{"id":2455336,"date":"2026-06-11T21:57:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T21:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2455336"},"modified":"2026-06-11T21:57:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T21:57:57","slug":"dissecting-the-new-york-times-top-100-songwriters-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/dissecting-the-new-york-times-top-100-songwriters-poll\/","title":{"rendered":"Dissecting \u2018The New York Times\u2019 Top 100 Songwriters Poll"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Attempting to name the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters<\/a> couldn\u2019t have gone any worse for The New York Times<\/em> when they published their list in April. It wasn\u2019t just who they picked, but frankly, the entire methodology of their approach that was flawed from the very beginning. Though they bragged about consulting more than 250 experts and meticulously curating their results, it was doomed if for no other reason than cutting the list off at 30 left it scandalously incomplete. <\/p>

\u201cLook, we only had 30 slots to play with,\u201d <\/em>says Wesley Morris, one of the list\u2019s authors on an episode of the Cannonball podcast<\/a> where he and the other authors smugly tried to defend themselves. But why only 30? Who made that decision? Was it decreed from God on stone tablets carried down the mountain by Moses? You could have as many slots as you wanted. <\/p>

Wesley Morris also cites the \u201cImpossible task we faced.\u201d<\/em> But the only reason it was impossible is because you made it that way for yourselves. Sure, any list is going to be polarizing, torn apart, scrutinized, and sized up and down. But you screwed yourselves by stopping it at 30. That wasn\u2019t the only mistake they made though. <\/p>

Ultimately, the list and their attempted cleanup afterwards was a catastrophe, and counter-productive to the effort to promote The New York Times<\/em> as an authority on music because it exposed how publications like The New York Times<\/em> are not always here to objectively report. They\u2019re often here to impose their ideology upon the people from on high, and make you accept it. <\/p>

The publication\u2019s pop reporter who participated in the \u201c30 Living Songwriters\u201d piece is Jon Caramanica, who incidentally, has openly and smugly criticized Saving Country Music many times in the past after being called out<\/a> for his poor reporting on country music. \u201cI feel like everybody in that room was willing to think expansively about what songwriting is,\u201d<\/em> Caramanica said in the damage control podcast after the publication of the list. \u201cAnd songwriting is such a peculiar thing. It has so much baggage. It comes with attachment to certain communities, certain subgenres, and engaged fans who have an extremely fixed idea of what constitutes songcraft.\u201d <\/em><\/p>

Notice how in this sentence, he figures out how to substitute \u201csongwriting\u201d for \u201csongcraft.\u201d <\/p>

Caramanica continues, \u201cI think it\u2019s a heroic white man with a guitar struggling through his emotions, sitting in a room, no collaborators, no contact with the outside world, perhaps alcohol, perhaps drugs, accessing some kind of pure emotional truth, and putting it in a rock, country, or otherwise roots affiliated genre. To me, as much as I enjoy some of that music, I do not mistake that for the totality of American song, and I do not mistake that for the best examples of songcraft<\/em>.\u201d <\/p>

But when Jon Caramanica replaces \u201csongwriting\u201d with \u201csongcraft,\u201d he\u2019s allowing that term to incorporate things that would generally be considered \u201cproduction,\u201d meaning the making of beats and rhythms, sampling, sequencing, etc., which isn\u2019t necessarily inherently evil in music, but is also not \u201csongwriting.\u201d Songwriting is melody and lyrical composition. The list was not titled the \u201c30 Great Living American Songcrafters.\u201d <\/p>

What Jon Caramanica basically came out and said is that anyone who fits his stereotype of what a \u201csongwriter\u201d is was discounted on the list, and anyone who didn\u2019t fit that stereotype was emphasized on the list, because that was the ideological slant he chose to impose on the list as opposed to a more objective perspective that gave equal weight to all songwriters. <\/p>

Respected music producer and YouTube commentator Rick Beato had a pretty good take on the matter in a video he titled \u201cWatch This NYT \u201cMusic Critic\u201d Embarass Himself \u2026 AGAIN<\/a>.\u201d For the record, The New York Times<\/em> damage control podcast only received some 90,000 views, while Rick Beato\u2019s takedown of it received 1.5 million. \u201cSo songwriting is not the best example of songwriting,\u201d<\/em> Beato chided Jon Caramanica. \u201cWho are these people?\u201d<\/em> <\/p>

Beato then went to explain how everyone involved in the original article was an Ivy League graduate except for one from NYU, including a Harvard alum, two from Yale, and one from Princeton. None of them were actual musicians or songwriters, or had music degrees. <\/p>

\u201cHere\u2019s four Ivy League educated people \u2026 that are the most pretentious, cork-sniffing, smug people, that are all music critics with no background in music \u2026 exactly what you would expect from a New York Times music critic,\u201d<\/em> Beato says. \u201cNow I shouldn\u2019t rag on these people because of their education \u2026 [but] these people\u2019s takes are absurd.\u201d<\/em><\/p>

And the sad thing is, this doesn\u2019t just relate to The New York Times<\/em> and so much of their music coverage, but Rolling Stone<\/em>, and the recent horrifically-uninformed NY Mag\/Vulture<\/em> piece<\/a> about politics and country music that got so much wrong\u2014and just like the 30 Greatest Songwriters List, had people from both the right and left universally calling foul. <\/p>

But The New York Times<\/em> did do something last week to help address the continuing controversy, and it became an excellent illustration of the deeper cultural rot at the heart of elite music media coverage. <\/p>

\u201cAs soon as we decided to make a list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters, we could guess how readers would respond to the results: with a combination of enthusiasm and outrage, quickly letting us know which of their favorites we had unconscionably forgotten,\u201d <\/em>NYT said<\/a>. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want all that passion to go undocumented. So we invited readers to assemble their own list in a formal poll.\u201d<\/em>More than 25,000 ballots were cast, producing nearly 12,000 distinct choices, which were then culled down to the top 100 songwriters, according to New York Times<\/em> readers. Below are the results, and some thoughts from Saving Country Music. <\/p>\n\n\n

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This feels like a pretty fair assessment, and one that fairly represents most all American genres, demographics, interests, regions, and socioeconomic statuses. It\u2019s incredible when you take ideology out of the equation, how much the average consensus makes way more sense than what\u2019s decreed from on high from elites. <\/p>

The only quibble might be that Taylor Swift is so high. Does she really have a catalog that\u2019s better than Willie Nelson or Dolly Parton? Of course not. Recency bias is prevalent throughout this list. But Swift has done tremendous work exposing the discipline of songwriting to the masses, and writing very personal songs. So it\u2019s not completely offensive she\u2019s in the Top 10 conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Tom Waits, Jason Isbell, and Randy Newman who were glaring omissions from the NYT\u2019s original list, but all made it in the Top 20, proving how flimsy the original 30 were. Yes, this isn\u2019t a survey of the wide population, but of New York Times<\/em> readers, so songwriters who lean left like Isbell and Tweedy are probably weighted extra heavily here. But they\u2019re also two excellent, landmark songwriters of this generation, and made it in before more performative picks. So we\u2019ll take it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Again, John Fogerty who wrote some of the most iconic songs for the American songbook was left out of the original NYT<\/em> list, and his inclusion here again is validation of his importance, and the foolishness of the original picks. Ditto for Jimmy Webb. Is Brandi Carlile really a better, more important songwriter than Neil Diamond? That\u2019s a hard case to make, even if it\u2019s an easy one that she should be included here somewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n

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No major complaints here, and it\u2019s good to see hip-hop stars beginning to be represented for the lyricism they bring to the table. It\u2019s not that hip-hop music is an anathema to songwriting. It\u2019s that it usually puts beats, production, and sampling first. But don\u2019t discount Eminen or Jay-Z as lyricists. From the country\/roots world, Steve Earle and John Hiatt are coming in very strong here. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Again, no complaints here. In a just world, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings should come in before Beyonc\u00e9, but you knew Mrs. Knowles would be weighted heavily here. This conversation would not be complete without Lyle Lovett, so it\u2019s good to see him. <\/p>\n\n\n

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James McMurtry was one of the biggest omissions from the original NYT<\/em> Top 30, and they got called for the mat for it. Sure, his appeal and name recognition is niche, but it still feels like a slight to put him at 65. Purely based on compositional prowess, a compelling argument could be made that McMurtry deserves to be in the Top 20, or at the least the Top 30. <\/p>

The other misstep here that speaks to a recency bias is Noah Kahan at 61. His career is just too early to consider over some more serious heavy hitters, and his inclusion here was probably helped by having the #1 album in the US when this poll was conducted. Also, you have Noah Kahan at 61, but don\u2019t have Zach Bryan at all? Arguably there is no Noah Kahan, or at least not an appetite for his music without Zach Bryan seeding it. This feels like one of the poll\u2019s biggest missteps. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Cool to see both Trent Reznor, and Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day getting some deserved love, even though they might not conventionally be though of as great \u201csongwriters.\u201d Patty Griffin and Mary Chapin Carpenter could also have been overlooked, but luckily weren\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n

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A lot of really cool names from the country world make it into the final slide, and probably deservedly so. The songwriting of Tyler Childers might have slid from his earlier career, but his early career was so rich, he deserves this. Much of Sturgill Simpson\u2019s impact has been through his iconoclastic approach and guitar playing. Sure, he\u2019s got some great songs too, but there might have been some more worthy names, where Simpson might have been better suited for the 100-150 slots. <\/p>

Emmylou Harris is nothing short of a goddess walking among us, and a certifiable country legend. She also has no business being on a list of songwriters, any more that George Strait does. Did she write some<\/em> songs? Sure. She\u2019s not a songwriter though. <\/p>

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Who was not<\/em> included from the country\/roots world? The dumb cobbling together of Josh Osborne, Brandy Clark, and Shane McAnally that made it onto the original NYT Top 30 list, but luckily got excluded by readers. It would make more sense to put any three of these names on the Top 100 list individually. But the people spoke, and they\u2019re not on there at all. In some respects, they\u2019re represented by the inclusion of Kacey Musgraves. For sure, performing songwriters were weighted heavily by readers. <\/p>

Who from the country\/roots\/folk\/ Americana world is a glaring omission? First and foremost, Jesse Welles. Forget that he should be on this list somewhere, he very well could have supplanted multiple names in the Top 20. He is the Bob Dylan of our time. But the fact that he is willing to criticize both sides of the political spectrum, go on the Joe Rogan podcast, engage in cross-ideological dialog has made him strangely hated by the very type of New York Times<\/em> reader who would overvalue others. <\/p>

Though you hate to de-ligitimize any list because one name is not on it, the exclusion of Jesse Welles does feel pretty disqualifying. <\/p>

The other name that you know would not even be close to consideration but deserves to be is Alan Jackson. He is an American superstar, and one that wrote many of his own songs, and by himself. <\/p>

But overall, what even the biased population of New York Times<\/em> readers proved is that the public tends to be more knowledgeable, reasonable, informed, and open-minded than the elitists in the media who attempt to serve us our information from on high. Engaged music fans know good songwriters, and know what good songwriting is. They don\u2019t need to be told by The New York Times<\/em> or anyone else. That\u2019s what this readers poll proves.<\/p>

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