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Here's a pretty cool list. The 100 greatest singer-songwriter albums of all time. Certain names you expect, like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, etc., are right up at top. But the whole list does make you wonder not only what is a good album, but what is a singer-songwriter?
posted by LAGuy @ 12:18 AM
4 Comments:
I'm sorry, but any list of great singer/songwriter albums that doesn't include Donald Fagen's Nightfly is rubbish.
Nobody seems sure whether "singer-songwriter" includes all rock'n'roll songs that are written by the artist himself (or even by a band). In my opinion, s-s music can be halfway rock, but it has to retain some connection with either folk or plain not-very-arranged rock (Dylan, Joni Mitchell, etc.). If it's sufficiently produced that people are buying it for the great guitar solos instead of the lyrics and tune, then it's not s-s music.
George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" is not singer-songwriter music, nor even singer-plagiarist music: it's rock'n'roll.
If they are defining singer-songwriter music this broadly, then they should have given us Springsteen's first, third, and fourth albums, but not Nebraska.
And the omission of Gordon Lightfoot invalidates the whole thing. A subtle anti-Canadian bias, perhaps?
But if s-s does include all rock'n'roll written by the artist, then they obviously have
I agree that no Gordon Lightfoot is a serious omission. I also think that Harry Chapin's Verities and Balderdash would fit right in, too.
Elvis Costello tied with Feist? No Jagged Little Pill? No Joe Jackson? And I'm with VG - no Nightfly? Lame lame lame.
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