Rolling Stone published their list (Taylor Swift, but no Laura Nyro? WTF?), and then The Telegraph published the alternate list. Any of your favorites missing?
100 BEST SONGWRITERS MISSED OUT BY ROLLING STONE
1 Cole Porter
2 Townes Van Zandt
3 Ewan MacColl
4 Kate Bush
5 Ray Charles
6 Freddie Mercury
7 Louis Jordan
8 Damon Albarn
9 John Hiatt
10 Richard Thompson
11 Irving Berlin
12 Stephen Sondheim
13 George Gershwin
14 Joan Baez
15 Cat Stevens
16 Phil Spector
17 Lefty Frizzell
18 Paul Anka
19 Shane McGowan
20 Gordon Lightfoot
21 Gil Scott-Heron
22 Lead Belly
23 John Denver
24 Jelly Roll Morton
25 Otis Redding
26 Peter Gabriel
27 Guy Clarke
28 Jarvis Cocker
29 Loudon Wainwright III
30 Frank Zappa
31 Lyle Lovett
32 Nick Drake
33 Tom Lehrer
34 Tupac Shakur
35 Bob Seger
36 John Lee Hooker
37 Neyo
38 Linda Perry
39 Steve Earle
40 Richard Shindell
41 Patty Griffin
42 Beck
43 Noël Coward
44 Joan Armatrading
45 Harold Arlen
46 Rodney Crowell
47 Chuck D Public Enemy
48 Amy Winehouse
49 Fred Neill
50 Bryan Ferry
51 John Cale
52 Roy Orbison
53 Nick Cave
54 Tracy Chapman
55 Robert Plant
56 Nick Lowe
57 Ryan Adams
58 Jeff Buckley
59 Laura Marling
60 Erykah Badu
61 Tim Hardin
62 Dr John
63 Warren Zevon
64 Ralph McTell
65 Gram Parsons
66 Rickie Lee Jones
67 Squeeze (Chris Difford/Glenn Tilbrook)
68 John Mellencamp
69 Bill Withers
70 Bobby Bland
71 John Martyn
72 Cyndi Lauper
73 Phil Ochs
74 Marc Bolan
75 Nanci Griffith
76 Nina Simone
77 Peter Case
78 Lowell George
79 Donovan
80 WC Handy
81 Ian Drury
82 Ian Curtis
83 A Tribe Called Quest
84 Don McLean
85 Christy Moore
86 Chris Martin
87 Mark Knopfler
88 Colin Meloy
89 Jeff Lynne
90 John Grant
91 Sandy Denny
92 Vic Chesnut
93 Elliott Smith
94 PJ Harvey
95 Jim Croce
96 Paul Weller
97 Ray Noble
98 Sia
99 Annie Lennox/Dave Stewart
100 Bobby Bradock
It’s a fool’s errand to try to put together a list like this, with so many genres of music in contention.
Assigning precise ranks makes the exercise even less credible.
I neglected to mention that the “of all time” (non)limitation renders the thing totally comical. Do we start with Palestrina, or with Anonymous?
Do we include opera arias? Is there any World Music on either list?
Nice to see Tom Lehrer get a mention. As well as Gordon Lightfoot. Bonnie Raitt got snubbed.
uh, John Lennon??? Paul McCartney??? WTF, indeed. And what about Eric Idle? I agree with Izquierdo: This is a fool’s errand, most likely to garner eyeballs. And a resulting silly list. Silly silly silly. And irrelevant.
Furthermore:
Did any of these 100 best songwriters of all time write in a language other than English?
What about the poor zhlubs who wrote only the music, such as Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers and Leonard Bernstein? Or lyricists such as W.S.Gilbert and Ira Gershwin?
Johnny Mercer?
well, Bonnie Raitt should have been on the list
and
Ani di Franco people! She comes ahead of Dylan in my book.