My Ballot for The New York Times 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters

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I was fortunate enough to be one of the “experts” solicited by The New York Times to contribute a ballot to the publication’s list of The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters, the results of which were published today.

The “living” qualifier in the description carries a bunch of weight. Take a glance at the selected individual ballots from a handful of contributors (mainly musicians) and you’ll discover asterisks scattered through the selections: those are the songwriters who died since the project started last year.

Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, who were among the anchors on my own personal ballot, died within days of each other in June 2025, a couple of months after I submitted my selections. Others died too: D’Angelo, cited by Justin Vernon; Tom Lehrer, who naturally headed “Weird Al” Yankovic’s list; plus Alan Bergman and Billy Steinberg, who both made Desmond Child’s ballot, right alongside Paul Stanley and Jon Bon Jovi & Richie Sambora, two musicians who’ve written with Child in the past.

Child isn’t the only canvassed songwriter to flaunt a personal connection. Aimee Mann nods to her husband Michael Penn and collaborator Ted Leo, while Jeff Tweedy names himself as one of the best living songwriters in America. Such biases are only right and natural: these are subjective lists, shaped by taste and temperament.

Looking back on my ballot, I certainly see that I fell prey to both mood and memory. I missed some of my favorite songwriters. I overlooked Gamble & Huff, which is a grievous error on my part. Carl Wilson’s ballot includes Bobby Braddock, who now seems like an obvious choice to me. I blanked on Miranda Lambert, who wrote many of my favorite songs of the past 15 years and who has just expanded her songbook with this year’s smash, Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas.”

Any of these would make my list if I was submitting it today, taking the place of Dwight Yoakam, whose presence reflects the fact that I was listening to a lot of Dwight Yoakam at this point last year. His inclusion also demonstrates how I attempt to balance my ballot. Once I’ve filled out the obvious choices, I try to represent different eras, styles, and genres. It’s a fool’s errand but it can be fun.

Of the “obvious choices” that didn’t make the cut, I felt like John Fogerty was a slam-dunk, since his songs already feel like standards. I’m also surprised that Randy Newman didn’t make the grade. He’s been a fixture on these kinds of lists for so long that I feel a little bit of a wistful pang in his absence, since it signals that the generations are shifting. Plus, you do need to make sure that a list like this doesn’t contain only Boomers: that’s boring to read.

I can find it a little difficult to discern which contemporary writers should make a Greatest Songwriters list, only because it takes time for a songbook to build and I do think there needs to be some depth and range in a songbook. Of the songwriters that made the list, I will gripe about Lana Del Rey, who I ran out of patience with a long time ago, and complain about Diane Warren, who has written a lot of songs, very few of them that could be classified as “good.”

Anyway, here’s what I submitted to The NYTimes last year, along with a list of also-rans. I’m sure I missed many of my favorite songwriters here but so it goes.

My New York Times Greatest Living American Songwriters Ballot

  1. Bob Dylan

  2. Smokey Robinson

  3. Paul Simon

  4. Randy Newman

  5. Willie Nelson

  6. Carole King

  7. John Fogerty

  8. R.E.M. (Peter Buck/Bill Berry/Mike Mills/Michael Stipe)

  9. Bruce Springsteen

  10. Tom Waits (and Kathleen Brennan)

  11. Stevie Wonder

  12. Mike Stoller

  13. Donald Fagen

  14. Sly Stone

  15. Brian Wilson

  16. Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham

  17. Dolly Parton

  18. Stephen Malkmus

  19. Jimmy Webb

  20. Billy Joel

  21. Public Enemy (The Bomb Squad)

  22. Todd Rundgren

  23. Neil Diamond

  24. Lindsey Buckingham

  25. Dwight Yoakam

My Also-Rans

My Ballot for The New York Times 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters | Readon News