The greatest female songwriter?

[Riverwolf]

Suzanne Vega.

[JimC1702]

A nod of the head to Cindy Walker.

[FrankHudson]

Rating artists is so subjective, but sometimes a lot of subjective ratings coalesce along with impact and you get something like a consensus. Kind of like Leonard Cohen's comment on Bob Dylan's Nobel: giving Bob Dylan a Nobel prize is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being so high.

Joni Mitchell has pretty much the same stature in the same time frame for songwriters who are women. If anything, underappreciated as a lyricist, and musically she fairly quickly developed her own distinctive voice with the guitar tunings and adding the different colors to that in the band choices on her records. She's a monster artist, and the gravitational pull of her influence is almost as inescapable as Dylan's.

I could list a dozen or more great songwriters who were women (some already mentioned) in the post WWII era, but if you just want the artist who stands out, it's Mitchell.

[Song Writer]

I truly appreciate and recognize Joni's many artistic creations.

However, it's really hard to ignore the numbers, and these numbers are enormous:

118 songs charting the Billboard 100.
61 of these also charted in the UK
An album that stayed on the Billboard album chart for more than six years straight.
75 million copies sold worldwide.

(All done without the need to massively add pounds per square inch of pressure on mahogany and steel.)

[tippy5]

. . there are thousands, millions. They are loving mothers singing to their infants.

[jseth]

Without a doubt... Joni Mitchell.

There are many fine female singer/songwriters, to be sure... but not a one of them comes close to Joni's output and longevity...

[Don Lampson]

Originally Posted by Jim Owen

Lots of fine writers. May I add Kate Wolf to the list?

Kate Wolf has always been a favorite of mine too! We're fortunate she left a surprising body of work during her relatively short career.....

Don

[6L6]

Carole King

[Dominick]

Originally Posted by JimC1702

A nod of the head to Cindy Walker.

Many great ones out there but she is my all time favorite. Inducted into the Country Music hall of fame in 1997, Willie thought enough of her to devote an entire album to her work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Do...f_Cindy_Walker

[Chicago Sandy]

Performing songwriters: Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Mary Chapin Carpenter. All have/had immense bodies of work though over half of King's catalog was co-written with Gerry Goffin (in which case, Cynthia Weill and Ellie Greenwich should qualify). Nobody's yet mentioned the excellent Melissa Manchester.

They didn't live long enough to leave their mark on the music business & culture, but I'd add Kate Wolf and Lesley Gore. The most successful, though, has to be Diane Warren--who has almost never graced a stage or studio except through the mouths and hands of those for whom she wrote tons of hits. She's a prime example of Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point," which posits that the mark of true success and genius is the discipline to put at a minimum 10,000 hours into honing one's craft. She has never even taken a vacation, and writes all day, every day. A few L.A. & Nashville writers described shopping songs to producers, A&R execs and artists' managers, only to have a truck pull up and deliver cartons of Diane Warren demo tapes & discs into the offices. They were exaggerating, of course, but not by much.

Contemporarily, I'd add Melissa Etheridge, Shawn Colvin, Cheryl Wheeler, Susan Werner, Eliza Gilkyson, Tracy Chapman, Neko Case and Jenny Lewis--but they have a lot of catching up to do to expand their catalogs to the same extent as the first three I listed.

But ask any contemporary female singer-songwriter (successful or aspiring) who her influences were as a writer and performer--and despite wide variations in styles and even genres--the vast majority will cite Mitchell first & foremost.

[Sage97]

Another vote for Diane Warren.

[Billy Hill]

Originally Posted by Murphy Slaw

Gillian Welch has her moments.

Gillian has plenty of moments. Can't believe how she's been so overlooked for so long.

[AmericanEagle]

Tracy Chapman

[KevWind]

There is no "greatest" , there certainly are some great ones, most of which have been mentioned .

[dirkronk]

Originally Posted by Don Lampson

Kate Wolf has always been a favorite of mine too! We're fortunate she left a surprising body of work during her relatively short career.....

Don

Thanks to you and Jim Owen and Chicago Sandy for mentioning Kate Wolf. Great talent gone way too soon, and deserving of being remembered far more than she is.

That said, the "greatest"? A bow to all the names already mentioned, but for my ears, surely Joni Mitchell takes pride of place. Not just for her own take on her own music, but for the number of her songs recognized for their artistry and covered beautifully by other performers from the earliest days of her career. (Tom Rush was an early and avid proponent...and his Urge For Going never fails to fill me with goose bumps and nostalgia.)

Dirk