Ten Great Wordsmiths of the Last Ten Years

Everybody's just dying for another list, right? Here's the latest: our ten favorite songwriters of the last decade, selected with an emphasis on lyrical prowess rather than compositional skill, though most of these musicians are no less than top-tier in the latter department as well. By the way, that's Bobby Berman above, looking good for the camera in a classic Northumbrian tartan and moleskin number. All his favorite singers couldn't sing...


Dan Bejar (Destroyer, The New Pornographers, Swan Lake, others)
Notable work: This Night (2002)
"Girl, what could have been 'til you gave up the violin / For a slight but distasteful penchant for men" (from "Beggar Might Ride")
Dan Bejar’s abstract phrases allude to an alternate earth populated by faux-allegorical characters and innumerable women – among others, Holly, Crystal, Ruby, Helena, Michelle, Contessa, Louise, Hannah, Jackie, Johanna – with unknowable motivations. He appropriates and recontextualizes the work of Sonic Youth, Fleetwood Mac, The Clash, Joy Division, and The Velvet Underground, and reworks tired clichés as snippets from a post-modern Poor Richard’s Almanac. It hardly matters whether his grandiose mythology means anything, or whether Thief and Priest and Streethawk are just hollow figures chosen for their phonetics – the words sell themselves. -AR


Dave Berman (Silver Jews)
Notable work: American Water (1998)
"Grass grows in the icebox / The year ends in the next room / It is autumn and my camouflage is dying" (from "The Wild Kindness")
Winner of the inexhaustible search for "The Next or At-Least-Comparatively-Talented-If-Not-Nearly-As-Important-Or-Influential-To-An-Entire-Generation Bob Dylan" - for real this time - is a relatively anonymous Jew from Nashville named Dave. Because the voice is apparently too obviously uncanny (like Dylan would sound now, minus four decades of smokes), check the lyric sheet: post-Beat platitudes and profundities on autopilot, wholly impenetrable if they didn't each land squarely in that way-back part of your brain that you're not phenomenally talented enough to translate into words, let alone entire albums of song after song. The Kathleen Brennan Effect doesn't seem to be doing the poor guy any favors lately, so head for the back catalog if you haven't had the formal introduction. -ZN


Bill Callahan (ex-Smog, ex-The Sundowners)
Notable work: Dongs of Sevotion (2000)
"I can hold a woman down on a hardwood floor / and her teeth can gnash right through me / looking for a soft place" (from "Cold Discovery")
For my money, there hasn't been a more consistent musicmaker in the last twenty years or more. Restless experimentation, a meticulously guarded public persona, and nearly two decades of stupifyingly good music have garnered yet another absurdly talented artist approximately zero recognition from the free-spending public. Don't buy the cop-outs - "misogynist," "misanthropist" - and you'll hear not only a peerless wordsmith and an equally brilliant composer, but the purest and rarest kind of soul cutting through the gloom. -ZN


John Darnielle (The Mountain Goats, The Extra Glenns, others)
Notable work: All Hail West Texas (2002)
"You hold my head in your hands / You say my name / How is it that though you say it some 20,000 times it's never quite the same?" (from "Deienara Crush")
In the world of John Darnielle, everything is lit by embers buried in secret corners of the soul and love and hate are more tightly bound than any of his characters’ crumbling, inescapable marriages. His fiction is mesmerizing, a terse battle cry for a stumbling army of the downtrodden. It’s a shame that so many philistines’ initial reaction to the post-tape-hiss era Mountain Goats is affinity for the pleasing acoustic guitar and aversion to the wrenching lyricism. It’s even more of a shame that, recently, I can’t blame them. -KM


Craig Finn (The Hold Steady, ex-Lifter Puller)
Notable work: Separation Sunday (2005)
"I guess I heard about original sin / I heard the dude blamed the chick / I heard the chick blamed the snake / And I heard they were naked when they got busted / and I heard things ain’t been the same since" (from "Cattle and the Creeping Things")
Craig Finn was mumbling Kerouac references into a microphone the first time I saw him, smiling like a kid. I’ve never had more fun at a show. Many people disagree - the black hole that is his singing ability proves insurmountably annoying - but the deftness of his writing hand is uncontested. He has the kind of verbal talent you might find in a sheltered bookworm and the utility humanism found in a minor league ballpark. He’s a blue-collar poet, shouting incantations of the good old bad days while clinging perilously to perspective. -KM


Stephin Merritt (The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths, The Gothic Archies, others)
Notable work: 69 Love Songs (1999)
"I lost my composure / and I shot Ferdinand / crying, 'It's well and kosher / to say you don't understand / but this is for Holland-Dozier-Holland" (from "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure")
None of us know enough about Stephin Merritt to write a paragraph about the guy. His music's pretty gay though (...). -ZN


Morrissey (ex-The Smiths)
Notable work: You Are the Quarry (2004)
"You have never been in love / until you've seen the dawn rise / behind the home for the blind" (from "The First of the Gang to Die")
Past his prime, yes, and even farther past his relevance, but Stevesy's wit is just as potent and pointed as ever. Just ask his song titles(!): "America Is Not The World," "I Have Forgiven Jesus," "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore," and my personal fave, "All The Lazy Dykes." -ZN


Joanna Newsom
Notable work: The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004)
"Never get so attached to a poem / you forget truth that lacks lyricism" (from "En Gallop")
If you find your way past the she-goblin voice (or as Dave Berman put it, "Emily Dickinson sauteed in Olive Oyl") - a higher hurdle than her obsession with the antique - you'll find more minstrel-y whimsy than you'll know what to do with, not to mention a feather in your cap and a smug sense of self-satisfaction for relishing the voice that would make Daniel Johnston blush. A million-dollar rhyme for the road: "The sight of bridges and balloons / makes calm canaries irritable / they caw and claw all afternoon / 'Catenaries and dirigibles.' -ZN


Will Oldham (Bonnie "Prince" Billy, ex-Palace, ex-The Sundowners)
Notable work: I See a Darkness (1999)
"Every terrible thing is a relief / Even months on end buried in grief / are easy light times which have to end / with the coming of your death friend" (from "Death to Everyone")
Without relying on trite sentiments, Will Oldham depicts the full spectrum of human emotion. Under his various guises, he writes poetry that delves into the hearts of the jealous and the jubilant, the melancholy and the moribund. He mimics Poe during his darkest (most eloquent?) moments, but seems just as comfortable detailing the contented musings of a loved man in Appalachia. All praise Bonnie Billy. -AR


Sufjan Stevens
Notable work: Come On Feel The Illinoise! (2005)
“In the morning when you finally go / and the nurse comes in with her head hung low / and the cardinal hits the window” (from "Casimir Pulaski Day")
The delicacy of Sufjan Steven’s voice is either boring or the whispering of angels, depending on who you are. And either way the constant presence of God would prove off-putting for most songwriters. But it is a testament to Sufjan’s talent that, even if you don’t share his faith, it’s hard not to marvel at it. His lyrics are full of stuff that should be corny – grace and nature and fleeting moments shared – but with such thoughtful treatment as his, anything can be profound. -KM

Six degrees of this article:
Drag City artists: 4 (Dave Berman, Bill Callahan, Joanna Newsom, Will Oldham)
Personal connections:
Bill Callahan and Will Oldham collaborated in the early '90s as The Sundowners.
Joanna Newsom was signed by Drag City after touring with Will Oldham.
Bill Callahan and Joanna Newsom were "linked romantically" for several recent years.
John Darnielle has covered at least one song by at least two of these other artists ("Pet Politics" by Silver Jews and "Reel Around the Fountain" by The Smiths).
Steve Albini has produced/engineered albums or songs for at least three of these artists (three songs for Smog, three albums for Will Oldham, and some recording for Joanna Newsom's Ys)
Moral of the story: Drag City wins.

Notable exceptions: No one here feels like wading too far into the swamp that is twenty-first century hip-hop, so this list is best considered as "Ten Great Non-Gangsta Wordsmiths of the Last Ten Years." And for the sake of variety, a sort of exclusionary grandfather clause was employed to eliminate dinosaurs like Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, et al, despite the quality of music each may presently be producing. And no, Morrissey is not a dinosaur, nor will he ever be.

[Zach Noland, Kiernan Maletsky, Adam Rux]