A bit more than a week ago, I posted Rick Beato’s video critique of the NYTs list of the 30 Greatest Living Songwriters that you can find here (archived here). Many of their choices, like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, were no-brainers, but Beato deemed others, like Bad Bunny, as bizarre. I agree.
Here he’s gotten his hands on some podcast footage of NYT staffers—three critics and the project’s editor—who helped compile the list, and for once he discards his geniality to make fun of these people in a nine-minute video. Beato even mocks the way they talk. They do indeed come off as pompous and largely ignorant: Beato harps on their lack of formal musical education, though he says it’s not essential to evaluate music. (The participants went to Harvard, Yale, NYU, and Princeton; none has a degree in music.)
John Carmanica, the NYT’s pop music editor, is particularly annoying with his definition of a “songwriter” and his dismissal of Billy Joel as “not a hitmaker.”
As a whole, Beato says the NYT group is “Four Ivy League educated people—you’ve got two from Yale, one from Princeton, and Mr. Harvard there—that are the most pretentious, cork-sniffing, smug people that are all music critics with no background in music: exactly what you’d expect from a New York Times music critic.” He adds, “These people’s takes are absurd. All you need to watch them talk about music. It drove me nuts watching it.”
As for Carmanica’s claim that Billy Joel wasn’t a hitmaker but a person who wrote “one or 1.5 kinds of songs,” have a gander at this list:
Piano Man
It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me
She’s Always a Woman
Movin’ Out
My Life
Uptown Girls
Just the Way You Are
The Longest Time
Only the Good Die Young (This is my favorite of his; it’s extremely inventive and a good critique of Catholic repression of sexuality. The lyrics are a work of genius.)
New York State of Mind
And others. These run the gamut from hard rock to love ballads to biography, and how can you say his range is limited to one to 1.5 types of song? Cork-sniffing pedants!
And it’s great watching Beato blow off steam.
My favorite:
Thanks for this; I’m looking forward to watching Rick get his dander up.
Billy Joel is by no means a favorite artist of mine, but he has written many excellent songs. Their dismissal of him as “not a hitmaker” is absurd, both because it is untrue of Joel, but also because that’s not a good reason to leave someone off the list anyway.
Not to defend Caramanica, but I think his point with his “1to 1.5” was that his songs are all very much alike, not that he only had one or two hits. I don’t agree that his songs are formulaic.
Even allowing that to be true, its even more so for many of the “mediocrates” that were put the NYT list. Bad Bunny essentially recycles the same stupid-simple music tracks.
Yes, I understand what he meant. But he’s dead wrong.
I don’t even agree with the premise…I think that Billy Joel has demonstrated impressive range over his career. But even if his songs were “formulaic”, then that would apply 1,000% to the hip-hop artists on the list.
So Caramanica is just a preening hypocrite. He, like the other judges (who as Beato points are lit and journo guys with no musical training) set out to include as many current and nonwhite and nonmale artists as possible, so as to advertise their virtue.
Also, let’s see in 10 years whether anyone remembers, let alone listens to, “Bad Bunny.”
The British have a great word for people like this…”tossers”.
That is a painful video to watch. I find all of these “best X of the last Y years” lists to be silly. They are so often slanted to works or creators that have been active in the authors’ lifetime with one or two older notable older works thrown in. Why isn’t Carol King on this list? How about Jagger and Richards? Paul Anka? Was this a conscious decision or just ignorance? (Given the pretentiousness of the writers in the video, it could go either way.) In this case I think Beato is right to lambast the credentials of the authors. Frankly, I suspect their methodology was to find songs they liked and then look up who the songwriter was. If the NYT wanted an interesting and useful piece, they would have gotten some songwriters together and ask them who they think the “greatest” living songwriters are.
Note that this is a list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters, so Jagger/Richards (as well as McCartney) and Paul Anka (Canadian) are excluded by nationality. And Carole King is on the list.
It’s still a dumb list IMO.
That was a painful video. I’ve read some of the music criticism at the NYT over the years and much of it seemed fine to me (full disclosure: when the artist or band interested me; I have zero interest in rap). But now that I’ve seen this video…well, “smug” is definitely the right word. And while I do like some Billy Joel songs, I can’t say I was ever fan in the sense that I would eagerly await a new release by him.
Anyway, Beato is right to go after these guys. So disappointing to learn what these reviewers are like, especially Caramanica, who is deeply and seriously annoying.
Hip hop can be a legit musical form. Hence, the very strange omission of Eminem from this list. The guy was/is very popular, he is prolific, he took the genre in a new direction, his lyrics were often very clever, and he has about as varied an output that you can hope to have in fairly limiting musical form as hip-hop. But, apparently not the right demo for this esteemed group of judges.
I like the lists because they often lead me to great literature (at least when they’re list of books). And sometimes it’s fun to argue about it with a friend.
Thanks for the Beato link. The clip of the NYT dude sneering & laughing at the critical comment he highlighted was awful — but worth getting through it to absorb Beato’s closing comments.
This is superb!
I have all those Joel recordings on my standard playlist and of course they are great, innovative, perpetually listenable – yet serve as homage to classic music from e.g. 50s or even – IMHO – Beethoven.
I think there’s some good covers of them too… hmm…
Delighted to see “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” topping that Rolling Stone list of Joel songs that you linked. I thought I was alone in thinking it his best!