The NY Times Asked Me to Pick the Greatest Living American Songwriters

Here's my ballot for the Times survey

On Valentine’s Day last year, I received an intriguing email from Jake Silverstein, Editor-in-Chief of the New York Times Magazine.

He wrote:

The New York Times Magazine is working on a project to define the 25 Greatest Living American Songwriters, and we’re seeking your input. The list will form the backbone of a special issue of the magazine to be published later this year….We are inviting you to submit your nominations.

I sat down and made a list of worthy candidates. The first half dozen names came easily enough, but then it got harder. After I reached number nine, I wanted to stop. But I eventually added six more names before submitting my list.

The New York Times asked if it could publish my ballot. I refused—I decided that I would share it instead with subscribers to The Honest Broker. I also turned down an invitation to write about the songwriters I picked. Here, too, I decided that anything i had to say about these artists would take place on Substack.

And then…

---

Please support my work by taking out a premium subscription (just $6 per month—or less).

---

And then nothing happened.

My deadline for submitting names was February 28, 2025—more than a year ago. As it turned out, one of the songwriters I picked died a few months later. My list was already outdated.

When we reached the end of 2025, I assumed that the NY Times had abandoned this project. So imagine my surprise when they finally published the results yesterday—more than 14 months after soliciting my ballot. The only thing that had changed in the interim was the Times’ decision to expand the final list to 30 names.

Of the 30 songwriters on the New York Times list, only five were on my ballot. But some of my picks were considered ineligible based on dubious criteria (see below).

You can find the results of the Times survey at this link.

Let’s jump into my picks, and you can offer opinions in the comments.

For a start, the top four names seemed obvious to me. Here they are.