And the Winner Is . . .

A friend and former student of mine just posed a question on Facebook: Who is the best songwriter of the last twenty years?

I've been thinking about this for three days and it's difficult to say -- not because I haven't liked any songs in the last twenty years, but because I'm not sure that I can think of a lot of actual songwriters who have written over that period, outside of the established ones (like Elton John, who is doing some of his best work ever, even though there is not a lot of buzz about it).

What it comes down to, for me, is that there are three kinds of people who put together songs.

Ditch the Shuffle

I've been going back in time. I'm real believer in the potential of pop music, though I'm a lover of modern orchestral music and classical. I think pop is the music with the most creative potential, even if it is the area in which the least creative potential is realized, as things stand. Anyway, I have been going back in time to check out the the particular tunes of the pop greats that we don't usually hear.

My latest purchase is Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection. (It's really, really good. But this isn't a music review. I hate music reviews.) The album got me thinking about something that has floated through my head ever since the iPod era began: the advent of the MP3 has some great effects, especially on young people whose diversity of musical experience is surprisingly broader than it was ten years ago. (I have seen kids with Metallica, Abba, Wu Tang Clan, The Beatles, Eminem and Sinatra on their playlists. Of course, this could indicate either a total lack of musical discernment or a delightfully broad musical view, depending on your perspective.)