Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Bad Bunny & More Named to ’30 Greatest Living American Songwriters’ List
Dolly Parton, Mariah Carey, Carole King, Stevie Wonder were also honored by The New York Times.
Black News 
Taylor Swift is part of a great American dynasty of songwriters, according to The New York Times, which published a definitive list of U.S. musicians with the best pens on Monday (April 27) that also included Jay-Z, Bad Bunny and more.
Related
The unranked 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters roundup is made up of icons selected by hundreds of music experts who sent their ballots in to the newspaper’s editors, who then duked it out among themselves to narrow the list down to its current size. Dolly Parton, Mariah Carey, Carole King, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Missy Elliott, Lionel Richie, Young Thug, Fiona Apple, Kendrick Lamar, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Lana Del Rey and several other people whose “music has defined what half a century of national life sounds like” were also included.
“We considered all sorts of remarkable songwriters — including lots of weird geniuses and under-loved influences,” reads a NYT article about the methodology behind the list. “But we were drawn back toward the beating-heart story of American song, to people whose music has reverberated through private worlds and across the public square, echoing through headphones, radios, grocery-store aisles, TikTok videos and school-gym ceremonies, blasting out of karaoke machines, club speakers and the windows of passing cars.”
It’s easy to see why any of the listed artists made the cut. Between Swift, Jay and Benito alone, they share 494 total entries on the Billboard Hot 100 — including 20 No. 1s — and 45 Grammys. The Eras Tour headliner will also soon be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, becoming the youngest woman to ever join its ranks (second only to Wonder, who was seven days younger than she is when he was inducted).
The list also allows readers to see how those modern superstars stand up against legendary legacy acts such as Parton, King, Richie, Dylan and Springsteen, who are each widely considered to be pioneers in their genres and major influences on what country, pop, R&B, folk and rock — respectively — look like today.
