The NY Times put together this list of 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters last spring and people got mad about it on substack. Some jazz piano guy I don't know wrote this screed about the travesty of Billy Joel not making the list when pop drivel like Taylor Swift did. I wasn't surprised by another old geezer hating on Swift's music. I know old guys who bristle at the mere mention of her name. Why? They feel obligated to like her music and they're rebelling against that obligation is my pop psychology take. This is a reflex in all old people, or dad rock era types anyway, and it's magnified by Swift's massive popularity. By contrast, I'm no Swiftie by any stretch, but I am as senior citizen too and I like a lot of Taylor Swift's music.
So the hating on TS part of the reaction wasn't surprising to me but someone stumping hard for Joel as an all-time great songwriter? That I did not expect. I actually have a soft spot for Joel's Glass Houses (1980). A timing thing, mostly: "Glass Houses" was New Wave when I thought that was a new and cool and fun exciting thing. I knew Joel had a couple big chart songs in the '70s as well. Undeniably big pop songs and still those kind of big pop songs, I'll add, that sound gratingly overplayed if I'm not in the right mood. Anyway, I've maybe never heard any of his albums after Glass Houses and only know any of his later stuff by its exposure on the radio, none of which left any impression. I know he got married to the model Christie Brinkley at some point and, I guess, assumed he lived happily ever after in Florida, playing at the elegantly appointed piano bar in his house. Anyway, easy call for me, Swift over Joel.
But these lists are so damn divisive online. The NY Times list does specify 'living' songwriters, so the list was at least a little bit like those retrospective appreciations at the Academy Awards. A primary objective, presumably, was to honor special artists, songwriters, before they die. Billy Joel is getting up there. Swift is in her 30s. So now by preferring Swift's music in this comparison I'm picking on another old guy!
By my count 22 of the 30 songwriters on the list, several of the 30 songwriters are two or three person songwriting teams, fit my crude lifetime achievement award criteria: over 50, most of their hits scored in the 20th century; 1960s-1990s. Of the eight 21st century songwriters that make the list, Swift, Fiona Apple, Bad Bunny, a Brandy Clark trio of country songwriters, Kendrick Lamar, Lana Del Ray, Romeo Santos, and Young Thug, I'm guessing a better case for Joel could have been made against several of these young songwriting contenders. Guessing because I don't know Santos at all, and Bad Bunny very little. And, from what I do know, elevating Young Thug over Rakim or The Bomb Squad or Eminem or J. Cole or Prince Paul or Noname, and probably many others I can't think of right now, does not speak well for the state of contemporary hiphop or at least its critical appreciation. And Apple and Lamar are personal favorites, so I wouldn't recommend challenging them. Or why not argue for Joel over Diane Warren or Mariah Carey, two legacy inclusions whose songwriting claims strike me as suspect at best?
In fact, I maybe come to this list with some antiquated ideas about songwriting. I was thinking songwriting was mostly about the words or the word-smithing aspects of songwriting. So I never thought of Niles Rodgers or Babyface or Jam & Lewis (although I see now they get credit for co-writing Janet Jackson's "When I Think of You," which I've always adored) as songwriters so much as musicians and record producers. I love Rodger's Chic and think they are still criminally underrated, failing to get into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for years, but I would never contend words or lyrics were Rodger's or Chic's strong suit. Nor Mariah Carey, for that matter. I always thought the generic quality to her hooks were a major weakness. I don't like Paul Simon's music much but I at least recognize word-smithing is his thing; "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," etc. It seems like the NY Times list was conflating songwriting with hit making.
Not that I mean to suggest I'm some great judge of songwriting. I can't recite lyrics and with most my favorite pop songs I connect with little more than a hook chorus or hook phrase or two of words. And as I've pointed out before, my listening preferences have only drifted further away from any appreciation of words or lyrics in music as I get older. But I still like to listen to good songwriting, words and music, now and then and I still think the NY Times list leans way too much on the charts and thereby undervalues the actual art of songwriting lyrics. I mean, Smokey Robinson, Missy Elliot, Stephin Merritt, sure, but Mariah Carey and Lionel Richie? Really?
Nearly every music person I know has a favorite living songwriter not on this list, including: Swamp Dogg, George Clinton, Randy Newman, Jonathan Richman, Tom Waits, Todd Rundgren, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Kate Bush, Madonna, Paul Westerberg, Mekons, Lauryn Hill, PJ Harvey, Boots Riley, Amy Rigby, Jason Isbell, Vincent Neil Emerson, Bill Calahan, etc. Anyway, my point is there's a lot of them. And, admittedly, as I rattle them off I realize added difficulties for the poor rock/pop critics at the NY Times: who is still living anyway (I wasn't sure about Rundgren and had to look it up) and only Americans (so no Neil Young or Bush or Mekons or Harvey, I was getting carried away there), but still their list, a little ironically given it's the top of journalism's word-smithing hierarchy, seems to belittle the actual art of songwriting lyrics.
And here's another case in point: James McMurtry. Son of western novelist Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, etc), a songwriting words or lyrics guy born and bred. And whom I recently saw at the Tractor Tavern.
Going I wondered aloud to a friend whether my relative unfamiliarity with McMurtry's entire 14 album catalog might hurt my experience hearing him live. McMurtry's baritone on record is a little pedestrian, it won't break any hearts, but live its rich and gravelly clarity is a perfect storytelling instrument. Even the songs I knew revealed more in person.
I first became aware of McMurtry's "We Can't Make It Here." (2005), making the rounds during the Great Recession by word of mouth or music critics. His first album is called Too Long in the Wasteland (1989), and it was produced by John Cougar Mellencamp. It's a model of that '80s rock sound that took over or at least expanded the palette of popular country music in the '90s. His guitar guy, Tim Holt, adds an exquisite drony thickness to a jangly Americana sound. McMurtry put out a single in 2015 called "Forgotten Coast." His last three albums, Complicated Game (2015), the Horse and the Hounds (2021), and The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy (2025), might reflect a more mature McMurtry, more big picture, more philosophical.
The place, "here," in his songs could be anywhere, Austin, San Antonio, Alaska, Coeur d'alene, Florida, Detroit, the Rust Belt deaths-of-despair deindustrialization that appeared in the 1980s and turned into an opioid epidemic in the '90s and metastasized into a political movement in the 2010s. McMurtry is the drifter trying to get by, trying not to get pulled under, every now and then hitting on these perfect song postcards from the wasteland.
"The Sons of the Second Sons,"
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