Paste's 100 Best Living Songwriters #31-40

40»BURT BACHARACH & HAL DAVID

“What do you get when you kiss a guy? / You get enough germs to catch pneumonia / After you do, he’ll never phone ya”

We’ve lived in the age of rock “edge” so long it’s hard to recall the time when the best young singers demanded classiness and sophistication in their material. It was the early 1960s and Gene Pitney, Tommy Hunt and others wanted songs from Brill Building tunesmiths Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Bacharach was in his 30s and David his 40s, but their music spoke to Top 40-loving youth. In songs like “Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa” and “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself,” Bacharach’s melodies and orchestral arrangements were seductively mysterious, alternately bright and wistful. David’s lyrics expressed romantic melancholy while achieving narrative drive. When they met Dionne Warwick in 1962, they had their perfect muse. Her pliant voice was capable of subtle changes in meaning and coloration and the resultant hits—“Don’t Make Me Over,” “Walk on By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and more—have become standards. Steven Rosen

GET»“I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” (Tommy Hunt, 1962), “Walk on By” (Isaac Hayes, 1969)

39»LED ZEPPELIN (Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham)

“Greasy slicked down body, groovy leather trim / I like the way you hold the road, mama, it ain’t no sin”

Make a list of successful covers of Led Zeppelin songs. It’s tough, isn’t it? You probably put down your pencil after Dread Zeppelin, or maybe you remembered Dolly Parton’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Because their songs are so connected with the overwhelming sonic force of Zeppelin’s records, they rarely work in any other context. You think of “Kashmir” and you remember the colossal heaviness of the strings (and maybe Damone and Rat cruising for chicks in Fast Times at Ridgemont High); you think of the “Immigrant Song” and you remember how Plant’s dog-whistle wail rubbed leeringly against that thunderous riff. In this sense, Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham were the first truly postmodern songwriters. They cut and pasted from the past, often without regard to copyright (Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf, among others, sued for appropriating without credit) while fusing, forever and completely, the song to the record. Nobody since has done it better. Mark Richardson

GET»“That’s the Way” (1970), “Ten Years Gone” (1975)

38»KRIS KRISTOFFERSON

“I have seen the morning burning golden on the mountain in the sky / Aching with the feeling of the freedom of an eagle when she flies / Turning on the world the way she smiled upon my soul as I lay dying / Healing as the colors in the sunshine and the shadows of her eyes”

Kris Kristofferson had it all—a Rhodes scholarship, a commission teaching at West Point, a beautiful wife; he was on the conveyor belt to the life we’re sold as the American Dream, and he gave it up for the truth. And not just the idealized truth of sculptured marble, but the hungover, laid-raw truth of people on the margins, chances taken and moments that explode from intensity. At a time when the educated sucked their teeth at the notion of “hillbillies” in Nashville, this brown-eyed handsome man with all advantages decided to stake his claim there, transfixed by the unburnished reality of the stories and the people inhabiting them. Hanging out on the maverick fringes, he crafted his way into the realm of songs. And what songs they were: the post-Saturday-night throbbing awareness of “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” the faltering need and sincerity that define “Help Me Make It Through The Night,” the oxymoronic reality of greatness in “The Pilgrim,” the tentative clinging to celebration in the wreckage on “For The Good Times,” the exquisite perfection of “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)” and the notion that drove “Me & Bobby McGee”—that, in having nothing, we gain everything. His voice was ragged in that sea-steeped, wind-tossed texture-of-driftwood way—and his songs were even more jagged. But they were true. True as only one who doesn’t wince when they look into the face of the sun can write. Kristofferson revered William Blake, Johnny Cash and Buddha, and he was a man who’d rather scrabble—he janitored and flew helicopters to make ends meet while waiting on the dream—than sell out. He became a first-class actor, activist, husband and father—and all those things only heightened his writing. One listen to This Old Road—his latest—demonstrates his potency and vibrance remain, that some flames don’t dim, but strengthen through life, love and lessons learned. Holly Gleason

GET»“Sunday Morning Coming Down” (1970), “To Beat the Devil” (1970), “Jody and the Kid” (1971)

37»SMOKEY ROBINSON

“Maybe you’d go away and never call / And a taste of honey is worse than none at all”

With 40 years of exquisite grooves, songs so romantic and smooth that he’s known as the “poet laureate of soul music” and ever-optimistic lyrics about the yearning and ecstasy of romantic love, Smokey Robinson helped establish Motown’s sophisticated persona and for decades created anthems for the gentleman-in-love. His engaging melodies, wordplay and passion are embraced by millions, and his songs—often co-written with help from his Miracles bandmates, especially Pete Moore—have been covered by The Beatles, Johnny Rivers, The Wallflowers, The Rolling Stones, Linda Ronstadt, The Temptations, Rita Coolidge, Terence Trent D’Arby and Luther Vandross. Bob Dylan even called Robinson “America’s greatest living poet.” Whether written for himself and the Miracles or other artists, Robinson’s sexy, party songs are for the ages. And few American tunes are more heartfelt and heartbreaking than his classic “The Tracks of My Tears.” John Holman

GET»“You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” (1963), “The Tracks of My Tears” (with Warren “Pete” Moore and Marvin Tarplin, 1965), “Ooh Baby Baby” (with Warren “Pete” Moore, 1965)

36»BECK

“Karaoke weekend at the suicide shack / Community service and I’m still the mack”

Unless you were living in L.A. in the early ’90s and frequented the city’s dingier locales (bus stations, trannie bars and the like), the first time you heard Beck Hansen, you heard the line, “In the time of chimpanzees / I was a monkey.” And then—like most of the music cognoscenti—you wrote the then-MTV-saturated man-child off as a one-hit-wonder white-boy rapper mook. And now you know you couldn’t have been more wrong. Even in those early stages there were signs of genius. That first line of “Loser,” taken out of context, is near-poetic; over the course of the last decade that near-poetry has become publishable. Not that all of it is straight-man stuff: Beck’s got as much room for the silly “Where It’s At”—and its now-ubiquitous cry of “Got two turntables and a microphone!”—as he does breakup anthem “Lost Cause,” one of many Beck ballads that are simultaneously weepy and revelatory. For such an eclectic musician to smash barriers without ever coming off as coy is notable enough; for one to make a career as an über-hipster while teaching even casual listeners about the commonality between genres as disparate as, say, country-rock and Brazilian Tropicalia is the sign of a true artist. Jeff Miller

GET»“Pay No Mind (Snoozer)” (1994), “Hotwax” (1996), “Guess I’m Doing Fine” (2002)

35»STEVE EARLE

“There’s doctors down on Wall Street / Sharpenin’ their scalpels and tryin’ to cut a deal / Meanwhile, back at the hospital / We got accountants playin’ God and countin’ out the pills”

Singer/songwriter Steve Earle beautifully writes and movingly performs rockabilly, twang-centric outlaw country, pure roots-rock, folk, bluegrass, traditional Irish and alt.country songs. Musically fearless, he’ll use those pointy-toed boots and gleefully kick every border, category and boundary to the curb—plus he says exactly what he thinks. The man not only writes powerful songs, he writes short stories, poetry (including haiku), stage plays and also delivers—in every one of these disparate disciplines—some of the most ass-kickin’ social commentary anywhere. He’s a passionate anti-death-penalty, landmine-ban and antiwar activist, and his music has been covered by everyone from Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins to Emmylou Harris and Travis Tritt. If Earle had a songwriting genealogy, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills and Mother Maybelle Carter would go in the grandparent slots; Bob Dylan, John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, J.C. Crowley, Neil Young and Johnny Cash would occupy the immediate parental boxes, with Steve as their wild, storytelling progeny/prodigy. His spiritual siblings? Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith and Lyle Lovett, who court their craft, along with Steve, through raw feeling combined with penetrating intellect. About that truth-telling deal, though—The Duke of Earle has not endeared himself to music’s mainstream commercial interests. You ain’t-a-gonna hear Steve on corporate Clear Channel, especially when he publicly says stuff like “Shania Twain is the highest-paid lap dancer in Nashville.” Or when he sings “John Walker’s Blues,” about American Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh. But, hey, when Earle speaks his mind he tells it with beauty, power and soul. And that’s why we listen to music. David Langness

GET»“Someday” (1986), “Goodbye” (1995), “Amerika V. 6.0 (The Best We Can Do)” (2002)

34»JOHN FOGERTY (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

“Some folks are born made to wave the flag / They’re red, white and blue / And when the band plays “Hail to the chief” / They point the cannon at you, Lord”

Hailing from El Cerrito, Calif., John Fogerty sounded more like a 1970s Mark Twain than a California hippy. Combining tales of the Deep South with soul-meets-country chords catchy enough to land the most elusive catfish, his fierce voice wailed and growled through the swampy jams CCR created, reminiscing about his fictional boyhood on the bayous. In reality, Fogerty had only ventured as far east as Montana when “Proud Mary”-their first hit-was released. There have been over 100 covers, including the Ike and Tina Turner firebolt and the Leonard Nemoy butchering. While most of CCR’s tales were dreamlike versions of the land below the Mason-Dixon line, political songs like “Fortunate Son” showed Fogerty’s fierce, opinionated side, slamming affluent families whose children were excluded from the draft. Leila Regan-Porter

GET»“Fortunate Son” (1970), “Who’ll Stop the Rain” (1969), “Lodi” (1969)

33»PETE TOWNSHEND (The Who)

“I have to be careful not to preach / I can’t pretend that I can teach / And yet I’ve lived your future out / By pounding stages like a clown”

Pete Townshend was the first person to make me consider rock ’n’ roll as something more than just some silly tunes on the radio. Hearing it blast from his bleeding hands and heart, it seemed more a matter of life and death. With street-level poetry neither oblique nor obscure, his early songs articulated the rebellious disorder of post-War babies, his later ones their aging within a culture that promoted perpetual adolescence, a culture Townshend himself belonged to. As propelled by the four-ring circus that was The Who, these songs became raging anthems, slammed home by Townshend’s punchy power-chords detonating like the audacious energy of youth, causing your soul to leap outta your skin for a few free, glorious moments. Always one to question rock, and his role in it, his ambitions have nevertheless pushed the music to new frontiers without abandoning the primal, violent intensity at its core (there are very good reasons why The Who were one of scant few veteran bands embraced by ’70s punk rockers). This much is indisputable: nearly every vital rock ’n’ roll band in The Who’s wake has been inspired in some way by this man. Jeff Clark

GET»“My Generation” (1965), “A Quick One, While He’s Away” (1966), “5:15” (1973)

32»JERRY LEIBER & MIKE STOLLER

“You say that music’s for the birds / And you can’t understand the words / But honey if you did, you’d really blow your lid / ’Cause baby, that is rock and roll”

They began their partnership in the early 1950s as hip teenagers yearning to be part of the burgeoning R&B scene that was just showing up on America’s pop radar. By decade’s end, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller had not only helped midwife the birth of rock ’n’ roll as the writers of hits for Elvis Presley, The Coasters and numerous others, but had changed the very nature of the music business as the industry’s very first “independent” producers. Leiber’s street- and pop-culture-savvy lyrics, composer Stoller’s ever-infectious melodies, and the duo’s uncanny knack for distinctive arrangements resulted in such Golden Era classics as “Hound Dog,” “Yakety Yak,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Love Potion #9” and literally scores of other hits that nearly half-a-century later are still hummed the world over. Mentors to Phil Spector, Carole King and virtually every noted songwriter to emerge from the Brill Building in the ’60s, Leiber and Stoller’s “We didn’t write songs, we wrote records” legacy remains a truly daunting one. Billy Altman

GET»“Hound Dog” (Performed by Big Mama Thornton, 1953), “Jailhouse Rock” (Elvis Presley, 1957), “Yakety Yak” (The Coasters, 1958)

31»CAROLE KING

“Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time / There’s something wrong here, there can be no denying / One of us is changing, or maybe we’ve stopped trying”

The first time I heard Carole King was on the Tapestry album in 1971. What a force! Her spirit is just so strong, and that was a time strong female spirits were just finding their voices. So a heck of a lot of women found their voices through the songs on Tapestry, and men—at least, the smarter ones—stood back and learned all they could. Even now, when I tour, I always make sure to have at least one of her recordings with me. King’s voice keeps me grounded. She’s one of the innovators of American music, unbelievably prolific and perpetually contemporary—certainly one of the greatest in terms of clarity of performance and composition. As the King of Rock ’n’ Soul, I hereby crown her “Queen Carole King.” Solomon Burke

GET»“So Far Away” (1961), “It’s Too Late” (with Toni Stern, 1967), “(You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman” (with Gerry Goffin, Performed by Aretha Franklin, 1967)