Michael Barbaro

Is not.

I wonder what you see and or hear when you look at the final list of 30.

And I'd argue, best of all, for our purposes, is that because this list of 30 songwriters required them to be alive, we can actually hear from them.

And for the rest of this episode, we're actually going to hear from a couple of our colleagues who helped create this list and did these interviews with these living songwriters.

And we're going to start with a colleague who spoke with arguably the biggest name in music today.

And we're actually going to hear from her.

In the great tradition of schmaltz, I'm going to use a pun here.

We're going to hear from her quite swiftly.

Excellent.

We'll be right back.

Joe Coscarelli.

Hey.

Welcome to the Sunday Daily.

You cover pop music for the New York Times.

You co-host a show, Popcast.

You were one of the journalists who helped winnow this wisdom of the crowd that Sasha mentioned down to the 30 best living American songwriters.

And most relevantly, for our purposes, you interviewed the queen.

Not Beyonce.

Tell me why Taylor Swift made the list.

And that's what puts her on the list of best living songwriters.