Pages tagged “100 greatest”

30»JOHN PRINE

“I guess that love is like a Christmas card / You decorate a tree, throw it in the yard / It decays and dies and the snowmen melt / Well, I once knew love, I knew how love felt”

As a grad student—a teaching assistant—in English Education at the University of North Carolina in 1974, I was in charge of several high-school student-teachers. One had just given me his plans for teaching a 10th-grade poetry class. I read the words to a poem he was planning to teach: “She was a level-headed dancer on the road to alcohol / I was just a soldier on my way to Montreal… ” “Where’d this come from,” I asked. “John Prine.” “Oh.” “You haven’t heard of John Prine?” “No.” “Well, where have you been?” Back then I’d just started playing music in a bluegrass/folk band called The Davy Circle Howevermany (We practiced at a band member’s house on Davy Circle). I was also just starting to write and sing my own songs—for myself only. I bought that first self-titled Prine album, placed it on the turntable, dropped the needle, and a new room began to build itself onto my little house of musical consciousness—a room that gave me John Prine songs to listen to, love and then sing for other people. And the Prine room is still there, while so many other rooms have been torn down after several years. It’s a musical, poetic, fun, painful, sad, crazy, philosophical, rightfully spiritual room that’s provided songs for me to sing along with my own now—to small groups in bars and other informal places for more than 30 years. I’ve met many other amateur songwriters and singers who own Prine songs in the same way. You feel that they’re yours, and you love to give them away. They delight the children in the room as well as the old folks. There is a way in which they are simple, and simply loved. I believe they’ll last in our culture like stories passed down through a close-knit country family. Clyde Edgerton

GET»“Angel From Montgomery” (1971), “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore” (1971), “All the Best” (1991)

29»TOM PETTY

“Yeah and it’s over before you know it / It all goes by so fast / Yeah, the bad nights last forever / And the good nights don’t ever seem to last”

The Southern gentleman with the British Invasion ringing in his ears and a permanent Roger McGuinn snarl in his voice, Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers (alongside the E Street Band and Graham Parker’s the Rumour) practically invented a neo-classic brand of rock ’n’ roll based on the organ/guitar duos of Bob Dylan and The Band and songs so simple, direct and familiar that it felt on first listen as if you’d known them your entire life. With a self-titled debut in 1976, Petty began stacking up classic three-minute radio-ready hits—like “American Girl,” “Refugee” and “The Waiting”—with seeming effortlessness. Even experiments, such as 1985’s Southern Accents used elements of rock’s history—in this case, sitar-inspired psychedelia—to cement its focus. Inclusion in supergroup The Traveling Wilburys further perched Petty as an elder statesman. But it was his two solo albums, 1989’s Full Moon Fever and 1994’s Wildflowers, that best displayed Petty’s unerring songwriting instincts. Rob O’Connor

GET»“American Girl” (1976), “The Waiting” (1981), “Free Fallin’” (with Jeff Lynne, 1989)

28»ROBBIE ROBERTSON (The Band)

“Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me / if I spring a leak, she mends me / I don't have to speak, she defends me / a drunkard's dream if I ever did see one”

In the decade between 1967 and 1976, two Canadians were responsible for some of the best Americana. One, Neil Young, would toggle between a solo career and various ensemble projects, while the other, Toronto’s Jaime Robbie Robertson, confined his most definitive songwriting to a Hall of Fame-worthy quintet—grandly named The Band—that defied the era’s characteristic bloat by making creaky little records that resonated with big, outsized truths. A scan of Robertson’s handiwork during that period—the Biblically metaphoric “The Weight,” the sepia-toned reverie of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” the neurotically funky “The Shape I’m In”—reads like a Murderer’s Row of rock ’n’ roll craftsmanship, with Robertson’s narrative gifts breathing life into persistent themes of faith, family and the disappearing rural landscape. Since the dissolution of The Band’s original lineup in 1976, Robertson moved on to various film projects and produced at least one classic solo album (his 1987 debut), but rock aficionados will forever cherish his contributions to an ensemble—including Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Levon Helm, also excellent, if less prolific, writers—that enchanted many with its deceptively simple stories and outsider’s view of an increasingly torn and frayed America. Corey Dubrowa

GET»“The Weight” (1968), “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (1969), “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)” (1969)

27»RADIOHEAD (Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway)

“Limb by limb and tooth by tooth, tearing up inside of me / Every day every hour / I just wish that I was bullet proof”

Sliding into his chair, apparently deep in introspection, my roommate unearthed a gem. “This is a very important song,” he purred, oddly nonplussed as Thom Yorke rolled into the opening lines of “Everything In Its Right Place.” His nonchalance, however, seemed too fitting; that Yorke and guitarist Jonny Greenwood write “important songs” has become more than truism, it’s an expectation. Radiohead is the public’s private obsession. Each fan boasts a personal encounter with a particular verse that forcefully etched itself into memory’s long abandon. Whether it’s Yorke’s bellowing, “Who are my real friends / Have they all got the bends” from their sophomore release or his maleficent humming “I’m a reasonable man, get off my case” from Amnesiac, Yorke’s falsetto and Greenwood’s guitar (or whatever else he happened to be playing) launched a fleet of imitators and invited critics to guiltlessly wallow in the glut of celebratory hyperbole. It’s the statist narrative of “Karma Police” or the absurdity (and then hope?) of “2 + 2 = 5” that seduces, inviting us to contemplate and enjoy the feedback of Radiohead’s collective brilliance. Jamin Warren

GET»“No Surprises” (1997), “Exit Music (For a Film)” (1997), “Everything In Its Right Place” (2000)

GET26»R.E.M (Peter Buck, Bill Berry, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe)

“Eastern to Mountain, third party call, the lines are down / The wise man built his words upon the rocks / But I'm not bound to follow suit”

Plenty of bands rock my world, but only a handful elevate my soul like R.E.M. Consider the impressionistic dreamscape of “Wolves, Lower,” or the pensive melody of “Fall on Me” (which Stipe and I share as our favorite R.E.M. song) or the melancholy beauty of “Nightswimming,” which Coldplay’s Chris Martin calls “the best song ever written.” Over the course of its 25-plus-year career, R.E.M. has given us countless thought-provoking musings, sometimes even wrapped in shiny-happy pop tunes like “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine),” “Pop Song ’89” and “Stand.” And no matter who composed the tune, Mssrs. Buck, Mills and Stipe—and, before he retired, Berry—have always taken the credit-sharing high road. Democracy lives. Lynne Margolis

GET»“Talk About the Passion” (1983), “Fall On Me” (1986), “Exhuming McCarthy (1987)”

25»CHUCK BERRY

“It then got cloudy and started to rain / I tooted my horn for a passin' lane / The rainwater blowin' all under my hood / I knew that I was doin' my motor good”

I didn’t ask who’s ahead of him on this list. I really don’t care. Chuck Berry is the greatest living songwriter. Did Brian Wilson and Springsteen nudge him out? Both have borrowed entire melodies, whole song structures, and mountains of thematic material from Mr. Berry, as did The Beatles. Remarkably, a single Chuck Berry number, “You Can’t Catch Me,” lends a dash of lyrics to two cuts on Nebraska (“Open All Night” and “State Trooper”) and provides the very first words we hear on Abbey Road. Put Bob Dylan’s voice in your head, singing Berry’s words: “Flying across the desert in a TWA, I saw a woman walking ’cross the sand.” Or “I met a German girl in England, she was going to school in France, we danced in Mississippi at an Alpha Kappa dance” Dylanesque? No… Dylan is Berry-esque. Both “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” and “It Wasn’t Me” tuck social protest (Dancing with a white girl in Mississippi? “It wasn’t me, officer”) into the kind of surreal humor and wordplay that entices Dylan or Costello. “Too Much Monkey Business” begat “Subterranean Homesick Blues” begat “Pump it Up,” rhythmically and spiritually. Berry always finds the perfect detail, and he nails it like a real poet. Think about how the newlyweds’ “coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale” in “You Never Can Tell.” Even the verb expresses the callow optimism and crassness of the first wild, foolish days of marriage. Pierre and his “mademoiselle” are the direct spiritual ancestors of Jack and Jane in The Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane,” a respectful, somewhat-awed gloss, I think, on the Berry classic, and perhaps the whole Berry oeuvre. Berry’s wedding tale contains a darkness, too, in the Greek-chorus reiteration of the “old folks” who observe the honeymoon with a certain benevolent detachment. Their “c’est la vie” reaffirms and exalts every shabby detail of the young couple’s love nest, but it’s also a warning about the impermanence of marriage, love, life, everything—a slow poison concealed in an overwhelming burst of momentary sweetness, a double edge worthy of Randy Newman. But what a moment of sweetness, and Berry tosses it out like a lifeline—“But when the sun went down, the rapid tempo of the music fell.” We know exactly what’s going on in that dumpy little apartment, and how beautiful a place it is, a home. Jack Pendarvis

GET»“Johnny B. Goode” (1959), “Thirty Days” (1962), “You Never Can Tell” (1964)

24»JEFF TWEEDY (Wilco, Uncle Tupelo)

“I rest my head on a pillowy star / and a cracked-door moon / that says I haven't gone too far”

“We made it, so it’s ours to destroy,” Jeff Tweedy once said. He was referring to Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot—where the Chicago band reconstructed the songwriter’s folk psyche amidst anthemic chaos—but he could be speaking of his career. Emerging from the imploding alt.country of Uncle Tupelo, Tweedy—aided by his iconic weathered, cracking voice—has drawn on deep-rooted Americana while continuously evolving with his musical surroundings. His lyrics match his music, often rhyming word-game surreality (“all these telescopic poems”) with pure ache (“it’s good to be alone”). Over the years, he’s established a vast, moody catalog of introspective rockers (“Pot Kettle Black,” “Shot in the Arm”) and heartbroken, abstract ballads (“She’s A Jar,” “Ashes of American Flags”). Since Tweedy hit his stride four albums ago on Being There, he hasn’t faltered, and with new songs like “Maybe the Sun Will Shine Today” and “Walken” debuting on Wilco’s spring tour, plus the hyper-catchy stream-of-consciousness flow of “The Ruling Class” (from his Loose Fur side project), it appears his prime is far from over. Jesse Jarnow

GET»“Sunken Treasure” (1996), “Jesus, Etc.” (with Jay Bennett, 2002), “Hummingbird” (2004)

23»ELTON JOHN & BERNIE TAUPIN

“And it seems to me you lived your life / Like a candle in the wind / Never knowing who to cling to / When the rain set in”

In the ’70s, Elton John didn’t just wear outrageous spectacles. He was an outrageous spectacle, a true pop-cultural phenomenon in platform boots and garish/lame/sequined/feathered stage outfits that defined a post-metal, pre-punk generation. It was a look that belied the brilliance of the pianist’s music and equally eccentric composing arrangement—his chum Bernie Taupin would submit often painfully personal poetry, which John would then set to rollicking song, culminating in the near-suicide study “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” (in retrospect, Elton’s first out-of-the-closet anthem). And while the team never tapped into that same “Captain Fantastic” zeitgeist again—and even splintered for a few years—they’ve approached stunning ’70s form with recent high points like “The One” and “Made In England.” Tom Lanham

GET»“Tiny Dancer” (1971), “My Father’s Gun” (1971), “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (1973)

22»LUCINDA WILLIAMS

“Blood spilled out from the hole in your heart / Over the strings of your guitar”

Whether she’s singing about drunken angels or dead boyfriends, this Louisiana-born poet’s daughter has managed to make a five-star career from documenting her failed relationships and personal screw-ups, her distressed country twang veering from intimate, whiskey-drenched whisper to full-blown caterwaul as she lists the wreckage of her past via self-punishing lyrics and faultless, albeit perfectly unpolished musicianship. Strung-out junkies, iconic bluesmen, suicidal friends and abusive lovers are all fair game for Williams’ bluesy, rootsy songwriting style, which falls somewhere between Loretta Lynn’s country-grrl feminist outlook, Lefty Frizzell’s honky-tonk storytelling, Townes Van Zandt’s inventory of self-destruction and Hank Williams’ mournful repertoire. Some fans fall under her spell, others long to fix her broken soul. Regardless which camp you fall in, when wrapped up in the tidal wave of stinging electric-guitar riffs and that sultry, husky voice, Williams’ thoughtful meditations on the frailty of the human condition prove irresistible. Andria Lisle

GET»“Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” (1998), “Fruits of my Labor” (2003)

21»LOU REED (The Velvet Underground)

“Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I’ll piss on ’em / that’s what the Statue of Bigotry says / Your poor huddled masses, let’s club ’em to death / and get it over with and just dump ’em on the boulevard”

Lou Reed always wanted to be seen as more of a literary figure than a rocker. “Instead of making a decision between pop songs and a real story or poem,” Reed said in the liner notes to Between Thought and Expression: The Lou Reed Anthology, he’d combine them “so that separation didn’t exist anymore … You put the two together and then you have the whole thing going on at once.” Hence, Reed’s best songs—from the gritty verse and tales he wrote as a member of The Velvet Underground to his more recent Edgar Allen Poe projects—are poems and short stories: “I’ll be Your Mirror,” “Heroin,” “The Gift,” “The Murder Mystery,” “The Bed,” “Street Hassle,” “The Blue Mask,” “The Bells,” “A Dream,” “Dirty Blvd” … the list goes on. But no list begins to encompass the breadth and depth of Reed’s oeuvre. For every song in which he expanded rock’s vocabulary to include the sex-and-drugs underbelly of urban life (“Venus in Furs,” “Walk on the Wild Side”), there are songs showing a tender side—meditations on marriage and the deaths of close friends. And those are fleshed out with songs in which Reed simply plays with the sounds of words strung together. A native of Freeport, on New York’s Long Island, Reed’s love of early rock ’n’ roll, and his later studies with poet Delmore Schwartz at Syracuse University, charted his future. His first job out of college was at Pickwick Records, but Reed soon fell in with a crowd that included avant-garde musician John Cale and the coterie of artists, actors, models and other hangers-on who converged at Andy Warhol’s Factory in the mid 1960s. He and Cale formed The Velvet Underground at Warhol’s suggestion. Reed’s songwriting methodology hasn’t changed much since then. He still mixes short stories and spoken-word tales with simple rock ’n’ roll songs, and often strings them together to form loose concept albums, such as Berlin, Street Hassle, Songs for ’Drella and Magic and Loss. His work never had the mainstream appeal of similarly gritty Northeastern songwriter Bruce Springsteen, but Reed’s songwriting has arguably inspired more younger artists over the years. Without his songs, it’s hard to imagine what alternative music—from R.E.M. to The Strokes—would’ve sounded like. Mark Kemp

GET»“Stephanie Says” (1969), “Sweet Jane” (1970), “Walk on the Wild Side” (1972)

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)

50»PUBLIC ENEMY (Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Hank Shocklee, Eric Sadler, et al)

“Blood in the wood and it’s mine / I’m chokin’ on spit feelin’ pain / Like my brain bein’ chained / Still gotta give it what I got”

Anchored by revolutionary-turned-philosopher Chuck D and comic foil Flavor Flav, five-man hip-hop collective Public Enemy was conceived in 1982, released a debut record—Yo! Bum Rush the Show—in 1987 (a score for Rick Rubin’s then-fledgling Def Jam Records), and followed it up with 1988’s mind-shattering It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Packed with cut-and-paste beats and caustic rhymes, Nation of Millions defined hip-hop as a catalyst for social change, offering an unapologetically demanding—both aurally and emotionally—depiction of urban strife. In 1989, “Fight the Power” sliced through Spike Lee’s landmark Brooklyn portrait Do The Right Thing, and Public Enemy became instantly responsible for one of the 20th century’s most resonant protest songs. Nine LPs followed; the streets were never the same again. Amanda Petrusich

GET»“Don’t Believe the Hype” (1988), “Fight the Power” (1990), “By the Time I Get To Arizona” (1991)

49»CAT STEVENS

“A gardener's daughter stopped me on my way, on the day I was to wed / It is you who I wish to share my body with she said / We'll find a dry place under the sky with a flower for a bed / And for my joy I will give you a boy with a moon and star on his head”

Cat Stevens drowned off Malibu 30 years ago, 1976. Rest in peace. The day he passed away, a sodden, transformed figure somehow hauled himself from rough surf and collapsed on the California sand. Minutes before, swept away by a capricious rip tide, that struggling swimmer promised the wild blue sky he would dedicate his life to God were he spared from drowning. The lucky man who emerged dripping from the foam became, in time, Yusuf Islam, son of Mohammed. Formerly a famous pop star named Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam marked the effective end of a brilliant 12-year recording career—40 million albums sold, 12 popular releases plus many anthologies and a memorable soundtrack to Harold and Maude. And for a few magical years, for fans like me, Cat Stevens was the greatest musician in the world. It wasn’t the first changeover for Stevens, who began life in London as Stephen Demetre Georgiou, Greek and Swedish by ancestry and gifted with the fresh timings and rhythms of each heritage. Stevens crafted songs limned in mysticism, able in a twinkling to carry off a listener to fantastic aural landscapes—Katmandu or Moonshadow-Land or a place where a tillerman sipped tea with the woman who made the rain come. Wild World-ly places where Peace Trains ran on time and Longer Boats pushed ashore, where aggrieved men growled out haunting, soul-searching ballads—“How Can I Tell You?” and “Into White” and “Where Do The Children Play?” Yusuf Islam also put an end to his predecessor’s skepticism about the whole pop-star scene, an undercurrent always tugging at Cat Stevens’ work… and, clearly, his soul. Maybe Stevens was really drowning all along—in the celebrity and flashbulbs and starfucking. I saw him perform in 1972 at The Omni in Atlanta, the first event ever held in that colossal concert space, a seat miles away from tiny figures on a distant stage. The first concert words ever uttered in that arena may have held a clue to the conversion that always ticked away inside Stevens… to his whole overwhelmed, drowning soul in the treacherous currents of pop stardom. “Shit!” Cat Stevens gasped. “It’s big!” Charles McNair

GET»“Here Comes My Baby” (1966), “Father and Son” (1970), “Wild World” (1970)

48»GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS

“And it’s under my nails and it’s under my collar / And it shows on my Sunday clothes / Though I do my best with the soap and the water / But the damned old dirt won’t go”

So much for “authenticity.” When two non-Southerners, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, released one of the great country albums of the decade, 1996’s Revival, their thorough recreation of old-time music elicited hushes of awe from music fans, but that trick would’ve worn thin years ago if Welch and Rawlings didn’t have so much else to offer. These songs are poetry—always meaning more than they seem to say, resonating in an expanding circle from the simplest words and images. “I am an orphan girl.” “The night came undone like a party dress.” “I dream a highway back to you.” Time (The Revelator) showed that they can write surreal, Dylanesque dreams without losing that simplicity, and Soul Journey showed that they can rock—and it’s all sung in voices so stoic and passionate that, to borrow a phrase from Guy Davenport, “You can hear mortality whetting its scythe behind every line.” Philip Christman GET»“I Want To Sing That Rock and Roll” (2001), “Elvis Presley Blues” (2001), “Look at Miss Ohio” (2003)

47»SUFJAN STEVENS

“Once when we moved away / She came to Romulus for a day / Her Chevrolet broke down / We prayed it’d never be fixed or found / We touched her hair, we touched her hair”

Sufjan Stevens’ first two albums, A Sun Came and Enjoy Your Rabbit, only hinted at the songwriter’s masterful skills at instrumentation and arrangement. With his third, Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State—the first in his ambitious 50-states project—his abilities were fully realized. A myriad of instruments—including piano, banjo and horns—provides a background for whispery-voiced lyrics of personal history intertwined with geographical storytelling. The album is at once personal and universal. Illinois’ flowing, lush arrangements and lyrics guide the listener on a tour through the state’s unique history, from a haunting portrayal of a killer to references to Superman and Abraham Lincoln. In between those two albums he delivered Seven Swans, a stripped-down, somber statement containing deeply personal tales of faith in the vein of Southern gothic writers like Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor. An incredibly prolific songwriter, he’s released five albums in six years, and with an album of Illinois outtakes on the horizon, he’s proving to be a lasting voice in the American musical landscape. Cory d. Byrom

GET»“John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” (2005), “Chicago” (2005)

46»DAVID BYRNE (Talking Heads)

“The island of doubt / It’s like the taste of medicine / Working by hindsight / Got the message from the oxygen / Making a list / Find the cost of opportunity / Doing it right / Facts are useful in emergencies”

Beyond the oversized suit and repetitive arm-chopping motions, the art-school, New Wave-punk poster-boy with a penchant for paranoid and postmodern subjects has made his career injecting polyrhythmic grooves with world-music melodies seemingly designed for the philosophical and sardonic urbanite but somehow digestible for popular consumption. With jerky tenderness and stammering authority, Byrne masterfully delivers lyrical salvos on the instability of the human condition better than the rest. Let your mind hum a few bars to “Burning Down the House,” “Life During War Time,” “Slippery People,” “Psycho Killer” or “Wild Wild Life,” and you wonder how this guy escaped being locked up in the nutty bin. But when balanced by the beautiful melancholia of “Heaven,” the cheekiness of “(Nothing But) Flowers” and the best domestic love song ever written, “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody),” you realize you’ve been privy to the mind of a true original. Jay Sweet

GET»“Heaven” (with Jerry Harrison, 1979), “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” (with Talking Heads, 1983)

45»JACKSON BROWNE

“These days I sit on corner stones / And count the time in quarter tones to ten, my friend / Don’t confront me with my failures / I had not forgotten them”

At the exhausted end of the 1960s, in the aftermath of Altamont and the dispirited crash of the hippie era, American singer/songwriters abandoned their grandiose plans to change the world and focused on changing themselves. It turned out to be a daunting task. No one chronicled that struggle more insightfully than Jackson Browne, whose meditative early-’70s country-folk albums perfectly captured a generation bereft of ideals and struggling to find something, anything to believe in. Browne peddled not so much cynicism as confusion, and the uncertainty and self-doubt reached a fever pitch on 1974’s masterful Late for the Sky. It was as eloquent and elegiac an album as ever recorded, full of the heights of poetic grandeur and the depths of personal despair. The songs turned political in the ’80s, and the age-old desire to change the world reasserted itself. There was great music there, too. But Jackson Browne’s best songs were his early songs, and they still resonate in these uneasy times. They were about his own life, but they speak for everyman. Andy Whitman

GET»“These Days” (1973), “Your Bright Baby Blues” (1976)

44»AL GREEN

“I don’t know why I love you like I do / After all these changes you put me through / The sixteen candles burning on my wall / Turning me into the biggest fool of them all”

When Al Green soared onto the pop scene in the early ’70s, he glided in as a sex symbol, all “Love and Happiness” and “Let’s Stay Together.” But beyond the voice, the charisma and the tossing of long-stemmed roses into crowds of adoring women, Green was an accomplished songwriter. In fact, he wrote or co-wrote all his greatest hits. By himself, Green composed “Tired of Being Alone” and “Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy).” With his producer and mentor, Willie Mitchell of Hi Records, he wrote “Livin’ For You,” and with Mitchell and drummer Al Jackson Jr., he came up with “I’m Still in Love With You,” “Let’s Stay Together,” “Call Me,” “Look What You Done For Me” and “You Ought to Be With Me.” And he hooked up with house guitarist Mabon “Teenie” Hodges for “L-O-V-E (Love)” and “Here I Am (Come and Take Me).” Green had written and cut a modest hit, “Back Up Train,” when he met Mitchell in the late ’60s. But he did mostly covers until he told the producer that he’d just written a new song, called “Tired of Being Alone.” It was straight out of his life, Green said. “You can’t just write it like a story you made up in your mind. This is life as it happens, and you can’t write it until it happens.” Mitchell, who calls Green “one of the greatest singers I’ve ever heard,” also marvels at how well—and how quickly—he writes. In 1971, he gave him a slow groove track he’d composed with Jackson, “and it took 15 minutes for him to come up with ‘Let’s Stay Together.’ I’m a good writer,” says Mitchell, “but Al, lyrically, is hard to beat.” Where does the music come from? “I’d have to say deep down within,” says Green. “That’s the only thing I can come up with. Yeah, it’s a well for music down there, and the only thing I gotta do is try to get it up to the surface so you can get a chance to display it. Sing it. Record it. Then go and perform it.” Marvin Gaye once said that his songs “just come through me; I’m just like a channel for the music that comes from somewhere else.” Green offered a me-too nod. “So it doesn’t really come from me,” he said. “I’m just a vessel being used for the music. It’s not me, it’s not Willie. It’s us collaborating and doing something we feel is wonderful.” Ben Fong-Torres GET»“Let’s Stay Together” (with Al Jackson Jr. and Willie Mitchell, 1972), “Love and Happiness” (with Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, 1972), “Take Me To The River” (with Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, 1974)

43»RYAN ADAMS (Whiskeytown)

“Everybody wants to go forever / I just want to burn up hard and bright”

At his best, Ryan Adams synthesizes endless, disparate influences—whether Willie Nelson, the Stones, Elton John, Springsteen, the Dead, the Mats or The Cure—all depending on his latest whims. And he’s done so transparently and in plain view, making no attempt to cover his tracks or hide his sources—a quality his many detractors interpret as a lack of originality or a kind of artistic insincerity. It’s useful—though their sounds are worlds apart—to think of Adams as the Paul McCartney of his generation: A prolific pen, a seemingly effortless gift for melody, an extraordinary stylistic versatility and flexibility, and an interest in writing within the confines of various pre-existing musical styles, or at least in consistently making musical reference to them. But Adams lends a gorgeous confessional bent to his songs that bares his soul—even while he’s masquerading—in heartbreaking, inspiring, sometimes embarrassing, but always affecting vignettes. Thomas Bartlett

GET»“Come Pick Me Up” (2000), “La Cienega Just Smiled” (2001)

42»LORETTA LYNN

“Well sloe gin fizz works mighty fast / When you drink it by the pitcher and not by the glass”

When I was little, my father routinely came home “a-drinkin’ with lovin’ on his mind.” My mother hated it, but her quiet, private nature and our rural isolation would allow only one ally—Loretta Lynn—to offer advice and consent. Her lyrics commanded our attention because they accomplished the aims Horace set out for literature: They delighted and instructed. Ages later, the poet James Weldon Johnson described the best Southern writing as universally shared sensations—love, hope, longing, despair—expressed in a clear, familiar and colloquial voice, rooted in the realities of life, whether Lynn’s at Butcher Hollow or my mother’s on Bend of the River Road. The trick of great writing is in this transcendence, and Loretta Lynn’s success at loading the universe, eternity and ultimate ideals onto words that may also be bender-specific—applicable to one woman’s heartache after one husband’s thoughtlessness—is what has sustained her as a poet, watchful and alert to the vagaries of a woman’s inconstant self-worth. Kaye Gibbons

GET»“You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” (1966), “Portland, Oregon” (2004)

41»Ray Davies (The Kinks)

“I miss the village green / the church, the clock, the steeple / I miss the morning dew, fresh air and Sunday school”

The quintessential English songsmith, Ray Davies stands behind only the Lennon/McCartney and Jagger/Richards songwriting teams in the canon of British Invasion-era artists. Forming the famously infighting Kinks in 1963 as one of the many spirited but sloppy R&B bands clogging London, the group would virtually invent garage rock in 1964 with the frenzied power chord romp of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me”—a #1 U.K. hit that owed as much to brother Dave Davies’ fuzz guitar as Ray’s leering come-ons. Davies would quickly move on to the stylistic eclecticism and social satire that would become his creative signature, leaving behind oversized guitar-rock in favor of an increasingly sophisticated mix of English music-hall, showtunes and country. With The Kinks banned from touring in the U.S. from 1965 to 1969 after heated exchanges with television executives and tour promoters, Davies was conspicuously absent from the social upheaval and political sloganeering of the love generation, instead sharpening his focus on a penetrating examination of English life. From his mocking commentary on bandwagon styles in “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” to biting criticism of the British tax system in “Sunny Afternoon,” Davies wrote with wit and whimsy, often pining for an idyllic English past while expressing bewilderment at ’60s upheaval. A near-unparalleled string of classic albums would follow, each more sophisticated and complex in tone and subject matter, with 1968’s The Village Green Preservation Society offered as a blue-collar epic to rebut The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Davies’ ambitions brought mixed results in the mid ’70s, while his band’s catalog would touch off the first of many Brit-pop revivals. Unable to recapture their momentum, The Kinks dissolved in 1996, leaving Davies to revisit the group’s oeuvre on solo tours and start anew with 2006’s Other People’s Lives. Matt Fink

GET»“Sunny Afternoon” (1966), “Waterloo Sunset” (1967), “Lola” (1972)

60»JIMMY WEBB

“By the time I get to Phoenix she’ll be risin’ / She’ll find the note that I left hangin’ on her door / And she will laugh to read the part that says I’m leavin’ / ’Cause I left that girl too many times before”

You can always tell a Jimmy Webb song—it doesn’t matter who happens to be singing it or how it was arranged or produced, though he’s been fortunate enough on these counts. There’s a strangeness lurking in the center of his perfect songs—usually a specific, peculiar image that might seem arbitrary at first, but later reveals itself to be the song’s soul. A phone ringing off the wall, the whine of electrical wires—just the sort of seemingly random detail you might notice during the saddest moments of your life. The effect is cinematic and startling, and you think to yourself, “How the hell does this guy know me so well?” Dan Messé

GET»“By The Time I Get To Phoenix” (1964), “Wichita Lineman” (1966)

59»JACK WHITE (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs)

“If there’s anything good about me / I’m the only one who knows” Jack White has every reason to hide his songs behind the “act”—the peppermint iconography, the ex-wife-turned-“sister” and the purebred-analog-recording ultimatum. But the myth of The White Stripes can in no way match the mystery of White’s songs. The Detroit native seamlessly blends establishment-friendly punk, sugary garage and modernist blues into a batter of neo-traditionalism. This isn’t to suggest White’s music is benign. His best songs are like firecrackers in a shoebox, short-fused and minimalist (“The Hardest Button to Button”) but ever likely to explode into frenetic, rapid-fire guitar wails, guided only by his voices—sometimes the boyish lament (“You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket”), other times the uninhibited howl (“Fell in Love With a Girl”). Palmer Houchins

GET»“Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” (2001), “The Hardest Button to Button” (2003)

58»SLY STONE

“There’s a mickie in the tastin’ of disaster”

Sly Stone—born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas—is the musician, songwriter and producer who fronted influential ’60s rock group Sly & The Family Stone. Due to his indelible impact on the post-Summer of Love direction of rock, funk, soul, jazz and pop (not to mention style, speech and social worldviews), many people consider Stone the most key figure of postwar music. And with my ear tuned to Stevie Wonder’s mature sonic experiments, Herbie Hancock, The Jackson 5, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Prince, Human League, World Party, Arrested Development and The Family Stand, my opinion is—they ain’t lyin’. Among my favorites are thornier Sly tunes like “Jane Is a Groupee” and “Run, Run, Run,” and the challenging album Small Talk. We’re all richer for Stone’s template of white and black together, twang meshing with gospel, and gals and guys all getting funky in flash threads. Kandia Crazy Horse

GET»“Stand!” (1969), “Time For Livin’” (1974)

57»MORRISSEY (The Smiths)

“Irish blood, English heart, this I’m made of / There is no one on earth I’m afraid of / And I will die with both of my hands untied”

Why bother attempting to separate Morrissey the lyricist from Morrissey the meme? Life is too nasty, brutish and short. Steven Patrick’s whole super-idiom is based on reckless blendings: of Wildean wit with the melodrama of a Keats cultist; of humble, other-directed story singing with status-obsessed self-mythologizing; of James Dean/rockabilly style with blousey, glam foppery; of the timeless (Joan Of Arc) with the ephemeral (her Walkman); of soggy sensitivity toward animals and the meek with murderous aggression toward DJs and the powerful; of randy flamboyance with puritanical abstinence; of andro-pop advocacy (yay New York Dolls) with andro-pop dissuasion (boo Elton John); of sagacious subtlety with cretinous bluntness. Prancing and athletic, his insistence on his own significance—and his ability to pen couplets defined by universal desires—make him appealing to the most machismo-driven Mancs and Mexican-Americans, as well as the prissiest. (Unfrustrated, normative boys love him, too. Not to mention the ladies.) He’s intellectual cheesecake, a reactionary libertine, a solitary populist, an effete aristocrat with the heart of a dole-bound vandal. He transcends gender differentials, and milks them for all that they’re worth. He’s an evergreen rake, and a bit of a dinosaur—which is no diss: what other fossil inspires such immediate awe? Even his physiognomy—that famous jutjaw—suggests invulnerable defiance and a weak spot ripe for cheap shots. Throngs of emotionally over-invested fans analyze his compositions like bankers divining a Federal Reserve Chair’s prophecy, and yet a compilation disc could be filled with songs defaming him (though The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle has retracted his, and even inscribed a copy of his zine for me with, “William it was really nothing”). Johnny Marr apologists may bemoan how much harder-to-dance-to the solo career has been, as if The Smiths’ legacy isn’t unassailable, but the Morrissey freed up to sermonize can be just as interesting as the Morrissey shackled to impulse (which is to say that a pulpit in a salon is just as interesting as a “Vicar In A Tutu”). Homemade topical boxsets could divide his songs into numerous fascinating categories—Shaming The Proles, or Cryptically About VD—and still only be scratching the surface of the work of this postmodern relic, who kicked off his first post-Smiths singles collection with the lines, “Off the rails I was, and / Off the rails I was happy to stay.” Get out of his way. William Bowers

GET»“Ask” (with Johnny Marr, 1986), “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” (with Johnny Marr, 1986), “Everyday is Like Sunday” (with Stephen Street, 1988)

56»JAMES BROWN

“Now we demand a chance to do things for ourself / We’re tired of beatin’ our head against the wall / And workin’ for someone else / We’re people, we’re just like the birds and the bees / We’d rather die on our feet / Than be livin’ on our knees"

It’s funny. When one thinks about James Brown, the term songwriter just doesn’t come to mind. Dancer? Hey, the man invented the moves that Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger and Prince made a fortune replicating. Sex symbol? With his package-snuggling tight jumpsuits, brilliantine ’do and powerful physique, the Augusta, Ga., native fit the bill. Bandleader? Even with instrumentalists like Bobby Byrd, Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker and Bootsy Collins backing him, it was Mr. Brown who ruled with total artistic control. Promoter? Brown picked the venues and marketed himself with the sobriquets “The Hardest Working Man In Show Business” and “The Godfather Of Soul.” Singer, arranger and musician—he plays a mean organ—this multi-hyphenate can do it all. But Brown’s most important, most underrated talent has always been his eclectic songwriting. Let’s not forget that the man who invented funk with his 1965 single “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” had nine years prior penned (with Johnny Terry) the greatest begging soul song of all time—and still a showstopper—“Please Please Please.” Want a pleading ballad? How about “Try Me (I Need You)”? Macho romanticism? “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” Protest songs? C’mon now. James—Mr. Brown to his face—heralded the ’60s Black Power movement with “Say It Loud—I’m Black And I’m Proud,” “Soul Power” and “It’s A New Day.’ He championed Black self-determination with “I Don’t Want Nobody To Give Me Nothin’ (Open Up The Door, I’ll Get It Myself)” and “Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved.” He railed against drug abuse with “King Heroin” as well as phony African-American politicians who exploit their own people on “Talkin’ Loud And Sayin’ Nothing.” And, despite lengthy song titles that threatened to run off the album label and right onto the vinyl, Brown always kept his lyrics simple and direct (his song titles were usually his hooks). At his absolute peak—1965 to 1976—his words formed the perfect yin to the yang of his mega-funky backdrops. Through the years, Brown has been accused of self-aggrandizement at the expense of his band’s talents. So what? So did Duke Ellington, George Clinton and any other bandleader of note. It’s the music that counts. And what music! Brown and company generated a slew of improvisational-sounding jams that can still cold rock a party. And above the bustling mix were the punchy, raspy, percussive vocals of the man known as “Soul Brother Number One,” always pushing, preaching, prodding his band to greater rhythmic heights. These songs—these anthems—not only inspired everyone from Sly Stone to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Usher but they laid the bedrock, the foundation, for hip-hop. I mean, take James Brown’s music away from rap and what’s left? Vanilla Ice? Clay Aiken? “Make It Funky,” Brown commanded on his hit 1971 single. Thanks to his unique genius, we did and still love “Doing It To Death.” Richard Torres

GET»“Try Me” (1959), “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” (1965), “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” (with Betty Jean Newsome, 1966)

55»DOLLY PARTON

“It’s hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world”

With 25 country #1s and more than 4,000 published songs covered by, among others, The White Stripes, Whitney Houston and The Sisters of Mercy, Dolly Parton occupies a strange position as a songwriter: the underrated major leaguer. Does she want us to take her seriously? The cartoonish, self-deprecating image makes her hard to read. What a contradiction, simultaneously clown and sage, singing hard-luck stories in her high birdsong warble and winking playfully as she tugs your heartstrings. Her songs blend plain language, high melodrama and sugarsweet imagery without losing their core sincerity. Parton tells small tales of dirt-poor rural lives (“Coat of Many Colors”), working women (“9 to 5") and abandoned pregnant teenagers (“Down from Dover”). Listen to “My Tennessee Mountain Home” and you swing on the porch with her. At her best, she makes the everyday seem magical—and for that we could always love her. Sally Timms

GET»“Jolene” (1974), “Wildflowers” (1987)

54»AIMEE MANN

“Now that I’ve met you / Would you object to / Never seeing each other again”

How many songwriters can claim to have helped inspire a movie? When director Paul Thomas Anderson heard several of Aimee Mann’s insightful, melancholic tunes, he was so moved that he crafted a few of the characters in his film Magnolia around her lyrics and included eight Mann originals on the film’s soundtrack, earning her an Academy Award nomination. With five fantastic, sparse, solo albums—in addition to her work with ’80s New Wave group ’Til Tuesday—Mann has enjoyed a rich career, due to her ability to deliver consistently earnest tunes that are as moving as they are meaningful. ,b>Carter Davis

GET»“Wise Up” (1999), “Deathly” (1999), “Humpty Dumpty” (2002)

53»JAMES TAYLOR

“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain / I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end / I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend / but I always thought that I’d see you again.”

In the early ’70s, before sentiment was sappy and belief was unbelievable, James Taylor was pumping out songs so unconscious, so soul-baring and honest you have to wonder how he survived the following decades when the world all but down-spiraled into a cynical ball of bitterness. But survive he did (and especially well in the soft-focused Me Decade), thus helping us handle the world with him. After three decades, he’s sold more than 35 million albums, won multiple Grammy Awards and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and won a Billboard Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. Hollis Gillespie

GET»“Fire and Rain” (1970), “Country Road” (1970)

52»PAUL WESTERBERG (The Replacements)

“I ain’t got no idols, I ain’t got much taste / I’m shiftless when I’m idle / And I got time to waste”

So many songwriters take the mundane and polish it with melodrama until it passes for sublime. The magic of Paul Westerberg is that he casually takes the sublime and cloaks it in the unassuming garb and cadence of everyday life. As a band, Westerberg’s Replacements were like your favorite college drinking buddy: just enough octane in the tank to make things a little dangerous, but with a sincerity that lent a certain shabby glory to even their most embarrassing moments of excess. Obscured at times by all the booze and pratfalls are the masterstrokes of alternative rock’s most natural and compelling storyteller. Here’s the Westerberg to revere: A guy who could humbly chuckle at the miscues of love and destiny in “Skyway.” A guy who could slice through the pretensions of indie rock with six strings and a smirk on “Color Me Impressed,” only to salvage its remaining virtues on “Left of the Dial.” A guy who could bottle the unflagging pain of unrequited love on “Within Your Reach,” but still back off the emotive intensity long enough to tell a joke (“Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out,” among many others). A guy who could wed lyrics to music whose every twist and throb supports the story—witness the cold mechanical riff of “Answering Machine,” or the fluttery heart-skips of “I Will Dare.” Taken as a whole, Westerberg’s range as a writer is incredible, and his songs are nothing short of genius, genius, genius. Jeff Leven

GET»“Bastards of Young” (1985), “Alex Chilton” (with Chris Mars and Tommy Stinson, 1987), “Gun Shy” (2004)

51»DAN PENN & SPOONER OLDHAM

“She made a mountain of love / From a little grain of sand / And out of left field / Out of left field / Came a lover and a friend”

I don’t know how they did it. Hell, to hear them talk, they don’t know how they did it, either. How could a couple of hillbillies like Dan Penn and Linden “Spooner” Oldham have—time and time again—written songs that evoke the deepest black-gospel roots? Songs that—when taken up by singers who themselves had these roots from their upbringings—came to epitomize the mid-’60s movement called “soul.” It’s uncanny. Unlike many songwriting teams, one wasn’t responsible for the music and the other the lyrics, but a Penn/Oldham co-write will have a melody using all the best gospel tricks, while the lyrics will hang on a Southern phrase: “It Tears Me Up;” “Sweet Inspiration.” Ed Ward

GET»“Out of Left Field” (Performed by Percy Sledge, 1967), “Cry Like a Baby” (The Box Tops, 1968)

70»ALEX CHILTON (Big Star, The Box Tops)

“Would you be an outlaw for my love?”

It makes sense that Alex Chilton nearly drowned in New Orleans. He’s a songwriter accustomed to sinking in others’ hurricanes—most often uncovered by those searching for him, rather than those hoping to catch him bobbing obviously on the surface. Chilton topped charts early with The Box Tops, but he’s better remembered for his obscurity. Big Star’s clash with ’70s commercialism made it necessary for more well-known artists to later introduce his confessional lyrics against jangly pop as something new. From the youthful doom of “Big Black Car” to Chilton’s portrayal of lechery as beautiful in “Thirteen,” this musician’s musician made unsafe pop safer. Courtney Ryan Fitzgerald

GET»“The Ballad of El Goodo” (with Chris Bell, 1972), “September Gurls” (1973)

69»MERLE HAGGARD

“Things I learned in a hobo jungle / Were things they never taught me in a classroom ... I’m not braggin’ or complainin’ / Just talkin’ to myself man to man / This ole’ mental fat I’m chewin’ didn’t take alot of doin’ / But I take alot of pride in what I am”

For a while there, when he’d made it with “Mama Tried” and “Hungry Eyes,” I was hanging out so often with Merle Haggard that I felt like a member of the band. Needing the company of friends as he played Nixon’s White House, he put me on his guest list; same deal when he became the first pure-country act to work Harrah’s in Reno. Later, I rode along with him and The Strangers as they worked Ohio with “Okie from Muskogee.” We drank a lot of whiskey while he spoke of being raised in a boxcar, doing time and writing about it. No meeting, though, was as revealing as the first. Haggard was playing for the homefolks—profits to draw the state bowling tournament to the county—and I followed him at intermission to the basement of the auditorium. He was sharing bourbon with some teenager. “My book’s The Nashville Sound,” I said, “but you’ve never recorded there.” The kid blurted, “Tell him what you always say, Merle.” Hag leaned back. “It don’t matter where you cut it at,” he said. “It’s what you put in the groove.” He was too young to look so old, I thought (he was 32), and what’s with the gnarled fingernails? And why didn’t he live among the stars? And how come he walked off The Ed Sullivan Show when he needed it most? It was all of a piece, really. Sullivan wanted him to sing “Surrey with the Fringe on Top.” They cut cookies in Nashville. The nails got eaten in the San Quentin laundry. He looked worn out because, well, it had been a hard life. He’s his own man, in short. And—because he stays true to it—he is, I think, the greatest country songwriter in history. Right next to Hank. Paul Hemphill

GET»“Mama Tried” (1968), “Sing Me Back Home” (1968), “I Take A Lot of Pride In What I am” (1969)

68»ALLEN TOUSSAINT

“Lord I am so tired, how long can this go on?”

Allen Toussaint is one of the most respected producers in R&B history—and with good reason, as his New Orleans-funk-defining work with The Meters and his tasteful horn arrangements for The Band and Dr. John will attest. But often overshadowed by this epic body of work is Toussaint’s brilliant songwriting. With tunes like “Working in the Coal Mine”—from his prolific writing partnership with Lee Dorsey—and “Everything I Do Gonh Be Funky (From Now On),” Toussaint continuously reinvented the Crescent City sound. He created worlds within the structure of his original compositions, though their performance was often left to other artists. “Southern Nights”—a song Toussaint wrote while reflecting on the web-like tales woven on the porch of his New Orleans childhood, was a simultaneous #1 hit for Glen Campbell on the pop, country and adult-contemporary charts in 1977. Toussaint is a torchbearer who’s kept the soul of New Orleans alive in contemporary music for five decades, and his songs are still being covered by a spectrum of artists so wide that his influence will continue for years. Jon Tonge

GET»“Get Out of My Life Woman” (Performed by Lee Dorsey, 1966), “Holy Cow” (Performed by The Band, 1973)

67»CONOR OBERST (aka Bright Eyes)

“While my mother waters plants my father loads his gun / He says, ‘Death will give us back to God / Just like the setting sun / Is returned to the lonesome ocean’”

Conor Oberst, prolific, reluctant emo posterchild (and justifiably so since—musically and lyrically—he’s grown up lifetimes over the last few albums), sings tragic, hope-lined poetry in his shaky warble that’ll knock you into an abyss of contemplation. No one writing today has their inner EKG better fixed on the pulse of the current lot of American twentysomethings; whether he’s tackling politics, relationships, existential malaise or spiritual awakening, his songs are seismographs charting both the tiny and vast rumblings of his soul-searching generation. Steve LaBate

GET»“Let’s Not Shit Ourselves” (2002), “At The Bottom of Everything” (2005)

66»CHARLES THOMPSON (aka Frank Black) Pixies

“Dead sea make it float / One sip from the salty wine / Dead sea make you choke”

Frank Black. Black Francis. Whatever you call him, Charles Thompson’s hilariously bizarre, instantly memorable tunes—bolstered by Joey Santiago’s epic guitar hooks—made the Pixies one of underground rock’s catchiest bands. In spite of their odd rhythms and mad shrieking about Andalusian dogs, the Pixies had a soft-pop center; they wrapped their sonic shredding and absurdist-Spanglish/mermaid/alien odes to Neptune and teenage love in the assonance of Beatles melodies and classic-soul chord changes. It’s what makes Thompson such a magical musical enigma—the juxtaposition of the odd and the familiar, the ugly and the enchanting. Even amidst his newer, impressively mature (if slightly more conventional) solo work—you can always find a little of that endearing, deliberate insanity. Jennifer Cohn

GET»“Wave of Mutilation” (UK Surf) (1989), “Debaser” (1989), “I Burn Today” (2005)

65»BILL MALLONEE (Vigilantes of Love)

“Well I may be confused but I’ll play my hunch / Did it feel like a kiss or a counter-punch?”

I can honestly say that I have never loved a band more feverishly than the now-defunct Vigilantes of Love from Athens, Ga. There’s a scrapbook in my closet full of fanclub newsletters and photos and backstage passes. During college I’d routinely cut out of town, driving six hours up to Athens to catch VoL concerts at the 40 Watt, only to climb back in the car at 2 a.m. and trek back down to Florida, veering dangerously from sleep deprivation as the sun crept into the sky. I’d be delirious, still humming a tune I heard at the show. It’s true what they say: Love makes you do stupid things. While the group’s sound evolved over the course of nine full-length albums—from bare-bones singer/songwriter folk to blistering roots rock to Americana to hand-clappy power pop—the constant was always frontman Bill Mallonee. The first song of his I ever heard was a ballad about Vincent Van Gogh called “Skin,” and the staggering hurt in the unnaturally strained vowels of his delivery caused my chest to tighten sympathetically. Mallonee’s longstanding struggle with depression bled into his songs, which painted gothic murals around bruised and scuffed-up people of every imaginable walk—Van Gogh, a confederate soldier trapped in the Andersonville POW camp, Eleanor Roosevelt and, most powerfully, Bill Mallonee himself. His best songs managed to come off bookish and literate without sacrificing the humanity of his subjects. And there was always a flicker of hope tickling up from catastrophe’s underbelly. In “I Can’t Remember”—after the narrator’s train derails and hits a snowbank, flinging his beloved to her death—he has a vision of some spectral Jesus gathering her body and wiping the snowflakes from her face. Voice barely above a whisper, Mallonee sings, “That white dress you were wearing, darling, like a billion stars did shine.” The first time I heard that song, I swear the lump in my throat felt like a chunk of granite. Jason Killingsworth

GET»“America” (1990), “I Can’t Remember” (1992), “Skin” (1995)

64»ANDY PARTRIDGE (XTC, The Dukes of Stratosphear)

“I’m 12 o’clock / All daylight hours / I’ll warm your bed / I’ll grow your ?owers / Like I’m a miniature sun / This ball ignited when she told me I was her only one.”

Bursting from England’s polyglot punk movement with jittery energy, Swindon’s XTC shed its genre-bound genesis to reveal a beating heart of classic pop songcraft. Led by the stubborn, brilliant and prolific Andy Partridge (with Colin Moulding, who also contributed key tunes to the band’s catalog), the songs drew on England’s pastoral tradition (“River Of Orchids”) and railed against the absurdities of modern life (“Scarecrow People,” “The Last Balloon”). Partridge’s songs, brimming with Technicolor imagery, jaw-dropping extended metaphors and some of the catchiest (and quirkiest) pop melodies this side of the Fab Four, earned the band an enduring cult despite no public performances since 1982. Reid Davis

GET»“The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul” (1986), “The Mayor of Simpleton” (1989)

63»RICHARD THOMPSON (Fairport Convention)

“And I’ve seen you at the corners and cafés it seems / Red hair and black leather, my favorite color schemes / And he pulled her on behind / And down Box Hill they did ride”

How many songwriters can pull off this swagger of a lyric: “I feel so good I’m gonna break somebody’s heart tonight?” Intrinsically masculine, whether his protagonists are looking for trouble (“I Feel So Good”) or love on a motorcycle (“1952 Vincent Black Lightning”), Richard Thompson wields the guitar like a weapon, creating intricate riffs that are alternately beautiful and scorching. From his days with Fairport Convention to albums with ex-wife Linda (including Shoot Out the Lights), and his solo work, Thompson wryly charts the course of his heart and the vicissitudes of human nature. A songwriter’s songwriter, Bonnie Raitt, David Byrne, Bob Mould and the indie duo Ida all have all covered his tunes. Carrie Havranek

GET»“Wall of Death” (1982), “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” (1991)

62»STING (The Police)

“Only hope can keep me together / Love can mend your life but love can break your heart”

Maybe it’s because of that early image, cloaked and playful, in The Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” video, but Sting seemingly always embodied the role of the cunning-yet-sensitive, smirking professor. Who else could unload didactic odes to Shakespeare and Chilean travesties and make us grab encyclopedias to look up St. Augustine or “Charybdis,” all while wrapping such heady references in chart-friendly pop melodies? Born Gordon Sumner (a name now hard to reconcile with the public persona), few others have so successfully stepped into a nickname and regal bearing, offering songs that continually make us feel worldly and smart, even if he’ll always know a little bit more. Sarah Schmelling

GET»“Roxanne” (1978), “King of Pain” (1983)

61»JOHN HIATT

“It’s a lonely picture of an empty glass / It’s a still life study of a drunken ass”

From Nashville songsmith to New Wave rocker, John Hiatt didn’t really find his true voice until 1987—when he enlisted Nick Lowe, Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner in a four-day session that produced the modern masterpiece, Bring the Family. An album about crawling from the wreckage of alcoholism to become a better man as a husband and father, the songs mostly leave behind Hiatt’s penchant for cutesy word play and go straight to the heart of love, lust, loss and redemption. And besides being Hiatt’s best work, the single, “Thing Called Love,” helped resurrect Bonnie Raitt’s career. Bob Townsend

GET»“Have A Little Faith In Me” (1987), “Memphis in the Meantime” (1987)

80»PINK FLOYD (Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright, Nick Mason)

“When I was a child I had a fever / My hands felt just like two balloons”

After they lost Syd Barrett to a drug-induced meltdown, Pink Floyd had no lead songwriter. Barrett’s witty, childlike songs were exercises in brilliant, mad simplicity, and they were much of the reason for the band’s early success. But during The Floyd’s post-Barrett ’70s heyday, the remaining members stepped it up. From Atom Heart Mother to The Wall, their concept albums and most of their biggest hits came from collaboration: where would Roger Waters’ wallowing monologues be without David Gilmour’s cathartic riffs, or the soothing backdrops of the under-recognized (and under-credited) Richard Wright? This lineup spent its last days turning dystopian horrors into giant inflatable balloons, but the cure to its cynical visions lay right in the creative process: that in spite of the conflicts and cussedness that would eventually wreck the band, Pink Floyd wrote its best music by working as a team. Chris Dahlen

GET»“Arnold Layne” (1967), “Wish You Were Here” (1975), “Comfortably Numb” (1979)

79»STEPHEN MALKMUS (Pavement, Silver Jews)

“You’ve been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life”

As leader of seminal ’90s band Pavement, Stephen Malkmus ensured that rock music stayed dirty following the death of grunge. The band’s early albums sounded as rough as basement demos, the concerts as informal as soundchecks. This refreshing lo-? aesthetic became a selling point but, as Malkmus once told me post facto, “it was making a virtue out of necessity.” Pavement was an indie band when the word “indie” still meant “independent.” As its spokesperson, Malkmus was an artistic outlaw, representing corporate freedom—here was a performing songwriter whose talents rivaled, probably even surpassed, many of the day’s top-grossing artists. Yet, by choice, Pavement took the high road… er, the low road… um, the road that had no manager or major label but was paved with “come-what-may” instead. Integrity and merit filled the spaces where platinum records and Grammy Awards could’ve gone. But if the band’s ironic indifference earned millions in hipster cred, Malkmus’ talents in the songwriting department paid its keep. This became increasingly evident after Pavement officially disbanded in 2000. When Malkmus went solo, the song remained the same. His tunes are architectural riddles—multi-faceted compositions presented with garage-rock simplicity. Lyrically Malkmus is the quiet one in study hall—clever but mischievous; he’s what happens when the smartest kid in the room decides to impress the class clown. With lines like, “One of us is a cigar stand / And one of us is a lovely blue incandescent guillotine,” his songs have been called both literate and unintelligible (often in the same review). Pavement’s massive impact on indie rock continues to ripple—you can hear the influence everywhere—but Malkmus refuses to be shadowcast. His most recent albums, Pig Lib (2003) and Face the Truth (2005) rank among his most artistic works to date. Benjy Eisen

GET»“Major Leagues” (with Pavement, 1999), “Jenny & The Ess-Dog” (2001)

78»ROBERT POLLARD (Guided by Voices)

“I met a non-dairy creamer explicitly laid out like a fruitcake / with a wet spot bigger than a great lake”

A modern-day pop-music genius, Robert Pollard generates more material than any sane person can absorb, sprinkling oh-so-many tossed-off diamonds across an ocean of songwriting. With Guided by Voices (RIP, 1985-2004) and his solo career (1996-?), he’s proven himself indie rock’s most prolific/alcoholic song-churning robot of the last 20 years, along the way creating some stone-cold classic records (like Alien Lanes and Bee Thousand). Whether from a dirty, lo-? track or a song barely stretching past the 30-second mark, you can rest assured Pollard’s bizarre lyrics and melodic barbs will snag your brain like a wriggling salmon. Austin L. Ray

GET»“Hot Freaks” (with Tobin Sprout, 1994), “Game of Pricks” (1995)

77»BRUCE COCKBURN“

“Situation desperate, echoes of the victim’s cry / If I had a rocket launcher... / Some son of a bitch would die”

Hugely popular in his native Canada, Bruce Cockburn is that country’s godfather of soul. Soul in the metaphysical sense, that is—his songs are infused with an unceasing morality and relaxed, spiritual consciousness. Berklee-trained, Cockburn’s guitar prowess is matched only by his haunting lyrics, which span themes from local Ottawa life to global conflict. He penned his 1984 single, “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” after visiting Guatemalan Refugee camps in Mexico. His biggest hit, 1979’s “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” is a loping, nautical reflection on eternity and “thousand-year-old petroglyphs.” He also wrote “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” a song that brought success to fellow Canucks The Barenaked Ladies. As long as Bruce wants to keep preaching to the crowds, we’re ready to hear his sermons. Rachel Syme

GET»“Tokyo” (1980), “Closer to the Light” (1994), “Open” (2003)

76»WILL OLDHAM (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Palace Music, etc.)

“O he will come / And make me have a baby / Then I foresee we all, us three, will ride and all together”

The first time I heard Will Oldham sing “We All, Us Three, Will Ride,” I had to pull over. I didn’t swerve off the road or slam on my brakes, and it’s not that I was crying too hard to drive—I just knew that the song was going to require my undivided attention. Oldham’s music is important. He takes familiar emotions out of context, using strange riddles and natural rhymes that leave you feeling small. His shamelessly vulnerable voice and sparsely dressed melodies make the music hard to swallow and unspeakably gratifying at the same time. I still can’t listen while I’m doing anything else—working, getting dressed, talking to a friend or driving. It just doesn’t feel right. Kate Kiefer

GET»“The Brute Choir” (1995), “I See A Darkness” (1999)

75»RON SEXSMITH

“As far as I can tell / The dark as well wears a thinly veiled disguise”

With his first major-label release, Canada’s Ron Sexsmith established himself as a songwriter’s songwriter. Little has changed in the decade since. While on a stylistic level he continues to display rich gifts for pop charm and rootsy twang, it’s the sly invention he employs in his lyrics that truly sets Sexsmith apart. Whether brightly ruminating on the ephemeral nature of happiness or capturing the shared pathos of a man advertising a carwash in a clown suit, his songs consistently display a keen eye for detail and a brilliant economy of language. That’s how you’ll know a Sexsmith song, even when it’s being covered by another artist, as is often the case. Tim Sheridan

GET»“Strawberry Blonde” (1997), “Disappearing Act” (2002)

74»OVER THE RHINE (Linford Detweiler, Karin Bergquist)

“I know I’m not a martyr / I’ve never died for anyone but me / The last frontier is only / The stranger in the mirror that I see”

Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist belong in a rare strata of artists who mine a deep Christian faith, but use it as a lens to view the world and fashion their music rather than telegraph a stiff religious agenda. Over the Rhine’s music is redolent of brokenness: personal, spiritual and emotional, sometimes redeemed, other times unresolved, but paradoxically uplifting. Recalling the likes of Daniel Lanois, mellower Neil Young, The Innocence Mission and 10,000 Maniacs, the duo retains an understated writing style that constantly puts the maxim “less is more” to the test—and succeeds. Louis R. Carlozo

GET»“All I Need Is Everything” (1996), “Ohio” (2003), “Jesus In New Orleans” (2003)

73»JULIE MILLER

“Princes, paupers, criminals and saints are all the same / no more or less than God’s beloved child aboard this train”

Although she debuted as a solo artist in the 1990s, Julie Miller has largely been defined by her personal and professional marriage to Americana rocker Buddy Miller. But that doesn’t mean her songwriting takes a supporting role. Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless and Lee Ann Womack have all been drawn to her confident words of unwavering spirituality. Whether addressing an estranged lover (“Does My Ring Burn Your Finger”) or craving a love better than morphine (“I Need You”), Miller’s blunt statements of self-awareness work overtime to demolish any notion of women as doormats. Cory Albertson

GET»“All My Tears (Be Washed Away)” (1993), “Orphan Train” (1999)

72»MICHAEL JACKSON

“Let the madness in the music get to you / Life ain’t so bad at all / If you live it off the wall”

You may now know him as Wacko Jacko, the child-dangling, nose-shrinking monstrosity, but there was a time when this man was the indisputable King of Pop. One could argue that MJ, like Elvis before him, belongs more on a list of Best Entertainers, but Jackson was so much more. Truth is, as a songwriter, he had the gift—not of gab necessarily, but of guile, as in the uncanny ability to blur truth and fiction, love and lust, celebrity and civilian. “Dirty Diana” ventured into uncharted territory for pop music, with its viciously lurid portrayal of the groupie/artist dynamic. And “Billie Jean” shatters the rosy perception of celebrity culture—its staggered bassline and Jackson’s primordial yelps reminding us that it’s the desperate, damaged ones who also write the most infectious songs. Chi Tung

GET»“Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough” (1979), “Billie Jean” (1982)

71»VIC CHESNUTT

“I’m a reluctant rebel / I just want to be Aaron Neville”

He was killing himself to live before the notion was a bumper sticker, and now he’s a living legend the world at large never quite found out about (even though he’s been covered by Madonna). Chesnutt is a rolling contradiction. His songs scan like nursery rhymes but stick—as he sings, “like a flounder gig”—on polysyllabic turns of phrase that tease the ear as they beg for the Oxford English Dictionary. Elegant and ungainly. Impish and morbidly depressed. Flat-assed drunk and piercingly sober. His salient obsessions circle around private peculiarities and public personae, scrawled like graffiti on the wall of a gas station, glimpsed through the Spanish moss. His wounded warble is an epic surprise, too: sweeping like Marvin Gaye, in its way, and teetering with uncertainty—like a bastard Wallenda, who defies gravity out of sheer heart. Steve Dollar

GET»“Gravity of the Situation” (1995), “Lucinda Williams” (1992)