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Cannonball: Debating Our ‘30 Greatest Songwriters’ List

5/7/20261 hr 3 min

On this week's episode of "Cannonball," Jon and Joe sit down with Wesley Morris and Sasha Weiss to discuss how The New York Times Magazine's 30 Greatest Songwriters list came together. They rehash their biggest debates from the process, react to the perceived snubs, engage with reader comments and share some of their personal regrets.

- Watch the video episode here.
- Read the full list here.

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Clips

Showing 10 of 12

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds
  1. Speaker 00:00

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  2. Jon Caramanica· Host0:35

    What's up, Popcast audio massive? It's John.

  3. Joe Coscarelli· Host0:39

    Hey, it's Joe.

  4. Jon Caramanica· Host0:40

    We're here because this is a special collaborative episode that you are about to hear. We went to the Cannonball sound stage. We got into it about the 30 greatest living American songwriters with Wesley Morris, fellow critic at The New York Times, and Sasha Weiss, one of the magazine editors who's in charge of the project.

  5. Joe Coscarelli· Host1:01

    We talked a little bit about what it was like in the room as we were making these decisions. We talked about who was left off the list, some of our personal heartbreaks- Yeah ... uh, people who didn't make it.

  6. Jon Caramanica· Host1:12

    If you get heartbroken over a list, that's something that I hope you guys will work on. But- Or it means the list worked. Yes. Uh, either way, you can watch the video on the Cannonball YouTube feed, but we had to rip the audio to give it to y'all here for the real ones.

  7. Joe Coscarelli· Host1:26

    Listen and let us know what we missed.

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