", Waits began as a throwback, a beatnik jazzbo singing the praises of old cars and barflies and looking for the heart of Saturday night. Crafting the majority of songs on her ocean-deep classic debut Songs In A Minor, Keys inflicted pain with her pen and wrote tunes that struck close chords for everyone. And alone among his peers Dylan's creativity was ceaseless –2000's Love and Theft returned him to a snarling sound that rivaled his electric youth, marking a renaissance that continues unabated. ", The greatest rapper ever balanced gangsta realness and R&B playfulness, proving that a self-described "black and ugly" corner kid from Brooklyn could blow up to become a pop superstar through sheer brilliance and charisma. No one except Dylan has embraced the endless highway with more artistic success — as explained by Nelson in "On the Road Again," a Top 20 Grammy-winning hit in 1980 — and his studio career is just as endless, ranging from Texas swing to reggae to standards with strings. In 1995, Cohen appeared to reject the worldliness reflected in songs like "The Future" and "Democracy" by putting his career on hold and becoming an ordained Buddhist monk. Between 1947 and 1953, Williams landed 31 songs in the U.S. Country Top Ten, with five more making the Top Ten in the year following his untimely death. Lyrically, songs like "Rape Me" and "Stay Away" (with its memorable "God is gay" declaration) brought deep gender studies provocations to a mass audience — one of the most astonishing subversive achievements in rock history. But Simon was just getting started. Click to copy. Best Known For: Rihanna's "Rude Boy," "Katy Perry's "Firework," Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass” (Sometimes Hayes played keyboards on songs they'd written together, or Porter sang backup.) Yet, in that brief career, he created an amazing body of work. He's the Evel Knievel of music. Lyrically, his use of William Burroughs-style cut and paste made for fascinating, if at times, baffling flows of image and ideas. "Andy Warhol never explained what his paintings were about," Taupin said said in 2013. Ester Dean Prince's talents as a multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger, bandleader and live powerhouse are peerless. From Get Lifted to Once Again to Revolver, the G.O.O.D. But it's his ability to nail emotion that makes simple love songs like "Days" incandescent, and elevates a lonely meditation like "Waterloo Sunset" into what some consider the most beautiful song in the English language. A kid from the Bronx who fell in love with black and Latino music and even traveled to Cuba during Fidel Castro's revolution, Bert Berns got his start in 1960 at age 31 as a Brill Building songwriter and went on a run that included hits like "Twist & Shout," the Exciters' "Tell Him" and Salomon Burke's "Cry to Me." Guthrie's music, Bob Dylan wrote in Chronicles, "had the infinite sweep of humanity. . "If a song can't be written in 20 minutes, it ain't worth writing," he once said, summing up the no-frills eloquence that makes his songs so fun to sing and easy to cover. "Neil doesn't turn corners," Crazy Horse guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro once said. In addition to winning a whopping nine Grammys, Legend – a singer, pianist, actor and songwriter – received the special Starlight award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007. I can't. .like partnerships because they can identify with the drama of two people in partnership. "Say I saw a word like 'transcendalistic tendencies.' He would actually sing the entire arrangement into a micro-cassette recorder complete with stops and fills. Justin Timberlake 13 min read. Listen to him, and he always brings you to your senses. "I looked at the songbooks and thought that anyone could do that," she told American Songwriter, "so I just started writing." . In 2008, he scored an ASCAP Songwriter of the Year award. "He'd just say, 'What does it mean to you?' He was rock & roll's first singer-songwriter, and the music's first guitar hero, as well. Madonna has enlisted numerous collaborators en route to selling more than 300 million albums — she started working with longtime writing partner Patrick Leonard after he brought her "Live to Tell" in 1986, and from Shep Pettibone and William Orbit in the Nineties through Diplo, Avicii and Kanye West on 2015's Rebel Heart, she's worked successfully with producers across many genres. That meant first reconnecting pop music to the awesome power of early rock & roll – Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Little Richard – then pushing forward with darker, more personal music like "Hard Day's Night" and "In My Life" that stretched the boundaries of the capabilities of pop, and then diving into the avant garde with music that had only existed in his dreams: "Strawberry Fields Forever," "A Day in the Life," "Revolution #9. May the best song win. After the band split up, Ulvaeus and Andersson went on to collaborate on several musicals — including the Abba jukebox musical, Mamma Mia!, one of the most successful in Broadway history. "I try to make the songs as good as I can — the way I like it, you know?" His haunting bass voice, nylon-stringed guitar patterns, and Greek-chorus backing vocals delivered incantatory verses about love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression, and other eternal dualities. He has achieved international success as well; his song “Troublemaker” for Olly Murs ft. Flo Rida has gone #1 in the UK. "The melody comes second, and then the words.". Akon "She grew up on Joni Mitchell and Motown and. "People know when you do that. ", "Hag, you're the guy people think I am," said Johnny Cash to Merle Haggard, whose life and lyrics intertwined magnificently. In addition to achieving huge crossover pop success in the U.S., their work was also a massive influence on the British Invasion: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Hollies and the Searchers were just some of the acts who recorded their songs. Johnta Austin Even more remarkably, the singer imagined the full arrangements for these songs as he wrote them, working from the basic rhythmic elements all the way up to the smallest ornamentations. Copied to clipboard. A look at the The Best Singer-Songwriter Albums of the 2000s by User Score. And in "Running on Empty," "Boulevard" and others, he also knew, far more than most of his peers, the value in rocking out. Reed was also a sound scientist who, with the Velvet Underground and after, advanced what was possible with simple chords and electric guitars. The Beatles' name was inspired by the Crickets and, according to legend, when the Fab Four arrived in America to play The Ed Sullivan Show, John Lennon asked, "Is this the stage Buddy Holly played on? The challenge was to not do another 'Mamma Mia' or 'Waterloo.'" Know It All”) to up-tempo tracks like Usher's "Lil Freak” and Beyoncé’s "Countdown.”. The results were a great selection of essential songs for Soul Music lovers. As far away from pop convention as Whitfield and Strong's music could be — several of the artists they worked with grew frustrated with their freakiness — their sound found its audience: the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion," the Undisputed Truth's "Smiling Faces Sometimes" and Edwin Starr's vehement protest diatribe "War" were all huge hits. But no songwriter has explored sex so ingeniously —from the frisky flirtations of "Little Red Corvette" and "U Got the Look" to more ambitious therapy sessions like "When Doves Cry" and "If I Was Your Girlfriend." Bob Dylan based the meter of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" on "Too Much Monkey Business," Mick Jagger and Keith Richards soaked up the idea of no satisfaction from "30 Days," and John Lennon once summed up his immeasurable impact by saying, "If you gave rock & roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry. "I don't like to make things too obvious, because it gets stale," Cobain said. Why He’s Dope: Sure, we’ve poked fun at Mr. Graham for his hashtag rap moments. But the same organic give-and-take governed their later albums as well. Benny and Björn had already been a songwriting duo for six years when they teamed up with their girlfriends Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog — who were both Swedish pop stars already — to form Abba. A Number One pop and country hit for Jeannie C. Riley in 1968, it freed Hall to record his own work, which included songs about burying a man who owed him 40 dollars, mourning the death of the local hero who taught him how to drink and play guitar, and "Trip to Hyden," a journalistic tale of a drive to the scene of a mining disaster that was part Woody Guthrie, part Studs Turkel. Like the theme music to a good movie, they underscore a unique decade in hip-hop.Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to take a trip down memory lane and explore the best rap songs of the 2000s. Songs like "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up on Cripple Creek," "The Weight" and "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" were, as Greil Marcus wrote in Mystery Train, "committed to the very idea of America: complicated, dangerous and alive." ", After scoring R&B hits like "Please Please Please" and recording the greatest live album ever, 1963's Live at the Apollo, James Brown changed the pop songwriting game forever during the Sixties and early Seventies by flipping the script on songform itself, foregrounding his music in tight, tempestuous rhythm to invent what would eventually be known as funk. But the dozens of hit songs they wrote for girl groups and teen idols during that time (often with producer Phil Spector pitching in) were as close to raw erotic fervor as you could hear on the radio at the time: the Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me," the Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack," and — near the end of their partnership — Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep – Mountain High." Paul Westerberg wasn't precious about his craft ("I hate music/It's got too many notes," he sang on the first Replacements album in 1981). Together, in less than four years, the duo wrote more than 70 songs, with Marr working as arranger and producer and Morrissey navigating whole new worlds of misery and disaffection, often with much more wit than he got credit for at the time. Westerberg has his own explanation for his unique underdog genius: "I think the opposite when I see something," he once said. Why He’s Dope: Think of the club’s top pop songs (Kesha’s “We R Who We R,” Rih’s “Where Have You Been,” Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold,” and Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA”) that looped in your mind afterwards, more than likely against your will. From the most visible to underrated to artists and producers pulling double duty for some liner note love, VIBE counts down the 35 best R&B/pop songwriters of the 2000s. Robinson's songwriting grounded the Band, influencing generations of back-to-the-land rockers. But instead of moving onto Heaven or Hell, the narrator finds himself in some sort of other world. "My talent is more than just sexual songs," said the only man who wrote for the Notorious B.I.G. Why He’s Dope: Schaffer Smith knows how to write from multiple perspectives and with a range of emotions. But as important to U2's sound as Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. may be, Bono and the Edge have been the primary songwriting team in the band from day one. Gamble wrote most of their lyrics, and keyboardist Huff most of their music, but their roles were flexible, and so was their style: they wrote poignant love songs ("Me and Mrs. Jones"), rubbery political funk ("For the Love of Money"), and richly orchestrated dance music with the rhythms that became disco tropes (like the Soul Train theme "TSOP"). Yet there's a reason Frank Ocean, Vampire Weekend, Gillian Welch, Mark Ronson, Regina Spektor, Gnarls Barkley, the Punch Brothers and others cover their compositions: because the best —from the acoustic ballad "Fake Plastic Trees" to the digital kaleidoscope of "Everything in Its Right Place" — are indelible. "They're just thorns without the rose." "I had almost like a theater workshop," he said, "where you're casting people in these parts, and that's what my job was then." Wilson would later blame his father and bandmates for the despair in his more somber writing. "You write down a paragraph or two describing several different subjects creating a kind of story ingredients-list, I suppose, and then cut the sentences into four or five-word sections; mix 'em up and reconnect them," he once said, describing a process that sometimes involves literally pulling phrases out of a hat. Comment on the contents of the 'Top 200 songs 2000 to 2020' page: Subject: Email to Reply To (optional): Previous Comments (newest first) 15 Jun 2018. "It is the finest music I have ever heard. He’s also passed the metaphor torch to a generation of songwriters like The-Dream and Frank Ocean. Leiber, who grew up in Baltimore, and Stoller, who was from Long Island, met in Los Angeles in 1950. The LP went on to sell millions and Armstrong — who didn't get the credit he deserved as a writer back in the days of more serious-minded bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam — has amassed one of the most impressive song books of the last 20 years. Yet, he was content to play a kind of behind-the-scenes role, passing out songs for the Band's three distinct vocalists — Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel — in an act of generosity that enhanced the Band's theme of communal progress and spirit. "Something about my songs, everyone thinks I'm kind of downbeat," he said at his 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "I don't think anyone's got his wit or insight or originality or obsession or overall dedication." List of 100 greatest rock music songs released between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2009 as compiled by digitaldreamdoor.com. "In other words, it was classic psychedelic thinking in the sense that you didn't take no — or yes — for an answer, instead tunneling down a little bit to see what else might be there beyond the binary." ", Marley didn't just introduce reggae to an American audience, he helped transform it from a singles-oriented medium to a social and musical force every bit as powerful as rock & roll at its best. Maybe it's his family's blue-collar background or the years he spent delivering mail before becoming a full-time musician. A collegiate creative writing student who played covers in bar bands and briefly held a job writing pop song knockoffs in the Brill Building era, Reed drew inspiration both from literature (Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, William Burroughs' Naked Lunch) and his own life — for example, the fellow Warhol collaborators that informed quintessential Reed character studies like "Candy Says" and "Walk on the Wild Side." Fogerty later admitted to envying the critical adulation received by Bob Dylan and the Band, but he tapped the tenor of his times as well as anyone, whether on the class conscious Vietnam protest anthem "Fortunate Son" or "Bad Moon Rising," which channeled America's sense of impending apocalyptic into two-and-a-half choogling minutes. Harrison described songwriting as a means to "get rid of some subconscious burden," comparing the process to "going to confession." "I've always prided myself as a songwriter more than anything else" she once said, adding "nothing is more sacred and more precious to me than when I really can get in that zone where it's just God and me. Writing and producing for Irma Thomas ("Ruler of My Heart," or "Pain in My Heart" when Otis Redding cut it), Benny Spellman ("Mother in Law"), Lee Dorsey ("Working in a Coal Mine") and Aaron Neville ("Hercules"), he helped define the sound of the city that helped define the sound of rock & roll: New Orleans. His personas shifted, but songs like "Tangled Up in Blue," "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and "Forever Young" continued to define their eras in lasting ways. "Songs aren't necessarily verbatim chronicles or necessarily journal entries, they're like smoke. Songs like the 1970 soft-rock classic "Heart of Gold," his only Number One single, have led to an image of the tireless 69-year-old legend as a lonely troubadour, but Young insists that's deceptive. Whether he's operating on a large scale summing up our shared national commitments in 1973's "American Tune," or writing a finely wrought personal reflection on lost love like 1986's "Graceland," the same wit and literary detail come through. It takes economy and simplicity to get to an idea or emotion in a song, and there's no better example of that than Hank Williams. October 8, 2019 by Aphoristical 44 Comments on The Ten Next Best Singer-Songwriters Ever Lists. I go into something minute, then look at it, then go back into it. Agree with Number One pick? In 2008, the versatile songwriter earned a fair share of songwriting awards, including one for Gwen Stefani's “Sweet Escape.”, Bruno Mars Best Known For: Pussycat Dolls’ “Beep,” Kelly Clarkson’s “Walk Away,” Gwen Stefani’s “Rich Girl” Uncut’s 50 best singer-songwriter albums. Rate your favorite albums to have your say in this list of the top user rated albums. It’s his attention to detail that makes him one of the best in the biz. Lukasz Gottwald, recognized under the moniker Mr. Luke, is the man to blame. There was no extra stimulus, no alcohol or drugs or anything. I write these little songs and go and sing them. Why He’s Dope: Confessions is Usher’s best album, and most of the songs were based on Jermaine Dupri’s life and songwriting. But Edmonds' true legacy is as a craftsman of thoughtful ballads and mid-tempo romantic material, with his own solid career as a performer often overshadowed by the huge successes he's enabled other artists to enjoy: "End of the Road," which he wrote for Boyz II Men, broke records with its 13-week run as the Number One song on the Billboard Hot 100. We polled 45 music writers to rank the definitive LPs of the 21st century so far. Creating these catchy tunes has earned him two ASCAP awards as well as two Grammy nominations. "And I guess my taste sometimes happens to be what other people, particularly radio programmers, like, too. Beyoncé Knowles "I wrote them about true things." "I wanted to release music that let people know he was more than just a gang­sta rapper," Combs said later. And if lines like "I feel stupid and contagious/here we are now, entertain us" became generational epigrams, it's in their cryptic ability to nail inarticulate pain. Why He’s Dope: If you pick a top-10 R&B song out of a hat, chances are Sean Garrett was involved in its creation. Many singer-songwriters reach the point where they have too many great tunes to fit into a live show. He’s proven his lyrical expertise by penning songs for his own hip-hop projects, and ballads, and won BMI Urban Awards for Songwriter of the Year in 2011 and 2012. Click to copy. CCR were the catchy, hard-driving dance band amidst the psychedelic San Francisco ballroom scene of the late Sixties, scoring 12 Top 40 hits during their run while releasing an incredible five albums between 1968 and 1970. The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business often created on the fly, scrawling lyrics on a paper bag ("Sex Machine") or a cocktail napkin ("Say It Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud"). R. Kelly Sir Paul is pop's greatest melodist, with a bulging songbook that includes many of the most-performed and best-loved tunes of the past half-century. Unsung Heroes: The 36 Best Songwriters Of The 2000s. And while he's disappointed more than a few bandmates and fans with his at-times baffling career choices, his songs are always pure Neil. . "I went, 'Oh my God, a lot of people are listening to me. Music, Film, TV and Political News Coverage. Newman's early albums were commercial calamities, but he had a surprise hit with 1977's "Short People," a bitingly funny parody of bigotry, and he's gone on to enjoy a hugely successful second career writing soundtracks for movies like Toy Story and Monsters Inc. Newman's songs have been covered by countless artists — from Judy Collins to Harry Nilsson to Ray Charles to Manfred Man's Earth Band to Three Dog Night — and his respect among his peers is universal. Best Known For: N’Sync’s “Gone”; “SexyBack,” “Cry Me A River” "But the American people appear to have developed an incredible fascination with the one image of the cake out in the rain. From the optimism of "Everyday People" to the funky angst of 1971's There's a Riot Goin' On, his music mapped the flower-power era's journey from utopian promise to catastrophic meltdown as well as anyone, and his grooves and riffs have been endlessly sampled by the hip-hop artists to arrive in his wake. Early on, Bowie specialized in offering an indelible vision of the Seventies glam-rock demimonde. And you could put together a rock-solid compilation of Green's songs that became hits in the hands of other artists: Syl Johnson's (or Talking Heads') "Take Me to the River," Tina Turner's "Let's Stay Together," UB40's "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)," Meli'sa Morgan's "Still in Love With You," Earnest Jackson's "Love and Happiness," and on and on. "Even in the early days we used to write things separately, because Paul was always more advanced than I was," John Lennon once said. "My songs, they're all about the American identity and your own identity," he once explained. Terius "The Dream" Nash "I don't think it's a very good song," he said of "MacArthur Park," the much-covered 1968 hit he penned for singer Richard Harris. Mariah Carey's " We Belong Together " was the best-performing Hot 100 single of the decade, spending 14 non-consecutive weeks at number one in 2005. She and Buckingham were a couple when they joined Fleetwood Mac, but some of her greatest songs came out of the wreckage of their relationship — including the Number One "Dreams." Features 25 Of The Best Singer-Songwriter Albums. "I've tried to sound ironic. Kara DioGuardi And Armstrong is a punk through and through: the whole band gets songwriting credit on its hugely successful catalog. song always read "Berry, Mills, Buck, Stipe." Early songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" became hits for others –Peter, Paul & Mary took it Number Two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963; Stevie Wonder brought it Number Nine two years later – and reshaped the ambitions of everyone from the Beatles to Johnny Cash. Since reuniting the E Street Band in 1999 he has been reconnecting to his earliest sense of inspiration and mission. "Being a songwriter is like being a nun," Rolling Stone reported him saying in 2014. They always had a simple melody, a hip set of chord changes and a cool groove.". songs. In addition to all her own stereotype-bending material, the spunky pop star has written for other genre heavyweights like Britney Spears, the Pussycat Dolls, Fergie, New Kids on the Block and Jennifer Lopez. Even their demo recordings were so fully realized that several charted under the name the Raindrops. "A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true," Dylan wrote. .We take longer to get to the future than anywhere else in America. "I still call myself that but musically I had already gone off in a different direction. Both Beyoncé’s B’Day, I Am… Sasha Fierce, and Solange’s 2008 album Sol-Angel and the Hadley St Dreams, most of which she wrote, spawned three singles that became No. . Ashanti Swift's first three albums display her emotional yet uncommonly inventive country style — even early hits like "Our Song" and "Tim McGraw" sound like nobody else. Since the Band ended its run, Robinson has only released albums sporadically; his most recent, 2013's How to Become Clairvoyant, delivered vintage American idioms with a 21st Century feel. Bono brings the grand vision and uncanny ear for heroic hooks, and the Edge brings his sonic mastery and an eagerness to push boundaries. "Wake Up Little Susie" followed quickly, and went to the top of the chart, as did "All I Have to Do Is Dream," and their varied work included songs that worked with strings, like Buddy Holly's "Raining in My Heart," or with banjo, like "Rocky Top," made into a bluegrass standard by the Osborne Brothers in 1967. All three began their careers as singers, but when they started working together behind the scenes, they made magic. The cake out in the 1970s, the other great rock & 's. & B/pop queens Beyonce and Rihanna of drill I would have a start, two four!, bandleader and live powerhouse are peerless write one, we wanted to make the songs as good I. 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