i should be on that list

photo by michael brosilow

today’s audio is a song from my most recent musical OUT HERE, written with Leslie Buxbaum and David Levin. performed by fellow virginian Ellie Duffey, “Picture Perfect” captures a young woman declaring herself free from the expectations of what a happy family should look like. she’s going to be just fine! and she’s gonna sing about it!

finishing a project like OUT HERE is a major moment and requires a certain amount of self-care. i am so glad i have had a few experiences like this before so i can help myself land in a soft place. the show opened exactly a month ago, and closed last weekend, fulfilling it’s contracted run. i didn’t read a single review, and i feel so damn free. that’s no small feat.

carl and i left the morning after opening and had a delightful roadtrip to see family and friends in pennsylvania and virginia. once home, i’ve been reading and sleeping and enjoying a western mass late spring. i’m still contemplating my next moves artistically, but i am sure of two things: Fax of Life is back for a 5th (and possibly) final season and… i am running out of money, fast. sorry to be so blunt, but working on a musical for 4 years leaves no time to hustle up work for the time when it’s done. i’m just giving you the straight dope about life as an artist. you climb a mountain, and on the other side is reality.

if you’re listening and you’re not a subscriber, or you’ve let your subscription lapse, please consider changing your status. even the smallest bit every month helps me. and makes you morally superior to my other listeners.

speaking of hierarchies and comparisons, the new york times recently published their list of the 30 greatest living american songwriters. pshaw! i said the minute i saw it. adding a terse, what the fuck, for good measure.

of course, the main problem with this list is that i am not on it. i didn’t have to look at it, i knew i wouldn’t be on it. despite feeling that i should be on it, despite what i think is a long-enough and public-enough career, i know i don’t have the reach or name recognition to even be considered.

in general i hate lists of any type - even when i am on them. i am allergic to ranking things. i am allergic to inclusion on such a list because it by default means things are excluded, culled, curated into the shadows, while the bright light of attention shines on a random subset. why would we want to bring order and rank and hierarchy to something so personal and delightful and unpredictable and mysterious as creativity and taste?? if you’re a critic, why not just share regularly what’s floating your boat? i much prefer a recommendation to a list!

something bad happens when we rank things publicly. it’s not just a feeling or anecdote, this has been studied, specifically about music. in a very famous experiment, princeton sociologists created a closed music marketplace, populated by songs from independent artists, folks without name recognition. one set of people were presented this group of songs without any information about them, and asked to listen, then rank them. unsurprisingly, there was no clear consensus on what was a “good” song or a “hit”. later, another set of people were presented the same group of songs, but with randomly selected ranking information from the first set. over and over, people liked and ranked more highly, songs they had seen were already “popular” and “liked”. the eye and the ear is drawn to the crowd.

i get it, there’s an element of social belonging in liking the same things as other people, but once the boulder starts rolling, its hard for other rocks to get noticed. why am i so burned about this? because these lists have consequences for the people on and off them. in the creative economy, attention is the commodity. being noticed is the way you build a career. getting just one set of eyes (or likes, or plays) allows you to get more. being named on a list, chosen for a playlist, featured in a ranking, can change your creative and economic circumstances materially.

hey yall! it’s so nice to be back making the Fax Of Life, and i have an awesome season planned for you. meantime, i have just two events on my calendar - both in the northeast. sorry california!

on june 14, i’ll once again be leading a hiking concert with The Trustees, this time in the western mass town of sheffield. and on september 18-19 i’ll be joining a songwriting camp put on by the Beacon Music Factory in hillsdale NY. info for both events is, as always, on erinmckeown.com/shows

here’s news everyone can enjoy: a few years ago my dear friend tessa blake asked me to make a cameo appearance in her movie If I Tell You. i got to play myself performing at a small town 4th of July picnic. and i got to improvise onstage with Hamilton’s George Washington, Chris Jackson. the film is now available to watch, and as a bonus when you stream it, you’re supporting RAINN - Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. click here to screen and support!

and once again, a reminder to consider a subscription if you can right now. regardless, i’ll keep making these episodes if you keep listening!

Share

once i got over my pique about not being on the new york times list, i had a look at it and then listened to the makers of the list debate how they created it. i’ll give everyone involved credit - they certainly attempted to really survey the field. and they gave a lot of time and diligence to vetting each entry. i mean it sounded kind of fun to be in the room debating who made and didnt make the list. my exclusion aside.

the list itself is agnostic of genre, and somewhat diverse in terms of commercial success. points in its favor. i absolutely think that dolly parton, jay Z, lucinda williams, and bad bunny belong on a list together. there are others that i am not so sure about (mostly because i have never heard of them) and plenty of selections that i was just bored by - like bob dylan, bruce springsteen, and paul simon. i would have rather put them in one box called Old White Guy Who Is Very Good. make space, boys!!

the list also got me thinking about, what exactly is a good song? i write in lots of forms (musicals, poems, essays) but i do love song form the most. it’s been my most natural means of expression for 35 years now. the clarity, concision, and portability of a song is pure magic. i’ve often said that songs are like seed pods, they disperse, carried by wind, memory, stuck to your pants after one journey only to drop off on your next. it’s hard to do that with longer forms like novels and musicals.

songs are also bite-sized, learnable pieces of art you can try on for yourself. everyone learns “blackbird” when they learn guitar. songs can get sung at home or camp or school with very little lift. so many websites exist to help you play a song you love, simply, immediately, on whatever instrument you like, at whatever level your musicianship is. try that with the scarlett letter.

for me, what makes a good song is simplicity, clarity and repeatability. a feeling of intoxication comes over you with a good song, you want more, you want again. and it’s so personal, dependent on the time and space you hear the song in, where you’re at in your life, who played it for you, who you played it for. i revel in these specificities and individual experiences. and i can’t imagine a list ever existing that could capture that.

x erin

ps - this is what recovering from a musical looks like

• Kids! get yer landlines now!

• in case you forgot, i have a degree in ethnomusicology with a specialty in blackface minstrelsy. so of course i snatched up the new book “darkology”, which tracks the pervasive and insidious path minstrelsy took into our fraternal organizations, hospital charities, schools and more in the 20th century (like now! within all our memories!!). but seriously, this book is FOR EVERYONE. you are or know someone who performed in blackface or sang these songs, whether you knew it or not. it’s a big deal to catalog this. and we can’t change anything until we archive and admit!!! archive and admit!!

• my dear pal debbie millman has a wonderful new TED talk about what happens after we get what we wanted.

• as a student of 19th century popular entertainment (see above) i was very familiar with the story of famous conjoined twins chang and eng bunker, but one of my fave outlets, the broadside, just did a lovely, new story about their complicated north carolina connections.

• davine joy randolph on amy poehler’s “good hang” is perfection.

• yes i read yesteryear. in like a weekend. it has fried my brain, and i am still spinning, in a good way. but it also helped me discover this treasure of a pod, and i will definitely never be the same.

• also, i want to acknowledge that i am a HUGE fan of NFL insider diana russini. i am heartbroken that she resigned from her job. i’m not even going to touch the ethics and sexism and and and here. i’m just sad. if you want to hear two women talk about this (rather than a myriad of men), i’d recommend this podcast.

now - June 2026 - Fredericksburg VA
Fredericksburg Area Museum
Out And About: The Walk-in Closet
VISIT

June 14, 2026 - Sheffield MA
Scenic Songs Hiking Concert
TICKETS & INFO

Sep 18-19, 2026 - Hillsdale NY
Beacon Music Factory Song Camp
TICKETS & INFO