De Gustibus to the <i>New York Times</i>’ 'Greatest Living Songwriters' List

So, the New York Times is out this week with its carefully assembled, critically reviewed list of the “30 Greatest Living American Songwriters.” And because everybody in my little musically related corner of the world is chittering about it, I suppose I’m practically professionally required to have an opinion on this thing. How howlingly offensive would a rock snob like me find it?

Truth is . . . it’s not that bad a list. It’s nowhere close to the one I would have assembled off the top of my head, and sometimes out of forgetfulness — it didn’t even occur to me to think the Holland brothers of Motown chartbusting fame were still alive, for one thing — but I’m obviously not the audience. The recency bias is obvious, and this despite popular music’s transparent creative downslope in the demotic Age of Poptimism, but the fact that it is tilted toward younger (and less rock-oriented) audiences at least reminded me of several picks I wouldn’t have come up with myself but which hover somewhere down the list in my own private rankings.

However, there are a few striking omissions, and they’re not even necessarily all old dinosaurs from the “classic rock” era. Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan are de rigueur inclusions, along with hearty stalwarts such as Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon. But white men (and thus the overall story of rock) are mostly missing from this list. To be fair, in large part that’s because most of them are dead. (Or British, though at this point what's the difference?)

But you know who’s not dead? Randy Newman and Tom Waits! Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks! David Byrne, Jackson Browne, and most certainly Stephen Malkmus (Pavement), Donald Fagen (Steely Dan), and Britt Daniel (heck, Spoon is making great albums to this day). John Fogerty may have written more hit singles than he has fingers and toes combined, but he didn’t make the list of the “greatest living American songwriters” while a person I’ve never heard of named “Young Thug” did. (Maybe it’s because people resent Creedence Clearwater Revival’s inauthenticity?) Mariah Carey is included on this Top 30 list — and I didn’t even know she was a songwriter.

All in all, I’m not about to get too upset about this, although I have to laugh at the veneer of authority the Times tries to give its list: “250 music insiders” and six New York Times writers came together to assemble this list! Why, it’s a veritable cornucopia of elite expert opinion . . . on matters of taste. In any event, I can guarantee you that the opinion of the writers carried more weight than all 250 of those insiders, because I know who had to write the blurbs — and it wasn’t those insiders.

So no, the Times is not the final word on American songwriting talent. But as the final word on the tastes of the sorts of people who are paid to write for the New York Times, it is spectacularly accurate. Their tastes clearly are not mine, of course — but I don't want to chalk it up to generational ignorance, considering that I am equally ignorant of several of their selections. As the ancients said, de gustibus non est disputandum.