Greatest Songwriter of all time

Onhwy61-I cannot believe you are serious with that Dylan/tune argument but there's probably been enough Dylan discussion recently...the thread has deviated slightly we were given limited boundaries but on tunes how about Brian Wilson,Paddy McAloon (Prefab Sprout),Jimmy Webb, latter Fleetwood Mac (Nicks/C.McVie/Buckingham),Carole King etc..the list is nearly endless and on more obscure levels Nick Drake,Scott Walker,Todd Rundgren,Suzanne Vega,Rickie Lee Jones......so many......
Oh stuff it,,,Back to Dylan and tunes..Knockin'On Heaven's Door,Mr Tambourine Man,Every Grain Of Sand,Sugar Baby,Jokerman,One More Cup Of Coffee,Lay Lady Lay surely the greatest song ever written about a chicken,can't think of a single Dylan song without a tune.
In fact occassionally one tune would be so good he'd use on about 6 or 7 different songs.....

Bencampbell, I agree. Onhwy61, what about the music of Blonde on blonde and Highway 61. Is this not some of rocks greatest and original tunes? Yea, a bit taken from here and there, but still some of rocks greatest and original tunes. No?
Forever an Onhwy61 fan.

Oh ya..Hank of course I mean who hasn't done his songs? Cold cold heart has everybodies name on it.
Townsvanzant personal choice. Guy Clark is amazing the words are ...perfect?Three is not enough
Gram Parsons ,Leonard Cohen,Proffessor Longhair
I mean these guys wrote and could sing?Many more are out there ...these are in my head at the moment

Teams
-Fagan/becker
-Rogers/Hammerstein
-Lennon/McCartney
-Davies/Hodgson
-Waters/Gilmore
Solos
-Brian Wilson
-Sting
-Frampton
-Brothers Gibb
-Maurice White
-Christopher Cross
-Stevie Nicks
-Peter Cetera
-Harry Nilson
-Don Henley
-Robbie Kroger

Duke Ellington
Jelly Roll Morton
Cole Porter
Scott Joplin
Irving Berlin
George Gershwin
Richard Rogers
Jerome Kern

The following guys were good, but in no way come up to the level of the previous songwriters:

Lennon & McCartney
Bob Dylan
Woody Guthrie

You know, we should all try to get out of our own era and geography a little bit. Nearly all of us have only picked from the twentieth century and most, only from a 30-40 year period within the twentieth century. What about foreign songwriters? What about music from other cultures? What about those from other centuries? Where do Bach, Beethoven and Mozart stand in this list? Remember, although we consider their music classical, it was the popular music of their time and 300-400 years later, we still listen to it. The name of the thread is greatest songwriter of all time, not greatest American songwriter from the last 20, 30, 40 or 50 years who wrote a couple of songs that I like a lot.