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?

These three bands made my list:

Counting Crows
Put these guys in the Billy Joel/John Mayer bucket of amazing artists who are inexplicably shit on by way too many critics. Granted, their output has been limited (and uneven) the last 16 years, but their first decade is impeccable. Those first four albums (August and Everything After and Hard Candy, especially) are the soundtrack to some of the most important periods of my life.

R.E.M.
I think this snub by the NYT is as egregious as the Billy Joel and Randy Newman omissions. R.E.M. defined alternative music in the 80s and then transformed what pop and rock superstardom could look like in the 90s. This is another band that meant the world to me during some formative years and put out some of their best work when I was paying the most attention.

Talking Heads
David Byrne could have made the list as a soloist as well as for his contributions to this seminal band. But I prefer to recognize Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison along with him. The quartet’s music forms the perfect backbone for Byrne’s eclectic lyrics and distinctive vocals, moving between art pop, funk, New Wave, and world music while always sounding perfectly like themselves.