Interesting approach to a massive topic. I have no doubt the point won't be missed at all by anyone who comments below.
The most contentious part of the article is presumably the section at the end where he claims there are no great songwriters anymore. Also maybe the parts where he dismisses "indie rock" and rap -- though as far as I can tell everything he says about both is true. Both genres eschew melody in the usual sense about 99 percent of the time, albeit for different reasons.
Two things do seem pretty obvious. One, great songwriters overwhelmingly write their greatest songs early in their lives. This is especially true for '60s-and-later musicians but may also be true in the case of Rodgers and his ilk. I'm not sure. Two, this article functions as a damn good brief history of modern (American) music, if indirectly. If you're trying to sample the vibes of 1900-1990, listening to one song by every person he mentions is pretty much all you need.
In reaction to this I listed some of my favorite songwriters post-Nirvana (basically where his list tails off), but I certainly couldn't put any of them in the same category as his top eight, and I would have trouble putting them in the top hundred, either based on quality or sheer output. Thom Yorke is a sticking point, worth discussing, and I'm sure there are others.
Most of the names he lists wrote songs I find annoying at best. I think his definition of a good song fails in being too universal, and his not finding great songwriters after the 90s corresponds to mass culture loosing out to smaller communities, so that we aren't all listening to the same songs and a particular sound doesn't define the times for everyone the way it did when you got whatever was on the radio or the shelves in the record store.
It goes without saying that you are in the deep minority, and when it comes to this subject there will always be a vocal minority. In large part, this is the rebuttal I would give. The best songwriters I can think of these days are from the Mountain Goats, Courtney Barnett, Gaslight Anthem, Okkervil River, Spoon etc etc etc (your list is different, thenewgreen's different yet again) -- I have no guarantee this guy has even heard their songs. However, even among my favorites I can recognize that history will remember none of them as all-time great songwriters. Also, there is obviously still a shared culture of pop music, and the only person he mentions who fits into that demographic that I can recall is Lady Gaga (which read sort of like a sop anyway). There is still a fair bit of non-rap, non-indie, non-niche music that defines our "culture" nowadays.Most of the names he lists wrote songs I find annoying at best.
I think his definition of a good song fails in being too universal, and his not finding great songwriters after the 90s corresponds to mass culture loosing out to smaller communities, so that we aren't all listening to the same songs and a particular sound doesn't define the times for everyone the way it did when you got whatever was on the radio or the shelves in the record store.