Trying to name the 30 greatest living American songwriters is like trying to choose the 30 best trees in our national parks. Where do you even begin? The sheer volume and variety of American song is daunting \u2014 so many traditions, genres, subgenres, even different ways of crafting music, from the lone singer-songwriter clutching a guitar to long-distance collaborators emailing each other sequencer patterns. The pleasures of all that music are equally varied. Sometimes you get wit, wordplay and tidy storytelling; other times, schmaltzy emotion, grimy darkness or wild experimentation. And besides, how do you define \u201cgreatness?\u201d Is it about originality? Influence? Mass appeal? <\/p>\n
We began by seeking the wisdom of the crowd: We sent out ballots to hundreds of experts, asking which songwriters they considered America\u2019s greatest. We asked musicians, of course \u2014 from pop stars to underground favorites \u2014 but also critics, historians, industry executives, D.J.s, music supervisors, choreographers. (You can head here to explore<\/a> a selection of the more than 250 ballots that came back.) They offered up over 700 nominees, covering a wild range: household names and deep-cut experimentalists, behind-the-scenes industry stalwarts and people making tapes in basements. (As for why we excluded the many great American songwriters who are no longer alive, there are two reasons: We wanted to reflect the present state of the craft, and we wanted to be able to ask some of these songwriters how they do what they do.)<\/p>\n We then took the wisdom of the crowd and ran it through a filter: To sort through the hundreds of nominees the first part of our process had generated, we assembled a group of six Times-affiliated critics \u2014 each of whom has written about music for decades \u2014 for several hourslong sessions. The names that appeared most on our expert ballots would be their starting point, undisputed contenders for any list of 30. The less frequently a songwriter appeared, the more in-the-room consensus and justification were needed to include them on the final list.<\/p>\n What ensued was exactly what you\u2019d imagine: a conversation that was always passionate and often heated. The critics played lot of great music for one another and debated the merits of dozens of songwriters, legendary and obscure. (If you spot a glaring omission from this list, you can be certain that the artist had a champion on our panel who went down swinging.) Along the way, they reckoned with fundamental questions about the art, craft and history of song creation. They pondered the importance of irony, grandeur, idiosyncrasy, political consciousness, personal confession. They argued about the value of formal mastery versus playful disruption. They talked about machines and muses: how music-making technologies, from pianos to Pro Tools, have determined what songs are written and how we hear them. <\/p>\n Some of the issues that had to be resolved were practical ones. Does Joni Mitchell count as an American songwriter? (We elected not to steal that honor from Canada.) Where do we draw the increasingly blurry lines between songwriters, beatmakers and producers? (Several case-by-case arguments arose.) Can we give the nod to surviving members of writing collectives whose partners have died? (Yes.) Some critics stumped for lesser-known innovators; others were bullish on popular taste, eager to steer toward writers who speak to millions. Sometimes one masterwork seemed like enough; other times the critics responded to the scale or depth of a songwriter\u2019s catalog. <\/p>\n