Who Is the Greatest Living Songwriter?

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Supported by

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Student Opinion

Who Is the Greatest Living Songwriter?

Times critics have named their top 30 American songwriters. Do you agree with their list? Who is missing? Here is your chance to make the case for your favorite.

Share full article

By

Jeremy Engle

April 29, 2026,

5:04 a.m. ET

See more of our coverage in your search results.

Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de búsqueda.

Add The New York Times on Google

Agrega The New York Times en Google

Do you have a favorite songwriter? What do you love about the way they write lyrics, compose a melody, tell a story, convey a feeling or craft a song?

In The New York Times Magazine interactive “

The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters

,” more than 250 music insiders and six Times critics weighed in on who defines the new American songbook. The list they created includes many modern music luminaries like Bad Bunny, Mariah Carey and Taylor Swift. But it also includes many others who wrote your favorite songs, often out of the spotlight.

The list won’t please everyone. It is intended to start conversations — not to end them. (You can read more about

how The Times’s critics chose their list

).

Video

Joe Coscarelli, a culture reporter for The Times, explains why Taylor Swift ranks among the 30 greatest living American songwriters:

She has never stopped chasing that initial Nashville impulse — a four-ish-minute distillation of the biggest feelings imaginable, threaded through a melody that won’t leave you alone. Sometimes she brings country phrasings to electro-pop, or pop rigor to indie rock; she might let her rhymes and verses go shaggy or bring a bridge back like a chorus. Such are the perks of having mastered the form early, while amassing the cultural capital to remake pop in her image.

Pop stars are not supposed to last this long or create this much. The Beatles’ entire creative output happened, essentially, in eight years. But Swift’s durability — 12 studio albums and hundreds of songs over two decades — has given us an unprecedented combination of musical auteurism and commercial success.

Mr. Coscarelli continues:

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and

log into

your Times account, or

subscribe

for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?

Log in

.

Want all of The Times?

Subscribe

.

Related Content

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT