperson), Wednesday, April 29, 2026 2:06 PM (yesterday)

"hamilton" kind of makes me think of something i read once about james branch cabell... someone said that he fell out of favor because he couldn't imagine a world in which hitler could exist. that's kind of how i think about "hamilton". the thing about that play is that while it's _not_ hagiography, ultimately i think to some extent it is a _celebration_ of an america that, uh, is very much not trump's america. for me, i think... it's kind of emblematic of the ultimate failure of obama's neoliberalism. which i don't think is fair to miranda or to "hamilton". it's more reflective of how i think about the rich white boomers i knew who were VERY VERY ENTHUSIASTIC about "hamilton" in a way that honestly was kind of cringe to me even at the time. "hamilton" _isn't_ green book, but it did occupy a similar cultural space in 2018.

so yeah, thinking about it miranda honestly _deserves_ to be on this list, and it is a political list, and so it doesn't really bother me that he's not on there for basically political reasons, any more than it bothers me that mike stoller isn't on the list. of fucking course mike stoller is one of the greatest living american songwriters.

Among certain demographics, LMM is as big as ever. Hamilton is still insanely big among young kids. They even watched it in my son's elementary school class.

Miranda should definitely be on the list. What world do y'all live in where the luster has faded from "Hamilton"? People still love that show and its music. And "We Don't Talk About Bruno" was just five years ago, and it was one of the most popular songs of all time.

Wow, jeez, no Stoller, yeah, that is an oversight, lol.

Gotta admit, I don't think I have ever heard Young Thug.

I don't think I have ever heard Young Thug

ever heard of fani willis? ;)

I tried to balance the obvious and the surprising, the recognized titans of American song (like Randy Newman, Billy Joel and Tom Waits) with some younger or below-the-mainstream talents who I think ought to be mentioned in the same breath (Alynda Segarra, Frank Ocean and Neko Case). I tried to limit myself to 10 but couldn’t, so this playlist goes up to 11.

That's Zoladz in the NY Times ampifier column (gift link above now I see) on the 11 she would have added : Steely Dan (Donald fagen); Replacements (Paul Westerberg); Gamble & Huff (she posts Harold Melvin & the Bluenotes doing If You Don't Know me by now & mentions more Gamble & Huff soul songs from 70s);Neko Case; Frank Ocean; Wilco(Jeff Tweedy); Billy Joel; Tom Waits; Hurray for the Riff Raff ( Alynda Segarra); Mountain Goats (John Darielle); Randy Newman

xpost Ha, actually forgot about her! Her last mixtape was OK.

decent list but i'd disqualify steely dan bc becker's dead and ... no on billy joel, just imo, i remember that ilm listening thread fondly but not for the music :)

I dunno, Brian and Eddie Holland are in there without Dozier ... If Fagen is the only one alive, then sure, why not Steely Dan.

The one thing Rick Beato brings up which is sort of valid is how muddy it gets when you essentially nominate a group. For example, Fleetwood Mac is a hybrid American/British band, but its two surviving songwriters are definitely two of the best living American songwriters. Or how you might break down REM, a band that has written so many great songs but has no clear singular songwriter voice, as such.

Or how you might break down REM, a band that has written so many great songs but has no clear singular songwriter voice, as such.

And who credited all four members with every song, no matter who did what, for band solidarity reasons.

for band solidarity reasons

and for economic reasons. i'd give them an extra vote in this poll if i could just for that.

Miranda should definitely be on the list. What world do y'all live in where the luster has faded from "Hamilton"?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, April 30, 2026 8:25 AM (two hours ago)

hell

for band solidarity reasons

and for economic reasons. i'd give them an extra vote in this poll if i could just for that.

― fact checking cuz, Thursday, April 30, 2026 10:21 AM (thirty-six minutes ago)

i like dave stewart's story on why all of egg's songs were credited to the entire band. he said dirk campbell wrote the songs, he (dave stewart) played the solos, and clive brooks packed and unpacked the gear.

at least Depeche Mode was honest: Martin Gore wrote them, Dave Gahan sang them, Alan Wilder played them, Andy Fletcher manned the fax machine.

i love that

(xp)

Gahan has written some bangers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Songs_written_by_Dave_Gahan

Mostly cowritten, DJP, which means he can't count.

Mariah gets credit for cowriting but Dave doesn’t?

the elusive co-chanteuse

https://variety.com/2026/music/columns/new-york-times-greatest-songwriters-list-missing-randy-newman-1236733511/

Chris Willman discussing mainly the musician ballots (Dua Lipa picked just Patti Smith; Natalie Merchant picked 38 people)

A few others not yet mentioned (and not yet dead):

Bob Gaudio
Neil Diamond
Paul Williams
Jeff Barry (RIP Ellie Greenwich)
Barry Mann (RIP Cynthia Weil)

not seeing Bob Seger anywhere either. that early comp someone put together years ago got me thinking about him differently.

Reading about those who received votes but became ineligible by the time of the tallying — Sly, Brian Wilson, D’Angelo, Sedaka, etc. — made me think about how many others whom we have lost just in this decade would have been locks or close contenders:

Kristofferson
Bacharach
Robbie Robertson
Loretta Lynn
Tom T. Hall
Bill Withers
John Prine

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

they need to make a list of the 30 greatest dead non-American songwriters

that would be a fun/interesting exercise

Leonard Cohen
Fela
....

Nick Drake
Jobim

Ian Curtis
Serge Gainsbourg
Amy Winehouse

John Lennon
David Bowie

Joe Strummer
Pete Shelley

30 living British songwriters would be pretty damn impressive.

Paul McCartney
Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Pete Townshend
Ray Davies
would Van Morrison count as an Northern Irishman?
Richard Thompson
Bryan Ferry
Elton John & Bernie Taupin
Nick Lowe
Graham Parker
Peter Gabriel
Mick Jones (RIP Joe Strummer)
Elvis Costello
Kate Bush
Shane MacGowan (English born)
Morrissey & Johnny Marr
and you get the idea

bad news about shane…

that list does a good job of capturing why building a canon around the term "songwriter" strikes me as fundamentally conservative

xp oops! I was about 15 minutes away from dozing off when I posted that.

impressive that given every single living British songwriter, you've managed to come out with a list so tediously canonical and focus-grouped

that list does a good job of capturing why building a canon around the term "songwriter" strikes me as fundamentally conservative

― rob, Thursday, May 7, 2026

otm

Tbf "English Born" is my fave Pogues song

music as art = conservative, music as a commodity = progressive?

well that's a baffling takeaway that I might be misreading. it's sounds like you're saying that white men (+ Kate Bush) make art and everyone else makes mere commodities?

My biggest gripe is no Patty Griffin (though I'd have also personally listed Tweedy, Fogerty, and Westerberg). Part of what makes a great songwriter in my mind is whether other artists want to play and record your songs. Many of the artists on this list fit that bill. Many do not.

well that's a baffling takeaway that I might be misreading. it's sounds like you're saying that white men (+ Kate Bush) make art and everyone else makes mere commodities?

― rob, Thursday, May 7, 2026 6:01 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

or that collaboration and group effort is inherently commercial, somehow

it's sounds like you're saying that white men (+ Kate Bush) make art and everyone else makes mere commodities?

no, that's not what i'm saying - would you mind elaborating on why you think being a songwriter is "conservative"?

nm, i misunderstood - i thought you were talking about the rolling stone list. but i don't think someone posting a list of primarily men to an ilm thread indicates anything broader about the nature of songwriting or being a songwriter.

i thought you were talking about the rolling stone list

ah ok that makes sense, thank you. I don't want to beat up on birdistheword as they made their list off the cuff, but seeing it made me think about what's implicitly included and excluded from the term songwriter, which I do think has a different semiotic resonance than terms like "musician" or "artist," though it's a distinction I find hard to pin down. For example, in thinking about who was missing from bird's British list, I was asking myself things like "does Tricky count? Linton Kwesi Johnson? Aphex Twin? Trish Keenan? Shabaka Hutchings? Dennis Bovell? Burial? Brian Eno?" Obviously you could take a radical, holistic approach and say yes to all of those — I assume to some degree imago had that in mind in his response, plus the NYT list deliberately includes people that trouble a strictly trad interpretation — but then I wonder why use that specific term? Is it to venerate the lone genius or the old-fashioned songwriting team? Maybe not! But for me there is a kind of aesthetic and veering into political conservatism (though I wouldn't necessarily take that too far) to the term that bird's list, more than the NYT one, suggested to me.

the only real songwriter in the uk is the guy from half man half biscuit

Robert Pollard should have been on the list. He wrote the MOST songs.

rob otm, but also somehow vc otm lol

it's a little odd that they didn't include anyone from the topline era, like Bonnie McKee, Esther Dean etc etc, although maybe the Dream is sposed to cover for that kind of songwriting… I think Ne Yo is a songwriter qua songwriter, but I guess he's not present much these days…

In terms of songwriter being an inherently conservative concept, I would say maybe so but so what. I mean in order for a song to be able to stand on its own and have a life of its own it’s important that other musicians can play it and that means there needs to be some shared approach to musical content and the interpretation thereof. That tends to favor styles that have been around long enough to acquire these traditions. However given those constraints I would say that this doesn’t prevent someone like Aphex Twin from being considered a songwriter- his Avril 14 is widely covered and meets the criteria of a modern standard whatever that means.

<annoyingpedant>The main thing keeping Aphex Twin from being a songwriter is that the majority of his music is instrumental </annoyingpedant>

On the plus side, I'm glad they limited the list to 30 so that it produced some real interest and debate. Would have been very easy to make this 50 or even 100 and no one would have cared if Billy Joel was #31.

xp now I can't stop imagining Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing "I would like some milk from the milkman's wife's tits"

lmao

fwiw the dictionary (M-W) and wikipedia say you can be a songwriter if you just write music, though I agree that in vernacular usage it tends to mean words + music even if those duties are split within a team

does the term even matter? is consulting the dictionary definition "conservative" ?

FFS it wasn't a representative list, I chronologically threw out what came to mind and then went to bed before digging into the '80s.

Re: conservative (in the definition given), I won't argue with that because each of them came quickly and easily to mind for the reasons you stated - they're very simple, very easy and very basic examples of a songwriter. One or two people composing the chords, melody, lyrics, maybe a demo and then some record comes out of it. Once you get into a larger collaborative group or songs coming out of extended jams or from building a recording like a hip-hop record, then paring it down to one or two primary songwriters gets trickier. But I wasn't going to stay up through the early morning thinking it over.

Looking at how songwriting has evolved in popular music (the role of the songwriter, how it's done, etc.) via profiles of different songwriters in different eras is a sound idea, the NY Times article did try to incorporate that concept, but admittedly it gets buried when the knee-jerk reaction for lists tend to revolve around rankings, omissions and inclusions.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

7 votes for LDR and The-Dream
0 votes for Willie and Dolly
ok

fwiw the dictionary (M-W) and wikipedia say you can be a songwriter if you just write music, though I agree that in vernacular usage it tends to mean words + music

that vernacular understanding is madness if it's going to try to convince me that stevie wonder's "contusion" and fleetwood mac's "albatross" and elton john's "funeral for a friend" and herbie hancock's "rockit" and link wray's "rumble" and scott joplin's "maple leaf rag" aren't in fact songs and that the act of creating them didn't involve songwriting.

That was the first thing that stood out when I looked at the NY Times list - they were making lyrics mandatory, which meant excluding any great jazz or classical composer who didn't focus on vocal music.

(I personally don't agree with it either, but it probably helped simplify the whole project for them.)

I voted for LDR out of nihilism and thought I would be the only one.

Was I the only vote for Missy? I’m right btw

I voted for Dylan because I found the Jacobin article about rock music so inspiring.

Popcast has a new episode up where Joe and Jon discuss the project with Wesley Morris. There are some interesting details but nothing too surprising. Things like, how some of them deliberately went into it with an agenda to keep certain artists out, or at least too many of a certain type of artist, i.e., white rockers. There is a long segment about rap that (confusingly to me) focuses primarily on the absence of Drake and Future but does not mention the Wu-Tang Clan, Q-Tip, et al. Jon has a rather amusing rant about Billy Joel and his lineage in American songwriting.

There is also a discussion about Madonna but a confusing "explanation" about how her own self-branding or rather lack thereof hurt the way she is viewed when compared to, say, Mariah Carey, who has deliberately labeled herself a songwriter. I found this especially bizarre given that they're critics and reporters and not passive consumers of branding.

I did like hearing which artists each of them fought for and felt had been unfairly excluded. Wesley brings up Patty Griffin and notes that she was "well balloted," which is not surprising to me at all given that she's always been an artist's artist and even more specifically a songwriter's songwriter.

Another tidbit to share in light of the ILX poll results: there were five songwriters that were overwhelming favorites on the ballots that the critics said were therefore shoe-ins.

Dylan
Wonder
Simon
King
Parton

Popcast has a new episode up where Joe and Jon discuss the project with Wesley Morris

I was just going to say, Cannonball has a new episode where Wesley discusses the project with Joe Coscarelli and Jon Caramanica, but I bet it's the same episode.

The absence of 50 cent is the weirdest to me from a hip hop pov. He was like the first rapper where that was explicitly part of the pitch and he influenced everyone for decades

Young thug explanation made no sense — it isn’t true that the current young Atlanta underground sounds like young thug, at all! Thug is just the guy critics liked the most !

future was a better choice to represent that scene. definitely more of a songwriter-qua-songwriter than thug, wrote on some hits for others ("drunk in love," that one rihanna song), annihilated hooks for a decade, etc.

a 2010 version of this list would have 1000% have had eminem on it

a 2010 version of this list would have 1000% have had eminem on it

And R. Kelly.

And Kanye

sure but eminem didn't commit any non-musical crimes

r kelly and kanye were way better songwriters though

Em's stock is real low rn

So you're saying that his opportunity came once in a lifetime

lots of people on this goofy list are "low stock."

50 Cent probably didn’t make it because he sucks and most people hate him now.

wrong

would have voted for valerie simpson.

agreed that future is a better pick than thug (though both belong)

You can work hard and write both "Yakety Yak" and "Stand By Me" and whadda they give you?

50 Cent the "In Da Club" rapper? is that who you're talking about?

He’s been scrubbed from history after being cancelled by a small minority of cake-hating fat kids

a lot of atlanta underground does sound like thug. ysl (the label) seems pretty active.

carti might be a weird omission

So Brad Mehldau did not like this list:

one of the most arbitrary, inconsequential pieces of musical "criticism" the newspaper has delivered in my almost four decades of reading it

https://bradmehldau.substack.com/p/jon-caramanica-is-a-bad-cliche

sounds like cool guy

But Jon Caramanica has never illuminated anything about music for me, and I’m pretty sure he never will. Jon Carmanica spends the majority of his time fawning over pop-confections like Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny or Kacey Musgraves. The pop that “matters” to Jon Caramanica is pop that matters, largely, for tween and teenaged girls. Is he not aware of the irony of his situation? There is indeed pop that matters. But Jon seems obsessed with the bubble-gum variety.

And then he speaks dismissively of Billy Joel?

Bill Joel's fans have never been tweens

Can we please be done with this

The pop that “matters” to Jon Caramanica is pop that matters, largely, for tween and teenaged girls.

As an insult?

lol brad mehldau thing is making me feel like a maga boomer. stick to music, brad!!!

Ah yes the famous "tween and teenage girls" argument. I seem to remember such other inconsequential artists as Elvis, The Beatles, and Chuck Berry faced similar criticisms from the polite music class in their heydeys. Is Mr. Mehldau not aware of the irony of his situation?

Well, of course Mehldau only makes music for

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Consenting_Adults_1177.jpg

haha wow that piece is the pits

otoh I listened to half of that Cannonball episode and it made me hate JC, the NYT, songwriting, and America, so I guess I kind of understand responding to it with a mortifying screed

Mehldau's specific, repeated comments about Taylor Swift in that substack post are dripping with condescension and misogyny.

Do not speak so flippantly about great musicians like Billy Joel. Less is more, Jon. Step back. Go back to the records you really love, that you fell in love with. And stop making podcasts about Taylor Swift. I really don’t fucking care. None of us do.

I am a middle-aged man who cares immensely about Taylor Swift and appreciate critics who take her work seriously. I don't know how you could watch the video interview she gave the Times as part of this package and not walk away deeply impressed with her understanding and study of songwriting.

Bill Joel's fans have never been tweens

I was such a fan ages 9-12! My first LP purchase (52nd Street)! My first concert I picked myself (The Nylon Curtain)!

lol brad mehldau thing is making me feel like a maga boomer. stick to music, brad!!!

ha for real. one of the best players around imo, his trio & his work with Metheny...so good. I do think it's fine to not care about any pop figure but maybe Substacking about it is not the best look for a jazz pianist. Not really yr lane man. Esp when you're big-upping Billy Joel, who is fine at writing songs and on any greatest list? Nah.

I don't really like Brad Mehldau's music and I hate Billy Joel's music, but Mehldau is exactly right about Jon Caramanica, who has always sucked in exactly the ways Mehldau describes. Caramanica is deeply invested in the question of "what should I be seen liking?" and it shows in every sentence he writes and every video he posts.

a lot of atlanta underground does sound like thug. ysl (the label) seems pretty active.

carti might be a weird omission

― gospodin simmel, Saturday, May 9, 2026 5:27 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

no it doesn't. what current atlanta rap sounds like thug to you ?

Future's track record of hits is much larger than the 2 year window where thug was really pushing the sound forward as a songwriter. thug is just kind of a random stand-in for "modernity" in rap that feels more based around his critical centrality than his actual impact on songcraft. his style is, like many rappers, a mix of songcraft, rapper as jazz stylist/soloist, and lyricist. He definitely had a bona fide run as an innovative songwriter, but modern rap has lots of those.

i assume he's talking about sk8star, tezzus, diamond, etc.

i assume he's talking about sk8star, tezzus, diamond, etc.

I hear it in the way that they rap at times but not really in 'songwriting' (as well as hearing future and carti and lots of other artists) but there's this critical investment in thug being atlanta's alpha and omega that feels more like stan wish fulfillment than empirical

when you're talking about song WRITING
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_singles_discography

Can we please be done with this

The pop that “matters” to Jon Caramanica is pop that matters, largely, for tween and teenaged girls.
As an insult?

― April is Cruella's month (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, May 11, 2026 1:57 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk man, take out the gendered element sure, but I think it might be time to dust off making fun of adults for listening to pop music made for children. I promise you Addison Rae is not Chuck Berry and Taylor Swift is not Billy Joel.

My Ding-a-Ling vs. My Fiancé's Ding-a-Ling

taylor swift and billy joel dont feel so far off to me lol

symsymsym at 12:55 11 May 26

Bill Joel's fans have never been tweens

not true!

that was my point

I only actively listened to Billy Joel when I was a tween tbh

I don't even fuck with Billy Joel but I heard "The Life of a Showgirl" in Target and I'm fully convinced that the whole "Taylor Swift is our generation's Cole Porter" is absolute cope from people who don't like aging

Taylor is “our” Billy Joel for sure, and it’s one of her artistic qualities of which I am least fond.

She hasn't delivered us a "Zanzibar" yet.

She didn't start the bad blood.

I only actively listened to Billy Joel when I was a tween tbh

Same

Taylor Swift should've switched to adult pop five years ago but tbf YA is just the dominant genre across media these days; 95% of everything is YA

on a more serious note where are the country fans? Willie and Dolly are both better than at least half the people on this list

the Billy Joel documentary series was really fascinating even if you're a mild fan

Taylor Swift should've switched to adult pop five years ago but tbf YA is just the dominant genre across media these days; 95% of everything is YA

― lakini's juice newton (theStalePrince), Monday, May 11, 2026 7:48 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is absolutely accurate and media criticism absolutely followed it down the rabbit hole into constant Star Wars/Marvel/Harry Potter/TV recaps/pop music churn

I can’t wait for HBO to buy the IP and reboot Taylor Swift as a gritty drama series

I want more smooth entertainment less grit

i want a reboot of Riverdale that is even more anodyne than the comic

I often think that caramanica should have absconded to a sneaker company many years ago, it is fundamentally so that positioning is what he is preoccupied with, to the extent that I’m confident that when he writes something, which isn’t often, he thinks of someone who looks like David fricke, Anthony decurtis, or rather more like me and likely you, and his resolve is to oppose those people. while I think mildew has long been a rockist jazz guy and his attitudes re popular culture are revolting, and also typical of jazz guys, it’s really funny to see him sharpshoot caramanica, who is about as smug as anyone I have encountered in media

Sia michel cannily saw that he was better autodidact that Kelefa would ever be, and so his career was very much her project at the paper

i couldn't resist clicking on my arch-nemesis Rick Beato's takedown vid of this list, and i must admit that the clips he played made Caramanica look like the most insufferable pretentious choad of all time. he also pointed out that everybody on the critic panel either went to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton LMAO

Fun fact 1: I think An Innocent Man might have been the first cassette I owned. And the only BJ I ever owned. Pre-tween, even.

Fun fact 2: I found myself defending Lucinda Williams on Youtube rants about this list. She was attracting an awful lot of "well I've never heard of her -- how good can she be?" jibber jabber. *sigh*

while I think mildew has long been a rockist jazz guy and his attitudes re popular culture are revolting, and also typical of jazz guys, it’s really funny to see him sharpshoot caramanica, who is about as smug as anyone I have encountered in media

Yeah, to be clear, I do not agree with anything Mehldau says in that piece except that Jon Caramanica sucks, and sucks in exactly the way Mehldau describes. I mean, Mehldau recorded an entire album of Beatles tunes! In 2023! He is not a person whose opinions on pop music need to be taken seriously.

I’m curious as to how we would distinguish between “adult pop” and “young adult pop” here - is it just the visual presentation of the performer?

Like, I’m not a fan of the last TS album, but “The Fate of Ophelia” and “Opalite” strike me as pitching toward the same territory as 80s Fleetwood Mac (even putting to one side TS’s more self-consciously adult material from prior albums).

I think TS has been doing mostly adult pop since Folklore.

taylor swift and billy joel dont feel so far off to me lol

― ok (D-40), Monday, May 11, 2026 5:29 PM (four hours ago)

this might be the way to get adults to stop talking about taylor swift like she's a songwriter on par with carole king or joni mitchell so I salute this post. more of this

Interesting tidbit from Wesley Morris in that podcast—the black writers were all pushing for Donald Fagan to be on the list, while the white writers (sans one) were against it.

this question is moot

Re: Billy Joel, back in 2002, the NY Times interviewed Robert Christgau for a feature on Joel to get a representative take on why Joel was never a critic's darling. Christgau wasn't completely dismissive (which is no surprise - he gave his diamond-selling hits set an A-) and compared Joel's talents to Irving Berlin. I don't like Joel's records, but when I think of songwriters of yore who composed songs as fruitful material for endless interpretations, his talents become more visible, at least to me. The best example that comes to mind is "And So It Goes" - I never cared for that record, but I didn't realize that it's become a new standard for straight jazz, and people who'd otherwise know it are genuinely surprised when I identify it at a show, even when the theme is pretty much intact.

Anyway, I see the debate come up when people try to differentiate between a great record and a great song, but it's not a bad way of evaluating a songwriter's work - how many of their songs become fertile ground for re-interpretation? The lyrics may be lacking, but something like Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" has gotten endless mileage on the music alone.

And of course smug old rockist white guy multi-instrumentalist and Youtuber Rick Beato is rolling his eyes at and poo-pooing Wesley Morris and Jon Caramanica in his predictable way in videos I see being shared by some on social media

rick beato is white? i thought he was italian

d-40, you don't have to sell me on future. he would be number one on my list. i would also include 6lack and gunna. just saying thug also belongs, even if he is a "safe" white critic choice in some sense.

on that note, i would also nominate nba youngboy and 03 greedo. how is frank ocean not in there?

guy is barely a songwriter anymore

Ted Gioia weighing in on a rare free version of his Substack on behalf of Rick Beato and his loyal viewers vs the NY Times. Ted is as annoying as Rick but he contends in his post that the decision by the NY Times critics to to use his, Ted’s ballot, as simply advisory rather than part of the ballot making process was wrong. He also cites some Billy Joel defenders and contends that only the NY Times critics are smug and narcissistic.

https://open.substack.com/pub/tedgioia/p/rick-beato-versus-the-ny-times?r=2ck8a&utm_medium=ios

I think TS has been doing mostly adult pop since Folklore.

― The Quaker Gurvitz Army (President Keyes), Monday, May 11, 2026 8:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

TY. She made two records with a Dessner brother, and they were not very well received by her youth fan base. My kid (who loves the first few records, especially, and Lover) won't tolerate them, nor Poets -- says they're too sad. That said, I did attend an elementary school dance/carnival night and witnessed a horde of single-digit-aged girls scream-singing "Ophelia" in unison. So I don't mean to claim that she's left this demo behind. Rather, I think she's making the music she wants to make, it's continuing to be very popular with older demos including her millennial peers, and I personally don't hear a lot of deliberate pandering to younger audiences.

But what gets my goat is the notion that making music that resonates with teenagers (and specifically girls) is both less worthy of praise and inappropriate for a self-respecting New York Times Man Critic to enjoy and praise. I am far more irritated by Caramanica's evolving speech patterns that mimic youth-speak (e.g., using "shout out to..." and "On God" incessantly for about a year and then rarely thereafter) than by his obvious efforts to stay up to date on the styles of music and artists that are actually pushing music forward. That's his job. And teenagers/early-20s artists have almost always been the ones most passionate about rebelling against the sounds of their elders + most fortunately oblivious to what more senior tastemakers think is worth making.

The Times did share a few ballots, and even this small sample made clear how different the final list was from the survey of experts. That would be embarrassing for the Times under the best of circumstances, but especially so in the current environment—when that same newspaper has repeatedly expressed outrage about voter suppression and attempts to subvert democracy.

lol, Ted. i think you might be overreacting a little

i don’t really think of the taylor swift shift happening with folklore, i think it happened as early as red. i don’t really know that i could identify the aspects of her music that read as “targeted toward preteens/teens” beyond the occasional really bad and obvious single (the trolls-soundtrack-core of “me!”). she’s been a serious and adult songwriter for some time and that’s how i’ve always approached her work as a critic

hxpost a ha I once worked for someone Gioia called a fascist in one of his columns because she'd said she didn't stock conservative books in her bookstore.

Ted Gioia is a fucking dolt.

otm

on that note, i would also nominate nba youngboy and 03 greedo. how is frank ocean not in there?

― gospodin simmel, Tuesday, May 12, 2026 5:04 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think of youngboy's strength as being songwriting per se. I think songwriting within hip-hop is a v distinct skill and has more to do w their relationship to form. chief keef and max b strike me as songwriters. youngboy's more like an expressionist, young thug an abstract jazz style soloist. not that both aren't also songwriters, but their songwriting--give or take a 2 year window in thug's case--tends towards less variety & more repeating certain forms

it's also why I put 50 cent and future above lil wayne and thug for example. wayne *could* be a good songwriter at times, like his rap style would eventually produce great songs as a logical extension of his rapping...but usually you're just listening for the rapping (and he's obviously a better rapper qua rapper than either).

gucci i'd argue is a better songwriter than wayne but similarly more of a rapper-first

The Times did share a few ballots, and even this small sample made clear how different the final list was from the survey of experts.

very weird comment. of course a small sample of individual ballots are different from the final list.

It seemed clear from the editors that this list wasn't really determined by the ballots though.

and from a newspaper that claims to support democracy no less

this whole flap has left me feeling very "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" about Gioia and Beato, misdirected as their ire may be. fwiw would take ten Beatos over one Caramanica

that's so stupid, you don't have to hand it to them just bc they hate someone you hate

Which of the ten would I take? I'd have to say "The Best of the Beatos."

that's so stupid, you don't have to hand it to them just bc they hate someone you hate

― ivy., Tuesday, May 12, 2026 7:18 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

everything about this is stupid? i am just posting here about this "controversy" for fun. i am "reluctantly" "handing it" to my "enemies" beato and gioia because ... it's fun? like who cares about any of this actually

they do

"no one really cares about this actually" is obviously untrue and just a way to prove that you're cooler than everybody for not taking the conversation seriously and i hate it as a rhetorical move nearly as much as "gotta hand it to this guy who sucks because he confirmed my biases"

Beato the Brat

xp it's not a rhetorical move. it is all silly to me. there's not really a reason to rank songwriters because music isn't sports and it's not a competition. to the extent that people do make lists that generate "controversy," it can be fun to chime in and "take sides" but ultimately i don't care. i know what i like and i know the songwriters who matter to me, it's going to be different for everybody and that's fine. i'm not saying it to be cooler than you or to shit on anybody who does care for whatever reason. i'm just sharing my opinion on a message board

just to clarify, gospodin, if someone asked you to name the 30 greatest living American songwriters, your list would include 6lack, Gunna, NBA YoungBoy and 03 Greedo? or is that not what you mean by "I would nominate"?

yeah i would. lil baby as well. he might be closest to what D-40 is going for with 50 cent. though there might be controversy about his actual contributions to the songs.

very happy with the wide motown representation but how in the world did gamble and huff miss the spot?

I guess none of the Stax writers are still around. Steve Cropper just missed.

lil baby was a good songwriter and influenced songwriting of his era like Thug but doesn't have Future-level longevity imo. Polo G was influenced by him in terms of songcraft for example

i read gioia i watch beato at the same damn time

Future really is a hooks writer leagues above all those other modern rap guys.

its not fair to compare anyone to future in general. longevity in particular. feel like he will be a consensus GOAT in a few years. weird we still aint there tbh.

my atlanta list would be

1. future
2. 6lack
3. gunna
4. baby
5. thug

I was never going to watch that Beato "reaction" video, and I sure wasn't going to watch that Times roundtable video, but because a friend of mine sent me the former to get my, er, reaction I saw those bits of the latter and, hoo boy, what a bunch of smug dorks.

i feel pretty confident saying the beato video is more insufferable than the roundtable though they're both on the scale

As the kids say, 6-7

my atlanta list would be

1. future
2. 6lack
3. gunna
4. baby
5. thug

― gospodin simmel, Tuesday, May 12, 2026 5:40 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I would put carti up there. I never got into 6lack like that

one of the great things about 'whole lotta red' is how he uses repetition as a compositional tool, this is a good example of what I mean about great rap songwriting

his imitators don't grasp that part of it 99% of the time, they just chase the energy but can't imitate his sense for structure

agreed. future, carti and thug is the "correct" order for a list like this. i just really love 6lack and never quite felt carti is a personal fave, more a fact of life.

one of the great things about 'whole lotta red' is how he uses repetition as a compositional tool, this is a good example of what I mean about great rap songwriting

― ok (D-40), Wednesday, May 13, 2026 1:57 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I love that we've reached the point where Carti punching in "What, slatt, slatt" 16 times makes him Randy Newman. Good thread everyone.

yeah ... completely bananas, to me

a good reminder, i guess, that there are a lot of different people who think different things out there in the world, and even here on the message board I Love Music

NBA YoungBoy on a list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters? sure, why not!

the beauty of opinions and whatnot

there are some challopy exclusions (newman, fagen, gamble/huff, malcmus, future, carti) but overall the list is good.

lionel richie would be my first cut tbh. most of his hits feel "slight" and not quite as pop canon as the (similar imo) diane warren.

I would argue that Carti's inclusion would have been challopy

NBA is part of a major southern songwriting tradition (notably boozie and kevin gates, but obviously much older) and he might be the peak of it.

he made like 500 songs over ten years, most of them adored by a substantial cult audience, and all of them recognisible as "songs" even in a framework that would dismiss carti (or other outsider, folk forms). they have choruses, themes and character.

you could say the same about Robert Pollard

and i would? for pollard. he is definitely in the conversation. i would put malcmus instead tho.

but frank ocean exclusion is the most severe mistake imo. i get the catalogue is small but still...

hey, i appreciate the perspective and enthusiasm, truly. i don't mean to diminish either, though maybe i did/am.

also, i mentioned one artist, but it isn't really about one artist for me. i just think it's a pretty skewed take to fill 20% of a list like this with the artists you named. but that's me, and you're you ... all good.

sure! i would probably tighten the list up if i ever made it. but yeah, trap is peak music for me.

NBA is part of a major southern songwriting tradition (notably boozie and kevin gates, but obviously much older) and he might be the peak of it.

he made like 500 songs over ten years, most of them adored by a substantial cult audience, and all of them recognisible as "songs" even in a framework that would dismiss carti (or other outsider, folk forms). they have choruses, themes and character.

― gospodin simmel, Wednesday, May 13, 2026 1:41 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I dont agree that he's the peak of that tradition as a songwriter really. his stuff is much more driven by expressivity, persona, raw emotion, energy, these kinds of non songwriting aspects. he is also a great songwriter (I mean he has like 100+ plaques or something) but I think his formal songwriting range is pretty narrow compared to the range of his ie emotional expressionism or lyrics or intensity

I wasn't saying carti is a "best songwriter of all time" either but he's a much better songwriter than chris weingarten who hasn't taken rap seriously in like two decades thinks