Guest post by Nathan Arizona
The New York Times has published a list of who it considers the 30 greatest living American songwriters. Many of the names make sense – Bob Dylan, Carole King, Paul Simon, Dolly Parton and so on. But there was a lot of furor about who was left off.
If you didn’t see the list, you can get angry about it now via this gift link.
I bet you wouldn’t have Young Thug, Fiona Apple, The-Dream or Romeo Santos on your list. And maybe not Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey or Bad Bunny. Remember, “30 greatest.”
Recency bias would explain some of it. So would catering to a perceived audience by the five writers who compiled the list. And they probably wanted to show off their hipster sensibility. Their defense of the list does make some sense in an esoteric way. It might have worked in an advanced university class on the aesthetics of pop music. But that’s not what this is.
So people look at the list and say, Where’s Randy Newman? Why is there no Billy Joel, no Tom Waits? No Patti Smith, no John Fogerty? No Neko Case, no David Byrne? Not even the legendary Mike Stoller, who wrote about a thousand hits with Jerry Leiber in the ’50s. He still walks among us, though probably not very fast. It’s likely most folks didn’t know that.
But here’s the one that steams me most: No Jimmy Webb.
You know the songs. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” “Wichita Lineman.” “Galveston.” “Up, Up and Away.” “MacArthur Park.” “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.” “Didn’t We,” “The Worst That Could Happen,” “Highwayman.”
The one to consider today is “If You See Me Getting Smaller.” It’s about the view you get of somebody walking away. But you could also think of it as Jimmy Webb’s reputation getting smaller and smaller (at least if you were willing to stretch things a bit).
Webb wrote the song for Waylon Jennings, a reference to the time Jennings walked away from an argument with a producer. It became a big hit for Jennings. Webb recorded it a little later with Willie Nelson and put it on his own 1977 album El Mirage. The producer was George Martin. You may remember him from such songs as “Hey Jude,” “Penny Lane,” “Here Comes the Sun” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
Webb and Nelson sound wistful as they get ready to split up their act. The singer recalls the closeness they used to have. One recollection involves the now-closed Main Point, a popular and important music club in Media, Pa. The narrator remembers when they performed there:
“God bless old Philadelphia/They Were Standing in the rain/Out in front of the Main Point/A wet and lonely train.”
The New York Times also conducted a survey of some 250 music business “insiders,” including musicians, and published lists from 36 of them. The Times writers considered suggestions from the survey but were not bound by them.
The insiders made better lists. Carole King got the most votes with 16. Waits got 10 votes, Webb and Newman 9 each. None of the ballots had Young Thug, The-Dream or Bad Bunny,
A random look at the over-all insider voting shows that Billy Bragg included Ry Cooder on his list, Iggy Pop cited Jackson Brown. George Clinton named youthful soul singer Muni Long, Rickie Lee Jones cited Cyndi Lauper, Jeff Tweedy named Adrianne Lenker, Mariah Carey picked Al Green and Natalie Merchant included David Byrne.
Young popster Dua Lipa’s list had just one name on it: Patti Smith. The New York Times turned a deaf ear.
Here are Jimmy Webb and Willie Nelson with Webb’s “If You See Me Getting Smaller.”
Waylon Jennings included his version on “Ol’ Waylon,” the 1977 LP that became the first platinum album by a solo country artist.
