1950-2000: The 10 Greatest Songwriting Teams


The attribution of songwriting credit in the popular music industry is fraught with all manner of swindling and cheating. Royalty checks are sent as often to pretenders and usurpers as they are to the true creative parties. I am not going to attempt to untangle the twisted and arcane competing stories underlying the extant listed publishing rights. With regard to just one band, The Beach Boys, there is an entire cottage industry of books devoted to arguing the minutiae of “who really deserves credit” for the band's most celebrated recordings.

So here, with the above caveat, is my list of the 10 greatest songwriting twosomes of the last half of the 20th Century.

1. John Lennon/Paul McCartney
2. Boudleaux Bryant/Felice Bryant
3. Burt Bacharach/Hal David
4. Gerry Goffin/Carole King
5. Kenneth Gamble/Leon Huff
6. Benny Andersson/Bjorn Ulvaeus
7. Ronald Dunbar/Edythe Wayne
8. Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller
9. Mick Jagger/Keith Richards
10. Jimmy Page/Robert Plant
tweakgeek

Showing 3 responses by 4yanx

Do David Gilmour/Roger Waters count, or did they more or less write separately for the larger Pink Floyd whole (in the wall)?
Damn, Rodgers and Hart miss out by just a few years.
Paul Simon/Art Garfunkel
Don Henely/Glen Frey
Lamont Dozier/Brian Holland/Edward Holland
Richard Rogers/Oscar Hammerstein
Nickolas Ashford/Valerie Simpson
Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil
Kix Brooks/Ronnie Dunn

BTW, Mes, the schwing vote goes to Garth for bagging Kim Basinger.
If nothing else, I realized a long time ago that one person's crap = another person's fertilizer, when it comes to music (and politics). There is, of course, a definite "flip side" to that record, too.