NYT List of 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters is Trolling Us

[Peter DeLegge]

When I saw the NY Times list of “The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters,” it was clear to me that they were trolling us with the intention of making this go viral. And it worked. They excluded Donald Fagan, Billy Joel, Jimmy Webb, Randy Newman, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Jackson Browne…

Bad Bunny, Mariah Carey, Taylor Swift, Fiona Apple, and Babyface, made the list. I get why Taylor Swift is there. She’s incredibly popular, but she sticks to cliches lyrically and musically and part of their stated criteria is to list songwriters that don’t do that. I think that she’s capable of being a very good songwriter, but she’s not interesting that when she can crank out cliches and make half a billion. I think the list was created to get buzz. It also seemed to focus on pop culture influence, not great songwriters.

Rick Beato does a good job of expressing how I feel about the list:

Here’s the NY Times article:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/magazine/greatest-american-songwriters-alive.html

 

What do you think?

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