Greatness in art is not a fixed quantity. It cannot be measured.
When the New York Times Magazine convened more than two hundred fifty music insiders to name the thirty greatest living American songwriters, it produced not only a cultural monument but an argument — one that may say as much about the architecture of taste as it does about the artists themselves. The act of ranking artistic greatness is, at its core, a philosophical problem dressed in editorial clothing: every inclusion is also an exclusion, and every canon is also a silence. What the list illuminates most clearly is not who belongs, but how belonging gets decided, and by whom.
- The Times list arrives with institutional weight — video portraits, critical essays, multimedia fanfare — yet its authority is immediately contested by the very critics who helped build it.
- Voters' remorse set in almost immediately, with one curator haunted by the names the mathematics of thirty made impossible to include: Randy Newman, Billy Joel, Tom Waits, Frank Ocean, Neko Case.
- The debate cuts deeper than omissions — it exposes how canons are constructed, whose tastes shape the record, and which blind spots get institutionalized as consensus.
- No resolution is in sight; the list stands, the counter-playlists multiply, and the question of what 'greatness' means in American music remains as open and contested as ever.
The New York Times Magazine recently published its ranking of the thirty greatest living American songwriters, assembled through votes cast by more than two hundred fifty music professionals. The project arrived with considerable cultural machinery — interviews with honorees like Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, and Lucinda Williams, critical essays, and multimedia content designed to signal seriousness of purpose. It is an ambitious attempt to map American songwriting at a particular moment in time.
But the number thirty is, almost by definition, too small. One curator involved in the voting described a kind of voters' remorse — a middle-of-the-night certainty that vital voices had been sacrificed to the arithmetic of the exercise. This is less a flaw in the list than a flaw in the premise: greatness in art cannot be measured. It shifts depending on who is measuring, what they value, and what they have been exposed to.
In response, the curator assembled an eleven-song counter-playlist of songwriters who deserved inclusion but were left out. Some omissions feel almost inexplicable — Randy Newman, Billy Joel, Tom Waits, figures whose influence on American popular music is foundational. Others are less visible in mainstream critical discourse but no less essential: Alynda Segarra, whose work carries political urgency and emotional precision; Frank Ocean, who has redefined what a contemporary songwriter can be; Neko Case, whose catalog refuses the boundaries of genre.
The gaps are not random. They tell a story about whose contributions get deemed essential and whose remain on the margins despite undeniable artistic achievement. Canons will keep being built, lists will keep being made, and the question of greatness will remain unanswerable — but what lives in the space between inclusion and omission is worth examining carefully.
The New York Times Magazine recently published a list of the thirty greatest living American songwriters, the result of voting by more than two hundred fifty music insiders and critics. It's the kind of project that arrives with considerable fanfare—video interviews with honorees like Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, and Lucinda Williams; critical essays exploring the work of the chosen few; and the kind of multimedia apparatus that signals cultural weight. The list itself is undeniably ambitious, a sprawling attempt to map the landscape of American songwriting at a particular moment in time.
But here's the problem with any list that claims to crown greatness: the number thirty is, by almost any measure, far too small. A music critic tasked with voting on such a ballot faces an impossible choice. The constraint creates genuine anguish. Days after submitting a ballot, the curator found themselves seized by what might be called voters' remorse—the nagging, middle-of-the-night certainty that vital voices had been left behind, that the mathematics of the exercise had forced the exclusion of songwriters whose work deserved recognition. This is not a flaw in the list itself so much as a flaw in the very premise of ranking artistic achievement.
The tension between subjectivity and authority runs through all critical work, but it becomes especially acute when the stakes involve legacy and canon. Greatness in art is not a fixed quantity. It cannot be measured. It shifts depending on who is doing the measuring, what they value, and what they have been exposed to. A professional critic knows this intellectually. They try to approach each piece of music with respect for the fact that their judgment is one among many, that taste is not truth. And yet the machinery of lists demands otherwise. It demands that we choose, that we rank, that we declare some artists more essential than others.
With that tension in mind, the curator assembled a separate playlist—eleven songs by songwriters who, in their view, should have been included but were not. The selection attempts to hold two things in balance: the obvious titans whose absence from the official list seems almost inexplicable, and the less mainstream voices whose work is no less vital but whose recognition remains incomplete. Randy Newman belongs in any serious conversation about American songwriting. So does Billy Joel. Tom Waits is a figure whose influence extends far beyond his own catalog. These are not obscure choices. They are artists whose work has shaped the landscape of popular music.
But the list also includes names less likely to appear in mainstream critical discourse: Alynda Segarra, whose songwriting carries both political urgency and emotional precision; Frank Ocean, whose approach to form and production has redefined what a contemporary American songwriter can be; and Neko Case, an artist whose catalog demonstrates a restless intelligence and a refusal to be confined by genre. These are artists working at the highest level, yet they occupy a different position in the cultural conversation than the names everyone knows.
The exercise reveals something important about how canons are built and who gets to participate in that building. The Times list was shaped by the votes of more than two hundred fifty music professionals, a broad coalition that nonetheless reflects particular tastes, particular blind spots, particular assumptions about what matters. The omissions are not random. They tell a story about whose work gets recognized, whose contributions are deemed essential, and whose voices remain on the margins even when their artistic achievement is undeniable.
There is no resolution to this tension. Lists will continue to be made. Canons will continue to be debated. The question of greatness will remain fundamentally unanswerable. But in the gaps between what gets included and what gets left out, there is something worth examining—not just the individual artists who were overlooked, but the systems and assumptions that determine whose work gets remembered and whose gets forgotten.
Citas Notables
Thirty is an absurdly, punishingly small number— The curator reflecting on the constraint of the list
Greatness in art is a subjective construct and my opinion is but one of many— The curator on the challenge of evaluating artistic merit
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does a list of thirty feel so constraining? Couldn't you just expand it?
Because the constraint is the whole point. A list of a hundred becomes meaningless. Thirty forces you to choose, and that's where the real conversation happens—in what you had to leave out.
But that means some genuinely great artists don't make it. Doesn't that bother you?
It does. It bothers me constantly. That's the honest answer. But the bothering is actually useful. It makes you think about why certain voices get centered and others don't.
Is it just about taste, then? Or is there something else going on?
It's about power. Who gets to vote, what they've been exposed to, what they value—that shapes the list as much as any individual artist's merit does. Taste is never neutral.
So the eleven you left out—they're not less great than the thirty?
No. They're equally great. The difference is visibility, institutional recognition, the machinery of how canons get built. That's a separate question from artistic achievement.
What does it mean for a songwriter to be left off a list like this?
It means their work continues to exist, to matter, to influence other artists. But it also means they don't get the cultural weight, the validation, the place in the official story. Both things are true at once.