Here are six standout albums from the new singer-songwriter movement. They are mostly women, a refreshing trend after decades of music-industry Guyville, a sea change that Joni would appreciate. The best of the new singer-songwriters channel all of those artists and many others. The singer-songwriter era eventually faded, but songcraft burned on through successive generations of artists who prized melody and harmony, chord inversions and counterpoint, from the guttural growl of Tom Waits to the heartbreaking waltzes of Elliott Smith to the spine-chilling strings that close “Purple Rain.” Joni Mitchell’s Blue album arguably marked the movement’s peak. Their work inspired the so-called singer-songwriter era, a generation of artists in the 1960s and early 1970s who wrote observational, confessional songs on acoustic guitars and pianos and presented them on albums with little adornment. Marissa Nadler, a self-taught finger-picker from Boston, progressed from Madonna and Abbey Road to Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Nina Simone.Īnd what is a singer-songwriter? Dylan, the Beatles and Curtis Mayfield, among others, pioneered the practice of populating full albums with music they wrote and sang, bucking long tradition that had separated writer from performer and padded long-players with endless, redundant covers. Shannon Lay, an erstwhile punk rocker from Redondo Beach, California, drew early inspiration from the Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls before tapping her “weird” gene and discovering Elliott Smith and the Velvet Underground. Lindsey Jordan absorbed influences as diverse as Lana Del Ray, Prince and the Church.

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