“Often the simplest song is the hardest to write.”
- Patti Smith
I'm still irritated about that NYT Greatest Living American Songwriter List. It's been stuck in my craw. I'm not the only one annoyed by it, that's for sure. There's plenty of outrage about inclusions and omissions. Maybe, just generating a little controversy was the point. Given the Times' flagging readership, any kind of publicity must be good.
Here are three living American songwriters that I'm sure were just nosed out by Bad Bunny, Young Thug and The Dream:
Who's on your list of Great Living American Songwriters and what are some of their words?
Well, this Sunday sermon won't mention
All the work we put into this love
They ain't gonna hang a billboard
Congratulating us
For surviving every rise and fall
For being more hard-headed than a wrecking ball
- Lori McKenna/You Get a Love Song
Out here in the middle where the center's on the right
And the ghost of William Jennings Bryan preaches every night
Saving lonely souls in the dashboard light
Wish you were here my love
Wish you were here, my love
James McMurtry/Out Here in the Middle - Covered here by Robert Earl Keen
I am a full-fledged grown up adult, I'm tryin' to make it down, tryin' to get a result
I'm hold up in a Hollywood hotel suite, tequila to drink, an avocado to eat
They got all kinds of victories and lots of downfalls, They got drugs in the rugs and ghosts in the walls
Starlets in the lobby that can make a man drool, blood on the curtains and a phone by the pool.
- Loudon Wainwright III/Hollywood Hopeful