{"id":3525,"date":"2026-05-02T01:32:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T01:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/?p=3525"},"modified":"2026-05-02T01:32:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T01:32:34","slug":"he-30-greatest-living-american-songwriters-nytimes-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/he-30-greatest-living-american-songwriters-nytimes-com\/","title":{"rendered":"he 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters nytimes.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters
\nnytimes
\nOver 250 music experts and six New York Times critics shared their opinions on who shapes the new American songbook. Here is a list of the artists they picked, without any specific ranking. It includes Music & Audio.<\/p>\n

Nile Rodgers<\/p>\n

The titles speak volumes. \u201cGood Times.\u201d \u201cI Want Your Love.\u201d \u201cLost in Music.\u201d \u201cEverybody Dance.\u201d \u201cMy Feet Keep Dancing.\u201d \u201cDance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah).\u201d The songs by Nile Rodgers capture the essence of disco\u2019s peak: late nights, flashing lights, love, passion, and most importantly, the joy of people coming together, moving as one, caught in an unstoppable rhythm that feels like it’s breaking the rules of the world \u2014 at least until the police arrive.<\/p>\n

Along with his songwriting p\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>artner, the bassist Bernard Edwards, who passed away in 1996, Rodgers helped start the band Chic. Chic became the main group for New York\u2019s disco scene during the late 1970s. Rodgers was known as a big party lover and spent a lot of time at Manhattan’s clubs. He was also one of the best writers when it came to describing the club scene. In the songs he and Edwards wrote for Chic and other artists, the raw, flashy style of the local nightlife scene \u2014 including people of all races, genders, and orientations \u2014 turned into a worldwide vision, captured in songs about freedom and breaking rules that spread around the world.<\/p>\n

Those songs worked so well because they suited everyone: The only people left out of Rodgers and Edwards’s party were the ones who didn’t want to dance. Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out” was clearly a powerful call for the LGBTQ+ community, but its message \u2014 “I want the world to know \/ I got to let it show” \u2014 was inclusive and welcomed many people. Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” from 1979 was also embraced by the gay and Black communities as a symbol of unity; however, it was also a song about siblings, sung by the real sisters Debbie, Joni, Kim, and Kathy Sledge, and became a beloved theme song for many families, both biological and chosen. The songs carried sneakier messages as well. The lyrics were full of historical references \u2014 like 1920s sayings and songs from the Depression, such as \u201cHappy Days Are Here Again\u201d \u2014 connecting the disco boom during stagflation to a time when Americans dealt with tough times by dancing all night.<\/p>\n

Lucinda Williams\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Whatever someone says about a song’s texture becomes real and feelable through Lucinda Williams. Sweat salt. Ice crunch. Oyster grit. Matches. Grease (bacon, engine, hair). She must know this. She named one of her greatest album \u201cCar Wheels on a Gravel Road.\u201d Her music career that lasted fifty years started with a kind of textured style. She traveled through a country and, like many singer-songwriters do, explored Black music, figuring out what makes affect different from affinity. Williams, from Lake Charles, La., began his career as a blues stencilist, drawing inspiration from Robert Johnson and Melvin \u201cLil\u2019 Son\u201d Jackson.\"\"<\/a> So there’s no fake part about the zydeco that adds a nice touch to her first recording of an original song called \u201cI Lost It.\u201d Music & Audio.<\/p>\n

Williams became a style that blends different influences and tells great stories, making her own unique genre. She is a songwriter that musicians love and critics admire: she is dry, seems simple but is actually deep, and she sounds sure of herself.<\/p>\n

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The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters nytimes Over 250 music experts and six New York Times critics shared their opinions on who shapes the new American songbook. Here is a list of the artists they picked, without any specific ranking. It includes Music & Audio. Nile Rodgers The titles speak volumes. \u201cGood Times.\u201d \u201cI Want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[147,251,255],"class_list":["post-3525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment-2","tag-ghana-home-page","tag-university-of-ghana-com","tag-yengh-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3529,"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3525\/revisions\/3529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rendergh.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}