The Top 10 Greatest Ever Americana Artists: Best of the Rest

It’s done, the articles have been written, the numbers crunched and AUK writers are slowly regaining their sanity. Twenty-four of our finest offered their assessment and came up with over 120 different artists. Points were awarded Eurovision style with each writer’s top choice getting 10 points, 9 for second place, 8 for third and so on. Six artists ended up with just one point indicating that a single writer had placed them at number 10 on their list which in itself is an achievement. We are talking the greatest EVER here.

Although each AUK writer nominated only their top 10, we are going to publish the Top 20 with the number of points awarded to each of them. Next week, starting on Monday, we will start a daily rundown of the Top 10 in reverse order. Today however, we bring you numbers 11 – 20.

11.   Emmylou Harris  26 points
12.   Guy Clark  25 points
13.   Wilco 23 points
14.   The Byrds  22 points
15.   Ry Cooder   21 points
16=  Jackson Browne   20 points
16= Rhiannon Giddens 20 points
16=  Chris Hillman 20 points
19=   Mary Chapin Carpenter  19 points
19=   The Felice Brothers 19 points

Interestingly Jackson Browne’s 20 points were accumulated by just two writers placing him as their number one greatest ever artist whereas Uncle Tupelo, just below this list on 18 points, were nominated by 5 different writers, but with a highest ranking of fifth spot. For clarification, Rhiannon Giddens score was a bit of a compilation. Some writers nominated her as a solo artist, but two also as part of either a collaboration or movement. As none of the other artists within those groups were nominated, I took the liberty of giving the points to Rhiannon.