Taylor Swift and Lana del Ray are among the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters, according to The New York Times. Over 250 music insiders and six New York Times critics have finalized the list, in no particular order.
According to The New York Times, Swift began writing songs at 16, emanating romance and nostalgia within the “pristine economical package of a pop-country song.”
“Pop stars are not supposed to last this long or create this much. The Beatles’ entire creative output happened, essentially, in eight years. But Swift’s durability — 12 studio albums and hundreds of songs over two decades — has given us an unprecedented combination of musical auteurism and commercial success,” The New York Times wrote.
Moreover, the musician’s run of musical dominance has stretched across a wide array of discography, from the coziness of “Folklore” and “Evermore” to the recreation of four of her earlier albums as “Taylor’s Version.”
Jose Coscarelli said that Swift has contributed greatly to music history, while “foregrounding the agency and emotional lives of young women.” In turn, she has perhaps become one of the most pored-over writers in the 21st Century, he noted.
Meanwhile, critics highlighted Lana del Ray’s relentless decision not to be bogged down by the “anxiety of influence.” Lindsay Zoladz wrote that the singer is deeply interested in American mythology and mass popular culture.
“There it goes, downstream in an atemporal swirl, our trickling national stream of consciousness: a ripped out page of Sylvia Plath, a half-forgotten Dennis Wilson record, a vintage Sublime T-shirt, a used vape cartridge and maybe — with her characteristic flair for self-mythology — a ticket stub from a Lana Del Rey concert,” Zoladz wrote.
For Lana, music is poetry. Everybody wants to sound like and emanate her aura. But, as Zoladz emphasized, “no one else can quite replicate the particular sonic grammar of her writing, which unfurls like an intimate dispatch from the blurry edge of sleep and wakefulness.”
The definitive list released by the newspaper blends in modern superstars with the legendary acts. Among them are music giants like Mariah Carey, Carole King, Lionel Richie, Dolly Parton, and more.
