1
Bob Dylan
Dylan was on our critics’ list.
Talk about consensus: A full third of all voters included Dylan on their ballots. (Even the one who noted that “I kinda blame him for things I hate about my parents’ generation.”) Dylan’s 8,265 votes outstripped the runner-up by nearly 2,000 votes. One ballot even wrote in votes for several Dylan pseudonyms, including Blind Boy Grunt, Tedham Porterhouse and Boo Wilbury.
2
Paul Simon
Simon was on our critics’ list.
His lyrics, one voter said, are “sometimes flirty, often playful, always insightful” and “float across melodies like river water rippling over rocks.” A quarter of all ballots included Simon.
3
Bruce Springsteen
Springsteen was on our critics’ list.
As one voter wrote: “He doesn’t feed you a story. He makes you feel it.” Looking at correlations among votes for readers’ top 200 songwriters, we found that ballots including Motown writers (Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, Brian and Eddie Holland) were disproportionately likely to also include Springsteen.
4
Carole King
King was on our critics’ list.
Judging by the comments that came with them, votes for King were based largely on the songs she performed as a singer-songwriter — leaving aside 1960s classics she co-wrote, like “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” She’s one of only four people on this list to appear on more than 20 percent of ballots.
5
Billy Joel
Joel was not on our critics’ list.
Joel is the highest-ranked songwriter who did not appear on our critics’ list. Readers made their dismay about his absence abundantly clear to us, starting about two minutes after our list’s publication. (One representative remark from a reader ballot: “Shame on you for leaving off the Piano Man. For shame.”) Joel was particularly likely to be chosen by people who voted for Garth Brooks, Don McLean or Barry Manilow.
6
Stevie Wonder
Wonder was on our critics’ list.
One voter described the way Wonder’s music was in “my soul, my psyche, my consciousness, my heart, my mind, my everything. He lives inside me.” Erykah Badu said something similar in her lovely appreciation of Wonder for our project.
7
Taylor Swift
Swift was on our critics’ list.
Swift, the youngest person in readers’ top 30, was a polarizing figure among those who commented on our critics’ list, but she has earned the admiration of 16 percent of voters — almost half of whom put her in their top 10 alongside Bob Dylan.
8
Dolly Parton
Parton was on our critics’ list.
“Her songs speak to the ‘everyperson’ in all of us,” one voter wrote, “and her voice backs up the integrity of the lyrics.” (Gillian Welch said something similar in her appreciation of Parton for our project.) Parton appeared on 14 percent of ballots overall, but on nearly half of all ballots that included Missy Elliott, who appeared on our critics’ list but did not make readers’ top 100.
9
James Taylor
Taylor was not on our critics’ list.
Taylor is the second-highest-ranking writer not to have appeared on our critics’ list. “His music doesn’t demand attention,” one voter said — “it earns it, lingering long after it ends.” Taylor received especially strong support from people who voted for Kenny Loggins, appearing on more than half of their ballots.
10
Willie Nelson
Nelson was on our critics’ list.
Nelson, who is 93, is the oldest songwriter to figure in readers’ top 100; among the voters most likely to name Nelson were those who had chosen Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris or Paul Anka. “I’ve listened to ‘On the Road Again’ religiously for three-quarters of my life,” one voter said, “and it still puts a smile on my face every time I hear the intro.”
11
Jackson Browne
Browne was not on our critics’ list.
A lot of admirers mentioned “The Pretender” on their ballots — as well as “These Days,” written by a 16-year-old Browne and first recorded by Nico in 1967. Browne was overrepresented on ballots that named some of his old associates in the Eagles, with whom he wrote “Take It Easy.”
Listen to the 30 Greatest American Songwriters playlist:
12
Tom Waits
Waits was not on our critics’ list.
Many Waits voters were keen to acknowledge the role of his wife and musical partner, Kathleen Brennan, in his writing. (One vote was registered for “Kathleen Brennan, Without Whom We Wouldn’t Really Care That Much About Tom Waits, Much as It Pains Me to Say So.”) The choices linked to votes for Waits cross genres but certainly suggest a type of listener: There’s overlap with Randy Newman, Jonathan Richman, Will Oldham, Suzanne Vega and Public Enemy, among others. Readers admired countless Waits songs, including “Time.”
13
Smokey Robinson
Robinson was on our critics’ list.
A geographic breakdown of readers’ top 100 finds one state punching well above its weight in the production of great songwriters: Michigan is surpassed only by the much-more-populous New York and California, thanks in part (but not exclusively) to Motown writers like Robinson.
14
Randy Newman
Newman was not on our critics’ list.
One reader said he could write an entire essay about how Newman is not only the best but also the most American songwriter: “No one has explored the themes of race, capitalism, religion, exceptionalism and the idea of America itself, in all its ironies and complexities, as frequently or as skillfully.” (Another mentioned the biting “Political Science” and said it “could have been written by Donald Trump — if he had Newman’s genius.”) Newman tended to appear on ballots from those who also chose Rickie Lee Jones, Jimmy Webb or Todd Rundgren.
15
David Byrne
Byrne was not on our critics’ list.
A sizable bloc of voters focused on music that emerged from a punk or indie-rock lineage. That bloc contributed to the larger consensus around Byrne, whose vast body of work stretches from Talking Heads into art-rock, world beat and experimental music. One reader said he “tilts the room until you notice the strangeness of being alive”; another ranked him with Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Pryor among “America’s great satirists.” Votes were especially likely to come from those who chose Iggy Pop, Chrissie Hynde, Beck, Patti Smith, Parliament-Funkadelic or R.E.M.
16
Stevie Nicks
Nicks was not on our critics’ list.
Sometimes readers’ choices were difficult to disentangle. How do you apportion votes for Stevie Nicks, for Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks together, for Fleetwood Mac as a collective? (Plus individual votes for Buckingham or Christine McVie?) This entry reflects votes specifically for Nicks; various ways of treating related groupings might have moved her up slightly, but not more than a few spots. Nicks was disproportionately likely to get votes from fans of Madonna, Paramore, Jack Antonoff or SZA.
17
Kendrick Lamar
Lamar was on our critics’ list.
Lamar is the highest-ranked rapper on the readers’ list. One voter called his albums “audio cultural landmarks,” praising the track “The Heart Part 5” in particular. Some voters mentioned his lyrical battle with Drake — though 13 ballots included both Lamar and Drake.
18
Lucinda Williams
Williams was on our critics’ list.
The album “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” one voter said, captures memory in an intensely physical way. “It doesn’t just describe a life — it reconstructs it, briefly, so you can step back inside.”
19
Jason Isbell
Isbell was not on our critics’ list.
Readers showed strong support for a few different songwriters to have been involved in the band Drive-By Truckers, with both Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley coming within striking distance of the top 250 names. The standout, though, was Isbell, who drew nearly 1,500 votes with songs like “Cast Iron Skillet” and “Elephant.”
20
Jeff Tweedy
Tweedy was not on our critics’ list.
The Wilco frontman was buoyed by support from both an indie-rock contingent (like voters for Stephen Malkmus or Robert Pollard) and a country-Americana one (like voters for Gillian Welch or Sturgill Simpson). Remarkably, the poll’s lone vote for Bhad Bhabie — Danielle Bregoli, of “catch me outside” fame — appeared on a seemingly earnest ballot that also included Tweedy.
21
Brandi Carlile
Carlile was not on our critics’ list.
Including or excluding votes for Carlile’s collaborators Phil and Tim Hanseroth would not change her position, but it’s notable that a clutch of readers praised all three, or the Hanseroths specifically. A few voters mentioned the song “The Joke.” Carlile was especially likely to win the votes of those who chose Indigo Girls, the Avett Brothers, Pink or Sara Bareilles.
22
Donald Fagen
Fagen was not on our critics’ list.
This entry also reflects votes for Steely Dan as a partnership, including individual votes for Walter Becker, who died in 2017. (Though at least one ballot said Fagen’s first solo album, “The Nightfly,” was evidence that Steely Dan’s “musical signatures” were his.) Fagen’s songs, one voter said, “sound like the seediest, most stylish ’70s neo-noir I’ve ever seen”; he was a prominent vote among those who also chose Todd Rundgren or members of the Doobie Brothers.
23
Neil Diamond
Diamond was not on our critics’ list.
Critics and snobs, one voter said, might consider him campy, but “you know they can sing every single word of ‘Sweet Caroline’ at the top of their lungs.” Judging from voters’ comments, their love for Diamond might not even much depend on his songs that were made more famous by others, like “I’m a Believer” and “Red Red Wine.” Diamond received just over 1,000 votes — a good indicator of just how quickly consensus evaporates as you move away from Dylan’s more than 8,000.
24
John Fogerty
Fogerty was not on our critics’ list.
One voter noted that the Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman’s work “from ’68 through ’70 (six whole albums!) is perhaps the single most prolific period of sustained songwriting brilliance we have ever seen.”
25
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was not on our critics’ list.
The band’s songs were always credited, democratically, to all four members — Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe — each of whom also received individual votes. One voter called the group “the absolute blueprint for channeling articulate discontent into cryptic, melancholic and structurally perfect alt-rock.” The songs readers mentioned ranged across the band’s career, from “So. Central Rain” and “Cuyahoga” to “You Are the Everything” and “Nightswimming.”
27
Don Henley
Henley was not on our critics’ list.
Another web of votes that was hard to disentangle involved the Eagles, with ballots naming the band as a whole as well as various individual writers or combinations thereof — Henley, Glenn Frey, Henley and Frey, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, Randy Meisner and so on. If you combined the vote totals of the band and everyone who ever wrote or co-wrote an original Eagles song (including Jack Tempchin, J.D. Souther and Bob Seger), the sum would just barely miss readers’ top 10, though nearly half of those votes would arrive via Jackson Browne.
28
Lionel Richie
Richie was on our critics’ list.
“So emotional, he’s played at weddings, engagements and even funerals,” one voter said. Comments on our critics’ list sometimes balked at Richie’s presence — one person even voted for “anyone who is not Lionel Richie” — but many, many readers shared an admiration for the monumental tenderness of songs like “Easy” and “Hello.”
29
Brian & Eddie Holland
Brian & Eddie Holland were on our critics’ list.
It took some time to collate the countless ways people indicated votes for the two surviving members of Motown’s Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team — including one truly surreal moment of ambiguity involving Dexter Holland of the Offspring.
30
Jimmy Webb
Webb was not on our critics’ list.
Webb is the highest-ranking person on the readers’ list who is best known as a writer of songs performed by others. Ballots were full of praise for various Webb classics: Those made famous by Glen Campbell were particular favorites (“Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston”), but there was also plenty of love for songs like “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” (first recorded by Johnny Rivers) and “MacArthur Park” (first recorded by the Irish actor — and future Dumbledore — Richard Harris).
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