Just 'cos we all like Top 100 lists so much

Bob-Dubery

Here is a list of not the top 50, not the top 100, but the top 200 Rock 'n Roll songwriters.

And Dylan is NOT at number 1.

Gearhead

☹ of course he is not, Bob ???

But seriously: link seems broken, to me.

AlanRatcliffe

Fixed the link. ?

Now this list is bad. Seems to be weighted a heavily to chart success, rather than actual songwriting skill. Black Sabbath ahead of Leonard Cohen? Pfft - safer to ignore.

Squonk

Bit of dodgy list ???

Ian Anderson at least makes 193 8)

singemonkey

Lennon and McCartney? Two in at the top? Anybody with more than a casual acquaintance with the Beatles knows that they were not a true songwriting team after the first few albums. What did Lennon have to do with Yesterday? And let's not even get into what Macca had to do with Imagine.

Bob-Dubery

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: Fixed the link. ?

Now this list is bad. Seems to be weighted a heavily to chart success, rather than actual songwriting skill. Black Sabbath ahead of Leonard Cohen? Pfft - safer to ignore.

I don't agree with it really, but I find it interesting because it made me ask "what is a song"? If you want to focus on lyrics well, yes, then Cohen should be waaaayyy up there. Especially if you want truly poetic lyrics rich with allusion and metaphor. But if you want hooks - which can legitimately be regarded as part of a song - then look elsewhere. Brian Wilson is not the world's great lyricist, but he wrote some great melodies. Ditto Elton John and Bernie Taupin - I think some of Taupin's lyrics are a bit questionable, even unpleasant, but Elton did write some marvellous tunes.

PeteM

A big problem here - how can they classify most of these songwriters under "Rock" - Tracy Chapman???
I hate classifying music into different genres anyway - why didn't they call it the "greatest 100 songwriters of all time"? I suppose it might have exposed most of the songwriters on the list as quite ordinary.

Bob-Dubery

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: Now this list is bad. Seems to be weighted a heavily to chart success, rather than actual songwriting skill. Black Sabbath ahead of Leonard Cohen? Pfft - safer to ignore.

Well I was being a but TIC. It is a very odd looking list and I do think chart success has weighed heavily on the minds of the compilers. Fats Domino had hits, but it's hard to argue that he was in the top rank of songwriters. They also exclude Joe Jackson.

Some of the data just seems plain wrong. They list Joni Mitchell as a 70's artist, but present as examples songs from the 60s....

All my fault!

@ Pete. I would guess that they are trying to pin down a certain time frame. It does depend on definitions, but they have missed out Burt Bacharach and Hal David who had big hits with Dionne Warwick and who wrote some fab songs. They also omitted Townes van Zandt who usually gets an honorable mention in such polls. I'd have thought that Jimmy Webb would be in there too. That's a surprising omission.