The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters

and I wanted to find out a few of our writers' favorite tips.

When you're first moving into your home, make sure that you change the beddy scene

to smoke the tent there. Buy mattress bag, but you can carry a mattress more easily because the handles are built in, and it's going to protect your mattress from the truck and the street. Make sure you have towels on hand, you don't want to end up taking a shower and using a dirty sock to dry off. Yeah. If you're getting ready to move, let Wirecutter help you make a plan,

at nytimes.com/moving. From New York Times, I'm Mike Obobaro. This is the daily, unsunday. 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.

Across all genres of music, famous lyricists, Sonic Pioneers, hit machines, and beloved storytellers. To date, 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 3rd.

“Socialize. 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 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 ballots 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 mothers, 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 balladning process had over 700 individual names.

Wow. What followed the balladning 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 kind of slug it out to slug it up. 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 shoeants. They balladed high above the rest. Stevie Wonder was one, Dolly Parton was another Bob Dylan was another Carol 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 balladning. The more they had to reach consensus. So there was a lot of debate. There was a lot

of playing music in the room. But when they couldn't get agreement, sometimes they had to move on. Crushing. It was crushing. I mean, I think at various points, different people in the room felt crushed. You know, part of what we were trying to do here was to complicate the image of a kind of singer-songwriter bar that a lot of us have in our heads and that, you know, some of the kind of usual suspect's represent. That's one mode of songwriting. A very important one. But it's actually relatively

new. You know, it was really in the sixties that Bob Dylan, among others, kind of inaugurated that kind of

“songwriting. You know, and we wanted to represent these other traditions. So how do we do that?”

So who do include from Nashville? That was a big question. And how to arrange that, you know,

how to explain that to readers? Well, let's talk about who ultimately got left off because so much

of our conversation today is going to be about who makes it. And I'm going to go first here, okay, because I have, I've had a chance to evaluate your list. And just off the top of my head, Billy Joel. Sure. You left off Billy Joel, the poet laureate of New York, the man who turned dinner at an entire restaurant into an opera. You're, you're not alone there, Michael. Many commenters

everybody in the room would agree. I think, at least most of them would agree. The Billy Joel

belongs on a list of great songwriters. But when you're making a list of 30, and you're rooting

“it in a balladning process, you have to make hard choices. And there were people who were higher”

than he was. And, you know, there were also people representing the piano man, Schmaltz tradition. Schmaltz. Sure, Schmaltz meant in the best sense. Emotionalism, opera, you know, a kind of like bigness of storytelling, which is a venerable tradition in Americans on. Yeah. And, and represented on the list. But Billy Joel, some people argue in the room as a lyricist. If you're kind of putting him up against a spring scene and a Dylan people who he admires and I think pays homage to

some people argued he's not quite there. And, and there are others who are better. And we do have

to represent the piano men. They're there. But the piano men himself, ultimately, is not.

Is not. I wonder what you see and or hear when you look at the final list of 30.

“I think it's a list that reflects the world that we move through. I think it reflects the way”

that American music comes out of everything from, like, a speaker at a bar mitzvah. You know, a dance bar at a bar mitzvah. To what you see on TikTok. To, like, the thing that you'd sing at karaoke that everybody would know. We have people who are layering in production and a kind of sound that threads its way through popular R&B and soul and hip-hop. We have Schmalt. And we have avant-garde indie, you know, weirdness.

You know, we have all of it. And we really wanted to show a range. And to show that songwriting is not just one kind of songwriting. So the list tells several stories about that. And I'd argue, best of all, for our purposes, is that because this list of 30

“songwriters required them to be alive, we can actually hear from them.”

Yes. So that was sort of the third step in the process. Once we went through the very

difficult work of winnowing this list. And by the way, it wasn't just one session. It was many, many sessions over weeks to get to where we got. We wanted to go to these practitioners of song and say, how do you do what you do? And for the rest of this episode, we're actually going to hear from a couple of our colleagues who helped create this list and did these interviews with these living songwriters. And we're going to start with a colleague who spoke with arguably the biggest

name in music today. And we're actually going to hear from her in the great tradition of small song. I'm going to use a pun here. We're going to hear from her quite swiftly. Excellent. We'll be right back. Some songs that I've written, I started on the piano that happened with all in one of a Christmas you. If you couldn't tell, that is Mariah Carey. I'm John Caramonica, one of the critics behind

the New York Times of 30, greatest living American songwriters project. We interviewed some of the songwriters on our list, including Taylor Swift, who hasn't sat for a video like this in a long time. These are not ordinary conversations. You're going to watch these videos and learn about intimate approaches to craft in ways that you rarely have access to. My mom had got me this notebook and I was just writing and really small because I didn't want

anybody to read what I was writing. Okay, Jay-Z's teenage notebooks. I need to see those. Watch all the video interviews for free and check out the entire 30-gradest living American songwriters project at ny times.com/30gradest or in the app. And let us know if you agree with our picks. I bet you won't. Joe Kaskarale. Hey. Welcome to the Sunday Daily. Thank you for having me. You cover pop music for the New York Times. You co-host a show, Popcast. You were one of the journalists

who helped winnow this wisdom of the crowd that Sasha mentioned down to the 30 best living American songwriters and most relevantly for our purposes. You interviewed the Queen. Not Beyonce.

Tell me why Taylor Swift made the list. How could she not? That's my stance. I think there's a lot of him hanging over Taylor's omnipresence as a celebrity, as a cultural figure, her sort of imperial reign over pop music, especially in the last five plus years. The fame is one thing, but the music is at the core of the fame. And I think that ultimately is the reason for everything else.

“It's the songs. And that's what puts her on the list of best living songwriters. You're a student.”

Maybe even dare I say a scholar of Taylor Swift and you've been studying her work for how long. I mean, I've been listening to Taylor Swift since I was a teenager, which is when she was a teenager. Yeah, we're about the same age. She's 1989. As we know, I'm 1988. We've grown up in

parallel. She's always been there as a soundtrack to my own adolescence and young adulthood.

And then I've been covering her as a journalist for 15 years now, 12 of which are here at the times. I interviewed her before for my songwriting series on YouTube called "Diary of a Song" 2020-19. And then after that interview, she essentially goes dark from speaking with reporters about her work, until, until now. All right. We're good. We're at your rock? Oh, absolutely. All right. Thank you so much for doing this. What a treat.

Thank you for inviting me to talk about Songwriting. I have a million years.

“Where do you start this conversation with her about her songwriting process?”

You know, I actually started with the first line of the first song of her first album. She ever released called Taylor Swift in 2006. That song is called Tim McGraw. We use that to get into all of these little songwriting tricks that she still does today that started with her initial schooling in what it means to make a record. There was almost this tradition of sort of breaking the fourth wall,

making the song then a part of the song or the writing of the song becomes a part of the song.

And one of the tricks I've always loved that Taylor Swift uses, which is a very country music thing

to do, is this sort of plot twist, this perspective shift at the end of a song.

“And I did that in a song called Tim McGraw, where, you know, I'm singing about this, this kind of love”

lost, and there's a letter that's on your doorstep and the first thing that you read. And then in the bridge, it's revealed that I wrote this song and I hope you hear it. This is something she was doing on that first album on songs like Tim McGraw and our song. The song "Our Song," which I still love so much. It's all about this romance in this relationship and then in the end it says, "I grabbed a pen and an old napkin and I wrote down our song."

So, I loved doing that. I still kind of loved doing that. It's a kind of just like it was me. And then she drew the thread all the way years and years later to a song on her album folklore called The Last Great American Dynasty. It is just so much fun to like tell this story about this real woman who lived in history and and she defied the social norms and she drove people crazy and she had a marvelous time

ruining everything. And you talk about the house she lived in on the coast and basically then in

the end you're like, you know, she moved away from holiday house. It's sat quietly on that beach. And then it was bought by me and you're like, every time I get to that part when I would sing it on tour, I just like, I wanted my grin to go from here to here but that looks crazy. So, it's like I had to like taper down my own excitement that that that hook happened. As you too are discussing the early phases of her career, she mentions a musical influence

that I had not quite expected, emo. I was intensely impacted by emo music, right? Dashboard confessional Chris Corrabba fallout boy Pete Wentz's lyrics. This was a real light bulb moment for me because Taylor and I are about the same age. We grew up on the

which is playing on idiom and even cliche. She drew it directly back to these sort of

“maligned at the time youth culture bands who were known for putting a sort of clever twist on an”

expected phrase. They take a common phrase and then they just twist the knife of it. Right? Like, I'm just a notch in your bedpost, but you're just a line in a song. Drop a heart break in name. I'd be reading those lyrics and I just finished reading a line and just go, oh my god. And that got her talking and thinking about all these little language tricks she likes to lean on. I really gravitate towards juxtaposition and polarity in a line, right? So hey, what could you possibly

get for the girl who has everything and nothing all at once? Are coming of age has come and gone. She talks about these little rules she has for herself. Like, she doesn't like one word to end on the same letter that the next word starts with. A really funny bugaboo. For example, in the song R song, it was supposed to be when you're on the phone and you talk real low. But I was like, I don't like, I don't like the real low. So it's turned into when you talk real slow.

Taylor is famous for her bridges in songwriting and here I'm just going to confess. I don't think

“I've ever really understood what her bridge is, but I know you guys talked about it. I think an”

easy way to think about a bridge is that it's a standalone part of the song that comes near the end

and you've never heard it before and it probably doesn't repeat. I knew I had to talk about bridges

with her because Taylor has made a point to really make the most out of this part of pop songwriting structure. I think the importance for me of a bridge, it just feels like we're painting a picture, we're setting a scene. You can start like painting the picture in the verse. You can get to the heart of it at the chorus, but then the bridge can be where you zoom back, you walk 20 feet back and you see what this entire painting was supposed to be. Like you've seen brushstrokes,

you've seen the color tones, but the bridge can be when you step back and you feel everything that that piece of art was supposed to make you feel. That's just how I feel about bridges. And she's yours in on something she likes to do that she calls the rant bridge.

We love these rant bridges where it's basically like

stream of consciousness, endless pouring out of emotion. Intrusive thoughts like blended with metaphor, with discussion, with shouting, "I can't help but I can't help but I can't help but I can't help." Though you want this rant bridge to feel the most intense of what that feeling is that you're trying to establish over the course of the song.

My favorite moment in the interview, in case you wondered, is when Taylor Swift

describes to you how an entire song just starts to come to her and that is always felt like

the divine in the songwriting process. And she recounts a recent example of that. Yeah, she's talking about the song Elizabeth Taylor. She's talking about this really sort of mundane moment of being on vacation with her boyfriend, Naufianse, Travis Kelsey. I go on and on and explaining to Travis like, "Why I love Elizabeth Taylor so much?" She fought for artists' rights. She was exploited in so many ways and you

can just imagine Travis. You know, in the driver's theater, whatever it is, just sort of like, "Okay, interesting." You know, learning all about Elizabeth Taylor. I'm just going on and on and like her eyes were violet. Some people said they were blue,

“some people said they were violet. I think they were violet. And we arrived. We get home.”

He gets out of the car and I'm just in my head. I'm like this intrusive melody. I'm like, "I cry my eyes violet. Elizabeth Taylor." And I'm just like scrambling to open my record like app on my phone. For somebody who is writing songs constantly, I think a conversation easily becomes art. But that's like one of those spontaneous places where it floats down like a cloud in front of you and all you have to do is grab it. And the song transpires from there.

reputation as a songwriter. I see a difference. It is exceedingly sensitive and she tells you this

“to the idea that other people have written her songs. Totally. And that's something that”

started very early in her career. Taylor's third album, Speak Now, is one that she wrote entirely alone with no other co-writers. When I wrote Speak Now, I was 18 and 19 and I was coming from this big massive moment that I had with an album called Fearless and it had one album of the year at the Grammys and it was this big. It was the first time there was like this

big debate over whether I deserved to be there. They're always going to be there. After fearless,

her second album blew up. You had a bunch of people coming out of the woodworks saying like ha ha cute. Look at this little girl who's writing her songs. I was like these discussions can lead to a really bad place if I don't do something to counteract them and to prove that no, it wasn't my co-writers that did all this work. And yes, I am the author of this entire body of work that I was

“very proud of. And I think that's something she's had to return to over and over again”

throughout her career. This idea that no, no, she in fact is the chief architect and author of everything she makes. Even if she works with some of the biggest songwriters on earth. I'd written so many songs alone and I love collaboration. I love co-writers but it's not something that I needed.

It's one of the things I've always loved and respected about Taylor is that you can tell she is in

tune with the conversation around her even as she's gotten to this level. And if you pay close attention, you can hear her in this interview responding to different lines of criticism. I do kind of like it when people challenge me on something because I never want to be in the room with creators who are afraid that if they have a better idea, like they can't, they can't argue with me because it must be my idea that makes it through. I'm never going to grow that way.

When she says something like, when I am collaborating, it's the best idea wins in the room. AKA, I'm not surrounded by yes men, which is something again that a lot of people have said. Oh, Taylor songs are slipping because she's so famous because no one in the room with her can tell her when she has a bad idea. So she does this thing where she not only internalizes the criticism and responds to it in a forum like this, but also responds to it in the music

and in the songs and in the way she makes them. Right. I'm glad you brought this up. She talks with really bracing frankness about the concept of criticism and about how she thinks you're supposed to best use it in songwriting and how you're not supposed to use it and the balancing act of that. I thought that was maybe her savvyest and most wise section of this interview. Yeah, criticism has been a huge fuel for me. It's been a huge jumping off point like a creative

writing prompt or something. She says basically like dip into it, get a taste of it,

and then use it in your art as fuel. There are so many songs in my career that would not exist. Like blank space would not exist if I hadn't had people being like, here's a slideshow on her way fan. And then anti-hero is a song that I'm so proud of still like. That song doesn't exist if I don't get criticized for every aspect of my personality that people have a problem with. My favorite thing when I sit down with new artists or songwriters

sound like why are you reading your comments? Like you're inundating yourself with too much

“criticism that doesn't really have a focus. But I think a little bit of it, you got to just be like this”

as part of it. Don't make this make you stop writing or make you edit yourself or whatever. If it's an interesting point to you to kind of respond to, then that's a gift for you to be able to write something, maybe you wouldn't have written something that day. Don't go to the notes app and post it, like write about it, make art about this. Don't respond to like trolls in your comments. That's not what we want from you. We want your art.

Oh, I'll put it in the spot. I voted against Billy Joel. Why?

“I find Billy Joel to be Schlockey. I think just because people want to sing your songs at karaoke or”

bar, that's one ingredient to a great songwriter. But I don't know that the catalog itself stands up when you put a little more pressure on it. Well, Joe, thanks for all the hate mail, Michael, in advance. Thank you for most of this conversation. Maybe not the very end. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back.

Joe, you're welcome to the Sunday Daily. Thanks, Michael, great to be here. You're one of the

esteemed critics. I would argue. Shucks, deeply involved in this songwriting project.

“And we just spoke to Joe Koskarelli about his conversation with Taylor Swift. So you know where”

you're entering here. That's one kind of songwriting tradition. When it comes to this list, that wasn't the tradition you focused on. No, I actually wrote about had conversations with songwriters who represented a bunch of different other styles, idioms, traditions, vibes, if you will. Well, let's start with rap with hip-hop and who you focused on there. Yeah, so I went out to Los Angeles and had a conversation with a New Yorker. That is with arguably the New Yorker, at least one of them,

Jay-Z, who of course is Brooklyn, born and bred. One of our things, the writer, rapper, behind arguably our great New York anthem of the 21st century Empire State of mind. I'm on many

“other songs. Beyond Billy Joel's obviously, yeah. Yeah, I think of him as sort of a more of a”

Britian tunnel, barred, but moving on. So Jay-Z, of course, chronicle his life. He's kind of hard scrabble upbringing in Brooklyn, in a lot of his music. He's kind of mythic journey from street corner hustler to famous rapper to now mogul and yep. Billy in there. Jay-Z, of course, a master storyteller, but also kind of a legendary technician. Just a true genius when it comes to writing rhymes, finding rhythmic pockets and flows. Just one of the great practitioners of his art form,

ever. What was the most revealing thing he said to you about his songwriting process? It was really fascinating to be speaking to him about sort of how songs start for him. Most times I come up with the

flow first. You may have heard like people like he does his Rayman in studio because I'm like,

I'm trying to work out the pockets and then I'll feel it with words. Jay-Z is famous for hearing it coming to the studio, hearing a beat, and kind of writing very quickly in the studio to that beat. These are the ingredients I got to work with. I'll make in this type of meal, and I have these sort of things and that's it. You take one of your arms and you tie it behind your back. That's a challenge, but there's a challenge that's right at it. You relish and you want.

So if you listen to like a great early song of his, like Dead Presidents, too. What you hear there is intricately rhyme lines with double-on-tandres, triple-on-tandres, puns, the word play, all that. For me, that's where I really drive. When I'm challenged to do a thing to make a word, mean more. It's triple-on-tandres, quadruple-on-tandres. That's when I feel like I'm in my best.

So Jay-Z had to be on this list because he is just a master practitioner of this of this great art form, which may be not enough people recognize as central to songwriting itself.

unheralded and to a certain degree unseen. And that is a group of writers in Tennessee.

“Yeah, so I wrote about the three honorees on our list who are probably the least well-known”

because they operate mostly behind the scenes. Not entirely behind the scenes because one of our three brandy Clark is herself a hallowed singer songwriter. But she does a lot of work behind the scenes, coming out of the tradition that is referred to by the catch-all music row, which of course refers to the kind of row of song publishing offices in Nashville that has been the epicenter of the country, music, business, and songwriting tradition for decades generations. The other two people who are

in this little collective that we chose to recognize as a songwriter named Shane Macanali

and a guy named Josh Osborn collectively between them. They have written dozens and dozens of hits over the past decade and a half. But they represent this tradition of writers who approach songwriting is a nine to five job. They get together have what they call co-rites little sessions at last for a couple hours usually it starts at 11 in the morning and then they ping-pong ideas, chord changes, melodies back and forth and they tend to produce a lot of songs like many songs over the course

of a week. Then of course these writers aren't the ones generally speaking whose names go on the record.

You know they kind of shop their songs to stars to performing artists. It's a different mode of

production than you know okay the singer songwriter who's pouring out his or her heart you know in that kind of like ironic romantic mode. These people are trying to write hits and trying to place

“songs. What are some of the hits that this collective of three songwriters have made?”

Yeah so this group are notable because while they operate out of this music road tradition they're also kind of I would say subverters of tradition that is they came in and kind of innovated a little bit. They kind of teamed up with some of the more progressive stars down in Nashville. So artists like Casey Musgrains. She's some about smoking weed about being who you are no matter what your sexual preference is.

That was a song that was written by Brandy Clark and Shane Macanalli. Another great Casey Musgrave song kind of her debut singlet believe song called Mary Go Round which was written by Josh Osborn Casey Musgraves and Shane Macanalli and that song is a kind of greedy look at small town life in the southeast Texas where Casey is from. It looks at things like adultery, dead end lives in a unvarnished way that was very surprising.

Shane Macanalli and Josh Osborn have written a lot of songs with Sam Hunt who's a big star down there these days and who is another kind of innovator he really has brought an R&D sound and sensibility to country music. Boxing and it looks like Pony up man we're closing down. We'll talk about your conversation with them and what you learned about how this trio and I know it's sometimes in different formations three or just two how they do this work.

Yeah so I went down there and interviewed them in a place called the blue bird cafe which is a legendary songwriter is hey now they spoke a lot about how they're kind of constantly writing and how that even impacts their everyday life. There's a great scene in the movie blockbuster. We're doing cocks his wife and he or having this big fight and he says all right that's fine get it you're innocent and I'm guilty guilty as George I'm guilty as George guilty as George.

guilty as George don't you dare want a song right now do it and that's exactly how my husband's feels because he'll be talking and not my glaze over and he'll be like are you

“writing a song this is our life but that's how how it happens it's scary how accurate that”

yeah another thing they say about their dynamic is how they kind of function as a as a support group for one another. As born in McNally we're talking about the process of working with Sam Hunt on

in me and you probably smile like that all the time I don't mean to bow Sam and I had a co-write set up with an established older writer that had some hits we were both very much in all of this person admired this person really excited to be in the room with them. Sam Hunt brought that idea into

“a session and there was an older writer there Sam said I have this idea for a song I think it would”

be really interesting in this day and age if you had a song where in the verse I was literally talking to the girl and that idea landed with a thud and the older writer started laughing and he said I don't think anybody's gonna want to hear that on the radio Sam and he left the room to get some coffee

but I was born in McNally knew that it was a great idea the second he walked out of the room I

said don't tell that to anybody else we're gonna play that for shame because I knew she would get he got the last laugh he did get the last laugh but you know that career and I think it's really interesting because you know these guys are again they're trying to write hits it is different

“then you know the kind of confessional tradition that we associate with senior songwriters who operate”

more as you know kind of alone um creators finally Jodi you spent time with a songwriter on the list of 30 whose creations in my mind feel like they kind of belong to all of us somebody who wrote dance anthems in particular that are so ingrained in our lives that we and here I mean me forgot to ask who actually wrote them yeah I spoke to Nile Rogers who is co-founder band leader of chic the great 70s early 80s disco band he is a legendary guitarist when you hear his guitar sound

if you don't off the top of your head know what Nile Rogers guitar sounds like trust me you know it just listen to for instance the song good times good times he's written songs like I'm coming out the Diana Ross song we are family he's the greatest dancer sister sledge songs La Freak uh freak out for give me these songs are what I love about them you know they sound like glossy products of

a very sophisticated recording studio environment but they also sound like songs that were found

under a rock because they sound like they have always been and should always have been

yeah they're tall moodak they like they've always been there but of course they haven't always been

“there they came out of a very particular moment cultural historical moment and that's what's so”

great about talking to Nile Rogers I went to this club called the Gigi Barnum Room he talks about for instance writing the great song I'm coming out and that particular night was not just a heavy trans night but for some reason I guess they were having a Diana Ross look alike kind of Nile so I was standing now I was at a club downtown uh in the bathroom at a year ago I just happened to look to my left and see like six or seven deep Diana Ross's and I looked to my right

and I see six or seven deep Diana Ross's and sort of like a lightning bolt it hit him like I ran outside and I called Bernard up because you know it was the days of payphone we didn't have cell phones yet he called his co-writer co-founder of Sheek and part of the great basis Bernard Edwards so wake up wake up right this down he's a what I says right down I'm coming out he says what I says right down I'm coming out because I know I'm gonna get drunk and forget

now what struck him at that moment was it was both a bolt of inspiration artistic inspiration and a commercial lightning flash I'm telling you if we do this the gay community alone will buy a

million records to have Diana Ross come in out

you have the distinction or I guess you have the burden of being the last word on this list of the 30 best living American songwriters so when you look at this list all the names on it from Taylor to Jay-Z to Nile and recognizing of course how imperfect the creation of any

all kinds of genres traditions errors no pun intended oh yeah but what I hear is a kind of

“grand tradition that pulls us way back through the myths of history American popular song has lots”

of strains lots of streams so you can go all the way back to West Africa and follow the kind of grio tradition that West African enslaved people brought to this country through field hollers spirituals

the blues up through jazz the great traditions of African American music you can look at the music

that came from the British Isles and found its way into Appalachian folk song and country music

“you can look at the music that Eastern European and Western European immigrants lots of Irish”

people and Jews brought to New York City all these different strains fed into the music of the

individuals on our list so when you listen to a braille building songwriter like Carol King

who began his career as a very young man in the braille building you're hearing stuff that came out of that tin pan alley tradition crazy it's the same for everyone on this list whether you're listening to Willie Nelson sing crazy or whether you're listening to Steven Mary the kind of quirky indie songwriter who updates tin pan alley and all kinds of mischievous ways when you're listening to smoky Robinson or some of like Missy Elliott who's music sounds like

it's from outer space or tv wonder so what I hear is maybe not a single tradition but maybe a grand tradition one big tradition that brings together all these different strains but represents a kind of hive mind a kind of something that can be called American music you know an e-pluribus oonum way of song one journey thank you so much appreciate it thank you Michael

today's episode was produced by Luke Van der Plug and Alex Barron it was edited by Wendy Dorr our production manager is Franny Kartoff this episode was engineered by Sophia Landman

“contains original music by Diane Wong if you want to watch extended video interviews of some”

of the artists we talked about today including Taylor Swift Jay Z the Nashville 3 and Nile Rogers visit nytimes.com slash 30 greatest that's nytimes.com slash 30 greatest that's it for the daily I'm Michael Barrow see you tomorrow