A trio of holdovers topped the Billboard Hot 100 the week of June 7, 1986. They were, in order, Madonna’s ‘Live To Tell,’ Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald’s ‘On My Own,’ and Whitney Houston’s ‘Greatest Love of All.’
In the #4 slot is the first (and likely last) appearance on this blog by Nu Shooz, a husband-wife pop duo that had one big U.S. hit: ‘I Can’t Wait.’ This song is actually a synth-pop remix of the duo’s original R&B recording.
Throwing back to the week of June 6, 1976, we find Wings atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Silly Love Songs,’ the band’s third #1 song in the U.S. This was Paul McCartney’s 27th #1 hit in America as a songwriter, setting a record that he holds to this day (the number is now 32).
Written as a response to critics (and his old pal John Lennon) who called his music sappy, ‘Silly Love Songs’ leans unapologetically into the corn. And it paid off, spending five weeks atop the chart and becoming the #1 overall song of 1976. That made McCartney the first artist to have the #1 overall song with two different bands.
The final member of my list of the ’30 Greatest Living American Songwriters’ is in a category all his own. I guess you could call this my ‘Musical Theater’ section, but the truth is I don’t pay any attention to musical theater.
I do pay attention to Lin-Manuel Miranda, though. And he is one of the few living songwriters I will comfortably call a genius.
If you had told me 20 years ago that one day more than 20 percent (seven out of 30) of my ’30 Greatest Living American Songwriters’ would be from the Country/Country Adjacent category, I’d have called you crazy. But here we are.
Several of these artists would be more accurately labeled as Americana or country folk, but they all got their start very much in the traditional country space. And when a great songwriter taps into the emotional directness of the genre, special things happen.
The next category of my ’30 Greatest Living American Songwriters’ list is Bands. The New York Times largely ignored bands when compiling their list — OutKast was the only exception — and I think that was a mistake.
I understand the temptation to include artists who write alone, but it’s not like The Times didn’t name some songwriting duos and trios on their list. So why not a group of people who write and perform their songs together?
Meet Me In Montauk 