I was just wondering who everyone thinks the greatest songwriters of our time are. Also who has influenced you the most.
In my case I would have to go with Dave Matthews and Adam Duritz from the counting crows.
I think John Mayor's pretty amazing
I have to say the honesty and passion in Jeff Buckley's songwriting is virtually unnequalled. His album "grace" is a masterpiece, It's such a shame that a shining talent is no longer with us.
In no particular order, a *very* incomplete list:
Nick Drake
Bob Dylan
James Taylor
Jimmy Buffet
Gordon Lightfoot
Joni Mitchell
Joan Baez
Louden Wainright III
John Prine
Bonnie Rait
-- Scratch 8)
"...if heartaches were commercials, we'd all be on TV" -- John Prine
42
Dylan - no-one can tell a story quite like him.
Lennon - with or without McCartney
Neil Young - Joni Mitchell - Mick & Keith - Fogerty - Jim Croce - Muddy Waters - Woody Guthrie - Willie Nelson - Hank Williams - Joe Strummer
An eclectic - though by no means exhaustive list - all of the above have been and still are huge influences on budding songwriters.
"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)
I'll add Elvis Costello
If you mean by continual success of a song then you have to include Soloman Linda, a South African Zulu, who wrote a song called Mbube.
That song has been recorded many hundreds of times and has been continually popular for over 60 years, but never under it's original name. It still gets regularly recorded, sometimes under it's first mispronounced rendition of Mbube - Wimoweh - and sometimes under it's anglicised name - The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
Even at the end of the 30's, when the song was discovered, record companies were ripping songwriters off - the Ntsele family (Linda was Soloman's praise name) received no royalties until 1992 and then only a pittance. They are still fighting to get what is rightfully theirs.
I started with nothing - and I've still got most of it left.
Did you know that the word "gullible" is not in any dictionary?
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Paul Simon
aka Izabella
Zevon, Zappa, Petty, Paul Simon
Dave Cousins -Strawbs
Lennon
Cat Stevens
lenard cohen
as i understand it one of the greatest songwriters of our time.
and elliott smith was pretty talented too.
currently number 60 in total posts... and shooting for number 1!!
I couldn't even begin to say who the greatest is, or even how you would judge that, but the ones who inspired me to start writing would be:
Alanis Morissette
Poe
Jewel
Delores O'riordan (Cranberries)
Funny, I don't actually listen to a whole lot of female artists nowadays - it's interesting that when I think of my inspiration/influences, it's a female list.
Layne Staley/Jerry Cantrell
They call them fingers, but I've never seen them fing.
Oh wait, there they go.
Shannon Hoon
David Lee Roth
I am kidding :wink: :lol:.
aka Izabella
