Dissecting ‘The New York Times’ Top 100 Songwriters Poll

Attempting to name the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters couldn’t have gone any worse for The New York Times when they published their list in April. It wasn’t 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.

“Look, we only had 30 slots to play with,” says Wesley Morris, one of the list’s authors on an episode of the Cannonball podcast 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.

Wesley Morris also cites the “Impossible task we faced.” 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’t the only mistake they made though.

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

The publication’s pop reporter who participated in the “30 Living Songwriters” piece is Jon Caramanica, who incidentally, has openly and smugly criticized Saving Country Music many times in the past after being called out for his poor reporting on country music.

“I feel like everybody in that room was willing to think expansively about what songwriting is,” Caramanica said in the damage control podcast after the publication of the list. “And 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.”

Notice how in this sentence, he figures out how to substitute “songwriting” for “songcraft.”

Caramanica continues, “I think it’s 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.”

But when Jon Caramanica replaces “songwriting” with “songcraft,” he’s allowing that term to incorporate things that would generally be considered “production,” meaning the making of beats and rhythms, sampling, sequencing, etc., which isn’t necessarily inherently evil in music, but is also not “songwriting.” Songwriting is melody and lyrical composition. The list was not titled the “30 Great Living American Songcrafters.”

What Jon Caramanica basically came out and said is that anyone who fits his stereotype of what a “songwriter” is was discounted on the list, and anyone who didn’t 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.

Respected music producer and YouTube commentator Rick Beato had a pretty good take on the matter in a video he titled “Watch This NYT “Music Critic” Embarass Himself … AGAIN.” For the record, The New York Times damage control podcast only received some 90,000 views, while Rick Beato’s takedown of it received 1.5 million.

“So songwriting is not the best example of songwriting,” Beato chided Jon Caramanica. “Who are these people?”

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.

“Here’s four Ivy League educated people … that are the most pretentious, cork-sniffing, smug people, that are all music critics with no background in music … exactly what you would expect from a New York Times music critic,” Beato says. “Now I shouldn’t rag on these people because of their education … [but] these people’s takes are absurd.”

And the sad thing is, this doesn’t just relate to The New York Times and so much of their music coverage, but Rolling Stone, and the recent horrifically-uninformed NY Mag/Vulture piece about politics and country music that got so much wrong—and just like the 30 Greatest Songwriters List, had people from both the right and left universally calling foul.

But The New York Times 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.

“As 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,” NYT said. “We didn’t want all that passion to go undocumented. So we invited readers to assemble their own list in a formal poll.”

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 readers. Below are the results, and some thoughts from Saving Country Music.

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

The only quibble might be that Taylor Swift is so high. Does she really have a catalog that’s 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’s not completely offensive she’s in the Top 10 conversation.

Tom Waits, Jason Isbell, and Randy Newman who were glaring omissions from the NYT’s original list, but all made it in the Top 20, proving how flimsy the original 30 were. Yes, this isn’t a survey of the wide population, but of New York Times readers, so songwriters who lean left like Isbell and Tweedy are probably weighted extra heavily here. But they’re also two excellent, landmark songwriters of this generation, and made it in before more performative picks. So we’ll take it.

Again, John Fogerty who wrote some of the most iconic songs for the American songbook was left out of the original NYT 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’s a hard case to make, even if it’s an easy one that she should be included here somewhere.

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

Again, no complaints here. In a just world, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings should come in before Beyoncé, but you knew Mrs. Knowles would be weighted heavily here. This conversation would not be complete without Lyle Lovett, so it’s good to see him.

James McMurtry was one of the biggest omissions from the original NYT 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.

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’t 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’s biggest missteps.

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 “songwriters.” Patty Griffin and Mary Chapin Carpenter could also have been overlooked, but luckily weren’t.

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’s impact has been through his iconoclastic approach and guitar playing. Sure, he’s 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.

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 songs? Sure. She’s not a songwriter though.

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Who was not 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’re not on there at all. In some respects, they’re represented by the inclusion of Kacey Musgraves. For sure, performing songwriters were weighted heavily by readers.

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 reader who would overvalue others.

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

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.

But overall, what even the biased population of New York Times 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’t need to be told by The New York Times or anyone else. That’s what this readers poll proves.

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