Best 20th Century Jewish Singer/Songwriters...

If you put a gun to my head and made me put together the Mt. Rushmore of 20th Century Jewish singer/songwriters my list would have to go something like this:

(The first three are no-brainers, not necessarily in this order)

1. Bob Dylan








2. Neil Diamond







3. Leonard Cohen







But this is where it gets tricky. It's either Billy Joel or Paul Simon at #4. I know there are a lot of Paul Simon partisans out there and not a lot of Billy Joel supporters for whatever reason (or for a variety of reasons) but I've thought about this a lot in the past few years and I'm going to have to go with Billy Joel. Paul Simon's important, obviously, but Billy Joel's had a far greater effect on my experience and I just think he's cooler. They're both shockingly short, tiny men and they're two of the best songwriters of the 20th century. I love both of them and if I was forced at gunpoint to rewrite this list tomorrow it might come out different. But for right now there's two deal-breaking factors: If both Joel and Simon were playing in Portland at the same time on the same night and I had to choose between one or the other I would, without a doubt, choose Billy Joel. I'd rather hear "Only the Good Die Young" live than almost any Paul Simon song and (as anyone who knows me knows) I'm drawn to Billy Joel's almost complete absence of coolness and his complete (and entirely hypocritical) exclusion from the contemporary rock canon (which, frankly, says more about the post-'60's rock cannon than it does about Billy Joel any day of the week...but that's another conversation entirely).

So...

4. Billy Joel









And incidentally, the top three Jewish singer/songwriters of the 20th century also happen to be...the top three singer/songwriters of the 20th century (after #3 there's a big drop-off...sorry Billy).

And isn't it strange, on an entirely different note, that for everything people have to say positively or negatively about THE JEWISH PEOPLE as a whole and in the abstract that no one ever talks or thinks about the Jews as great bards...why is that? No, seriously, why is that?