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.
Comments