I am certainly no expert in the history of song writing, but it seems to me that it is probably the oldest musical endeavor in human existence. I’m sure there are academic definitions about what constitutes song writing, and one probably has to be doing it for monetary gain to be considered a true songwriter if you study it in those terms. But in my mind, wasn’t the first songwriter the first person who made up some melody and sang some lyrics to it? It’s really just a way of telling a story with musical accompaniment. Caveman, rock, first drummer. If they said ooga booga to the rhythm? First songwriter.

In the United States, Stephen Foster (the father of American music) was one of the first people to write music for the purpose of performing it or selling it for others to perform. He composed hundreds of songs in the 19th century, many of which are still sung today. The next hundred years produced all kinds of avenues for people to write and sing their songs, from minstrel shows to vaudeville to Broadway. Then with the advent of recording technology, this became a much more lucrative endeavor, with the phonograph, film, and radio leading the advancements.

Woody Guthrie

Again, I am not an expert in the history of the singer/songwriter, but I’ll guess that one of the first true singer/songwriters in the modern sense was Woody Guthrie. There are obviously others, such as the thousands of 20th century blues musicians, folk singers, Tin Pan Alley writers, and everyone who came before them. But, to keep it simple and get to the theme in the quickest route possible, let’s stick with Woody Guthrie. He wasn’t doing anything new with regard to singing songs to anyone who would listen, but he was doing it as a career and his songs were about his personal experiences. This is the definition of the modern singer/songwriter, a person who writes and performs a song they wrote in order to express their attitudes, views, emotions, outrage, joy, and opinions.

Bob Dylan

The obvious lineage in the singer/songwriter discussion if we start with Woody Guthrie is to move to Bob Dylan. Early Dylan, folk singer Dylan, Greenwich Village Dylan – he is the epitome of the modern day concept of a singer/songwriter. With just a guitar and a harmonica, he spoke to the masses about the world around them and presented his views and ideals in a way that others could understand as their own.

There are two good answers to that question. First, if I don’t focus on something specific then there are too many songs to choose from and this entire endeavor becomes impossible. Second, I am currently reading Ronald Brownstein’s Rock Me on the Water, a book about 1974 Los Angeles and the film, music, television, and politics of that period. Some of the main characters in that period of history include Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and the rest of the early ’70s singer/songwriters who shaped the era.

Carole King “So Far Away”

James Taylor “Don’t Let Me Lonely Tonight”

Jackson Browne “Late for the Sky”

Carly Simon “You’re So Vain”

Laura Nyro “I Met Him on a Sunday”

Bill Withers “The Same Love That Made Me Laugh”

Cat Stevens “Can’t Keep It In”

Bob Marley “Three Little Birds”

Paul Simon “Something So Right”

Joni Mitchell “Coyote”

Joan Armatrading “Down to Zero”

Warren Zevon “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”

Bob Dylan “Hurricane”

Tom Waits “The Piano Has Been Drinking”

Carole King breaks out as a star with her 1971 album Tapestry.

Jackson Browne defines his sound with his 1974 album Late for the Sky. I am a Jackson Browne fan so I like most of his albums, but this is one of my favorite albums by any artist. Lyrically, I believe it stands with the best albums by any songwriter.

Carly Simon creates one of the most mysterious questions in pop music trivia history – who is “so vain” in “You’re So Vain”? Warren Beatty? James Taylor? Jackson Browne? Less famous people? Simon says the song is about 3 men and one of them is Beatty. On a related note, the song “Anticipation” is about Cat Stevens so at least we know that for sure.

Bill Withers may seem an odd choice for the list, but his songwriting is so idiosyncratic that he deserves to be considered one of the great singer/songwriters of his time. Any day you get to hear some Bill Withers is a good day.

This is Cat Stevens at the end of his run of great albums. It is a symbol of how great Cat Stevens was in the early ’70s that the album Catch Bull At Four is often overlooked in comparison to the three albums that came before it.

Bob Marley and Bob Dylan are the two greatest Bobs in the history of music.

Paul Simon is one of the greatest Pauls in the history of music, although Ms. Faux would pick Mr. Weller if she could only listen to one.

Joni Mitchell, Linda Rondstadt, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, and Laura Nyro dated one another in various pairings throughout the early ’70s.

Warren Zevon died much too young and deserves more attention than he gets.

Tom Waits is Tom Waits and no one else sounds like Tom Waits. Any day you get to hear some Tom Waits is a good day.

Laura Nyro is now considered one of the greatest songwriters of her generation, but during her lifetime her talent was mostly ignored by everyone other than her fans and supporters. Nyro died in 1997 at the age of 49, but she has received many posthumous awards in the 21st century including induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

She recorded seven albums between 1967 and 1978, but only a few more during the next 20 years. Her records sold well enough to keep her working during those first 10 years, but she never achieved the success of her contemporaries, most notably Carole King who may have never released a single record if not for Laura Nyro. She never had a hit single, but many of her songs were hits for others.

This lack of hits under her own name led to a lot of unfortunate negativity when Nyro was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. I am certainly not one to come to the defense of the Rock Hall board of electors, but they actually got one right with Nyro. So many of the artists who do get inducted by that committee are just artists with a lot of hits and album sales. Laura Nyro is one of the finest examples of an artist who deserves recognition for the work she presented, not the popularity of that work at the time. Listen to the albums she produced from ’67-’78 now and you will find as solid a set of recordings as any of her contemporaries who are now household names.

Songs that were hits for other artists

The 5th Dimension “Stoned Soul Picnic“: #3 Hit (6/22/68)

The 5th Dimension “Sweet Blindness”: #13 (10/26/68)

The 5th Dimension “Wedding Bell Blues”: # 1 (10/4/69)

Blood, Sweat & Tears “And When I Die”: #2 hit (10/25/69)

Three Dog Night “Eli’s Coming: #10 hit (11/8/69)

The 5th Dimension “Blowing Away”: #21 hit (1/24/70)

The 5th Dimension “Save the Country”: #27 (6/27/70)

Barbra Streisand “Stoney End“: #6 hit (12/12/70)

Laura Nyro “I Met Him on a Sunday” and “Sweet Blindness”: The first song is a cover of the classic Shirelles song and is from the album Gonna Take a Miracle which features Labelle (Nona Hendryx, Patti Labelle, and Sarah Dash) as co-vocalists. The second song is from her album Eli and The Thirteenth Confession.

Joan Armatrading “Already There,” “Down to Zero,” and “(I Love It When You) Call Me Names.”: I almost selected Joan Armatrading as Artist of the Week, so instead I gave her a triple shot of songs and a special entry here. Just like Laura Nyro, Armatrading does not have any Top 40 hits in the US. Unlike Nyro, she has enjoyed a continuous, 50 year career as a popular artist.

Her lack of hits is most likely due to her being a black woman from England with a unique voice who sings rock and pop. That is unfortunate if for no other reason than songs like “Drop the Pilot,” “Love and Affection,” and “Willow” would certainly be favorites of a lot of people in the States if they had only been given the chance to hear them more over the years.

The strength of her songwriting is in her ability to strip down people’s pain into a few verses of a 4 minute pop song. Her music is timeless and even her latest album is as strong as her earlier work. Watching the video for her latest single “Already There” feels like the ’80s and 2021 all at the same time. Listening to her now in the current world climate, some of her best songs feel like they could become anthems for the times.

Here are some specially selected Joan Armatrading videos.

Hits

Carole King “So Far Away“

James Taylor “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight”

Linda Ronstadt “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”

Carly Simon “You’re So Vain”

Pointer Sisters “He’s So Shy”

Kool and the Gang “Too Hot”

Thurston Harris “Little Bitty Pretty One”

Lee Dorsey “Ya Ya”

New

Tenacious D “You Never Give Me Your Money/The End”: When Tenacious D put out a Beatles cover you have to start with it.

Jimbo Mathus and Andrew Bird “Sweet Oblivion”: This is from the new album These 13 by one of the founding members of Squirrel Nut Zippers (Mathus) and one of the most underrated songwriters of the 21st century (Bird).

Joan Armatrading “Already There”: This is from her 2021 album Consequences.

Bob McGrath: Bob McGrath got his start in show business as a singer for Mitch Miller, but to a lot of us he will always be remembered as just “Bob from Sesame Street.” (Note: Bob’s birthday is actually June 13 -oops – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all know our “A,B,C,D”s.)

Suzanne Vega: Suzanne Vega is still recording and touring. She is also known as the “Mother of the MP3” because the 1990 hit remix of “Tom’s Diner” was used for testing during creation of the MP3. Who knew?

Bonnie Pointer: Bonnie Pointer is one of the Pointer Sisters. “He’s So Shy” is one of their hits.

Peter Murphy: Peter Murphy was the lead singer for the band Bauhaus. “Lagartija Nick” is one of many songs by Bauhaus who, along with Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and others, formed the foundation of goth music in the early ’80s.

Thurston Harris: Harris was a minor R&B star in the ’50s. I have always preferred his version of “Little Bitty Pretty One” to Bobby Day’s original.

Michael Rose: Michael Rose wasn’t the original lead vocalist for Black Uhuru, but he was the voice of all of their classic albums. “Happiness” is the first track on their 1980 album Sinsemilla.

Andrew Bird: Andrew Bird is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and all around cool guy (I assume based on the stuff he has done during his career). “Sweet Oblivion” is from a new collaboration with Jimbo Mathus, who he worked with for a little while in Squirrel Nut Zippers. All of Bird’s albums are worth a listen, especially just to hear his world-class whistling. He has changed his sound over the decades, but his songwriting has always remained top notch and unique.

Jim Croce died tragically in a plane crash in 1973 at the age of 30. At that time, Croce was arguably about to become the most popular singer/songwriter in the United States, if not the world.

Randy Newman has become a joke to some people because of the ridiculous amount of soundtrack work he has done for Disney over the last 20 odd years, all of which start to sound the same due to his unique songwriting and singing style. He has written a slew of hits for both himself and other artists, and his albums are a masterclass in how to write lyrics. He is sarcastic to the point that you occasionally have to step back and realize he does not believe the things he is singing about. Most importantly, he writes with a wit that can be honest, beautiful, and funny all at the same time.

Dolly Parton will get her own Faux Show at some point. She is one of the greatest songwriters in the history of modern music. For now I’ll just say that as far as I can tell she really is as nice as she appears to be.