YouTube musicologist Rick Beato, the internet’s music professor, furiously shredded the New York Times music critics “30 Greatest Living American Songwriters” list – a creation that irked him so deeply he posted a second video this week attacking the “pretentious, cork-Sniffing, smug people” who made it.
Beato, the classically-trained multi-instrumentalist and former session player, engineer, producer and educator – who began building the 5.4 million followers and 6 billion lifetime views on his “Everything Music” channel in 2015 – first took aim at the panel’s list earlier this month with a video titled “The NYT ‘Greatest Songwriters’ List is an Absolute Disaster.”
Beato’s followers knew they were in for a barnburner. The genre-spanning music guru, though certainly known for extra-salty takes, has a broad appreciation for virtually all types of music, respects others’ opinions and rarely, if ever, attacks individuals.
Then, in the days after that episode aired, someone sent Beato the May 7 episode of the Times’ podcast “Cannonball With Wesley Morris,” in which the paper’s music critics gathered to defend their choices. Beato went ballistic.
“It drove me nuts watching it,” he said in the Monday episode, which you can watch below. “I have to make a video about this.”
“Here’s four Ivy League educated people,” Beato snarled. “You’ve got two from Yale, one from Princeton, and Mr. Harvard there, that are the most pretentious, cork-sniffing, smug people that are all music critics with no background in music.”
Their list is an eclectic mix for sure, with some indisputable greats (Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Dolly Parton) and more than a few disputable ones (Fiona Apple, Stephin Merritt, Young Thug), but it was the thinking behind the inclusions – and omissions – with which Beato took particular issue. He zeroed in on Times critic Jon Caramanica, who argued that songwriting is often defined as “a heroic white man with a guitar struggling through his emotions.”
“Exactly what you would expect from a New York Times music critic,” Beato said. Responding to the panel’s discussion of why Billy Joel was excluded, he asked: “You hear these guys competing for the worst take?”
Beato, whose long-running “What Makes This Song Great?” series helped establish him as a household name among musicians, producers and music fans, concluded by saying he’s “not going to sit here and say this is a definitive list of the greatest living American songwriters. It’s ridiculous. … That’s why I always say at the end of these videos, this is my personal opinion.”
You can watch his full take in the video above.
