Arguing with the NYT's Songwriter List

The first problem with the New York Times Magazine’s new list (“The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters”) is that it’s the wrong list. It makes perfect sense for a cultural publication like the Old Gray Lady to trot out legitimizing lists, announcing the best records or songs released over the past year. It even makes sense to crown—with the highest pretension the institution can muster—the Supreme Artists of Our Time (though any institution will inevitably be very wrong: it goes with the territory [The Establishment]). But then this is just what the New York Times’ anodyne new list fails to do, why its pandering and legacy laundering feels particularly offensive. To get to the point: that title should have read “The 30 Greatest Working American Songwriters.” Specifying “Living” is just silly.