Matt Dragstrem enters the top 20 of the MusicRow songwriter chart at No. 17

Matt Dragstrem has broken into the top 20 of the MusicRow Top Songwriter Chart, landing at No. 17 this week. Two cuts did the work: Country And She Knows It, recorded by Luke Bryan, and Water At A Wedding by Greylan James.

That combination is a fair description of how a Nashville writing career actually functions. One song is with an artist who has been selling out arenas for fifteen years and the other is with a newer name, and the chart counts them both by activity rather than by the size of the act, which is how a writer nobody outside the industry could pick out of a line-up ends up ranked next to household names.

The method matters here. The MusicRow chart is built from algorithms measuring song activity through radio airplay, digital download track sales and streaming, and it is the only chart of its kind: a weekly ranking of writers rather than of performers. Most of the people on it will never be interviewed about the songs that put them there.

At the top of it this week is Ella Langley, who holds No. 1 with five songs in play, Be Her, Choosin' Texas, I Can't Love You Anymore, Jaded and Loving Life Again. Dolly Parton is at No. 2 with three, 9 to 5, Jolene and Son Of Jolene, which is an unusual sight on a chart designed to measure current activity.

Chase McGill, Jordan Schmidt and Ernest fill out the top five at Nos. 3, 4 and 5, all of them writers whose names appear in liner notes far more often than in headlines.

Dragstrem's position is one place inside the boundary, which means it is the kind of week that can reverse as quickly as it arrived; the chart reshuffles every week on the strength of whatever is being played. Its own recent history shows both sides of that, with Ella Langley setting a record for weeks at No. 1 and John Byron climbing into the top five over the summer. The country trade press is the only place most of this is visible at all.