The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters

A Sapphire Reserve story from Ella Langley. I kinda say my first concert ever was for cows. I would climb up to the top of the barn and just perform. Now I still do that, listening to Apple Music, which I get through my Sapphire Reserve card. And when moo can sound very close to boo, it toughens a girl up. Sapphire Reserve now comes with Apple Music. Chase Sapphire Reserve, now even more rewarding. See more rewards at chase.com/reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank NA member, FDIC, subject to credit approval. Terms apply. Apple in the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. Registered in The US and other countries. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily on Sunday. Over the past year, under a veil of secrecy, my colleagues at The New York Times Magazine have been arguing over a list of the best living songwriters in America. Put stupid with type effects. It's a love stoop, the sunshine. Across all genres of music. Famous lyricists. Sonic pioneers, hit machines, and beloved storytellers. Today, Times journalists explain how this list was made, and we hear from the artists themselves about how they created some of the greatest songs ever written. It's Sunday, May 3. Sasha Weisz. Michael Barbaro. You must be exhausted. We've had some late nights here. Yeah. But fun ones. Really fun. And just to explain, you are the deputy editor of the Times Magazine, and you were deeply involved along with a vast crew in creating this list. And I wonder how do you even begin to create a list as ambitious as this? Well, we decided to draw on the wisdom of the crowd. And But not just any crowd. Not just any crowd. We wanted to really canvas a lot of different music experts from all walks of life. So we sent ballads out, of course, to working musicians and songwriters, but also to producers, to label executives, to many generations of music critics, to top editors of music magazines, to scholars, to authors, to DJs, to music supervisors. So we really tried to go wide. And in the end, the list that was generated by that balloting process had over 700 individual names. Wow. What followed the balloting process was a second part of the process, which was inviting Times critics and sometimes affiliated critics to come to The Times, for a long day of debate. And just kinda slug it out. To slug it out. Were you in the room? Oh, yeah. What was it like? Passionate, contentious, sometimes heated. You know, I mean, there were some people who were obvious shoe ins. They balloted high above the rest. Stevie Wonder was one, Dolly Parton was another, Bob Dylan was another, Carole King. So hold your fire. Those guys are in. Those guys are in, and that was part of our rules. And sort of the lower down we got in the balloting, the more …