American Tunes

At the dinner table here at Posh Jefito Manor the other night, talk turned — as it so often does — to music, with the subject eventually rambling toward an attempt to round up a list of quintessentially American songs by quintessentially American artists. Given that we probably only spent 20 minutes trying to hash this out, we didn't get very far, but we were able to come up with a number of songs and artists that feel right to me, so now I'm sharing them here in the hopes of opening up a broader discussion (and, hopefully, creating a more perfect playlist).

Now, as my parents and any of my teachers could tell you, I'm not really one for rules, but we did have some during this conversation, and I'm carrying them over here, so it's only fair for me to let you know. First off, unless there are some extraordinary circumstances involved, the artist/composer in question should be or have been an American citizen; second, the song in question should do or say something that somehow reflects our national history and/or character. That second thing is extremely vague, but I think it still works well for the purposes of our discussion here, because really, how do you define a nation's character with music? Sometimes, it really just comes down to vibes, and one person's "quintessentially American" will be another person's bemused shrug.

Anyway, here are some picks to get the conversation started. I look forward to your thoughts.

Stephen Foster, "Hard Times Come Again No More"
There's probably an argument to be made for someone else as the first great American songwriter, but in terms of stuff that remains resolutely part of the national lexicon, I think it's hard to go wrong with Stephen Foster. Like everyone else in the world, he was probably kind of an asshole in numerous respects, but his songs are absolutely quintessentially American — perhaps none more particularly so than this one, which can be read as either a hymn to persistent optimism or a childish insistence that things can always be great if we merely wish hard enough for it to be so.

It's that second interpretation that feels most apt in 2025. The last American president who was naïve enough to tell this country that economic cycles are a fact of life got drummed out of office for his honesty, and as a result, we've been huffing the increasingly thin fumes of trickle-down economics for nearly 50 years now. Along the way, while our saner politicians have paid lip service to the idea that we're all in this together, louder voices have insisted that we can blame all our problems on those who are, to quote Kendrick, not like us. The latter point of view has unfortunately been allowed to metastasize, and we're currently bearing witness to what feels like the deeply appalling end result.

Having said all that, it probably seems like I'd want to dismiss "Hard Times Come Again No More," but really, like a lot of Foster's work, it's a damn near flawless composition. I think deep down, we all really understand that the hopes expressed in the lyrics are doomed to be dashed every now and then — which is, perhaps paradoxically, what makes the song such a deathless classic. I mean, if hard times really did come again no more, then eventually, our good times would just be... times. And if you ask me, all of this is conveyed in Mavis Staples' cover, which originally appeared on a 2004 Stephen Foster tribute album which appears to have sadly fallen out of print.

Antonín Dvořák, "New World Symphony"
And here's that "extraordinary circumstances" loophole. Antonín Dvořák was a Czech composer, but his outsider's perspective, fused with a sincere enthusiasm for the potential of American ideals and an expansive approach to cultural development, made him the perfect person to lead the National Conservatory of Music in the late 1800s. It was during this period at Dvořák was commissioned to write a symphony by the New York Philharmonic, and the result was this towering masterpiece — a work that celebrates diversity and conveys the surging optimism he felt while surveying a country whose blood-soaked roots seemed capable of drawing on the strength required to truly reckon with its own fundamental flaws.

Snake eyes on that roll, obviously, but that doesn't take anything away from the lovely gift Dvořák bestowed upon us — a stirring reminder of our greatest potential, should we ever choose to finally fulfill it. (I wouldn't be me if I wrote all this without mentioning Largo, the wonderfully weird concept album assembled by Rick Chertoff and the Hooters in the late '90s, which is heavily inspired by this symphony. One of my all-time favorite records, and one which highlights the fact that anyone who thinks of "New World Symphony" as "only" classical music does themselves a disservice. From "Goin' Home" on down, this piece is one of the longest and most vibrant threads in the American musical canvas.)

Woody Guthrie, "Tear the Fascists Down"
You can't have a serious discussion about American music without making room for Woody Guthrie. A figure as quintessentially American as they come, Guthrie was a bundle of fascinating, fundamental contradictions, in life as well as in legacy — an artist whose blunt, unvarnished observations about our national character made him revered and reviled in roughly equal measure, and a man whose unrelenting insistence that we yield to the better angels of our nature was never close to enough to prevent him from tumbling through some of the darkest cracks in the dream he championed. (I remain quite proud of my role in assembling this multi-artist benefit compilation, timed to Woody's centennial.) The obvious choice for this post would have been "This Land Is Your Land," but given recent events, I feel like "Tear the Fascists Down" is the timelier pick.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Didn't It Rain?"
It's always tempting to present huge cultural shifts as if they happened suddenly without warning, but the roots are always there if you take the time to look for them. That's definitely the case with rock 'n' roll, which was growling at the margins for years before the (predominantly white) artists everyone associates with its early years came along. Sister Rosetta Tharpe is discussed more widely now than she was when Elvis was crowned king, but still — not nearly enough people understand how loudly her voice resonates through the halls of American music. This particular performance is one of her most transcendent; to watch the footage is to bear witness to an artist with a bedrock-deep understanding of who she is, what she's accomplished, and everything it's worth.

W.C. Handy, "St. Louis Blues"
W.C. Handy's story is pockmarked with all sorts of allegations regarding the actual origins of songs he claimed to have written, which I suppose underscores how ahead of his time he was — not only is he widely given credit for popularizing the blues, he was also a trailblazer in terms of ripping off his fellow artists. Those qualms aside, Handy's synonymous with the genre for a bunch of reasons, and here's one of them. "St. Louis Blues" is primordial stuff; rich soil that artists are still tilling to this day.

Louis Armstrong, "When the Saints Go Marching In"
I mean, come on.

Duke Ellington, "Black, Brown, and Beige"
Ellington is such a bedrock component of American music that it's essentially impossible to point to a single song that most deserves inclusion in this sort of list. I chose this ambitious symphonic work over any of his many well-known standards because it marks Ellington's attempt to encapsulate Black American history in song. He only performed it publicly in its entirety once, but that had nothing to do with its quality; if you want to hear everything that made Ellington special, all wrapped up into one four-movement work, it's all here — presented in a form that honors resiliency in the face of trauma and horror, and finds hope and beauty in the work necessary to find a way forward.

Aaron Copland, "Appalachian Spring"
Any composer progressive enough to be attacked by Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare deserves a spot in this conversation, and that goes at least double for Aaron Copland. Although it's true that a lot of Copland's best-loved work is guilty of the type of soft-focus mythologizing that depends on uncritical and often wholly misguided nostalgia, it's also true that America has mythologized itself pretty much from the goddamn get-go, and few have provided a more intelligent or empathetic soundtrack. All of which is to say that while I suspect many who lived through the Appalachian springs this song hankers for would have made some rather different choices when composing something that honestly reflected their feelings, there is absolutely something undeniably, quintessentially American in here. These gentle melodies turn a blind eye to harsh truths, and they pluck at the heartstrings in a way that's ominously familiar to any student of blind nationalistic fervor, but that's wholly American too — and we know enough about the composer to understand that he was trying to remind us of who we can be, not convince us we've always been who we wish we were.

Chuck Berry, "Maybelline"
Chuck Berry stood on the shoulders of Sister Rosetta Tharpe (among others), did a backflip off those shoulders, and duck-walked all the way to glory. (He might have stolen that move from Tharpe too — the sincerest form of flattery, etc.) None of this is a knock on Berry; after all, nothing comes from nowhere, and the whole point behind calling out every song in this post is highlighting how our national musical melting pot reflects the type of nation we've always claimed to be. And especially in the beginning, Berry really did sound thrillingly original, perhaps never more so than this 1955 single.

Miles Davis, "So What"
You can't have a serious conversation about American music without talking about jazz, and you can't talk about jazz without discussing Miles Davis. You could pick any number of spots in his catalog as pivotal, transformational, and/or defining moments; he reinvented jazz, at least in terms of public appreciation and consumption of it, more than once. With that being said, let's just throw a dart and let it land on the opening track from Kind of Blue, an early modal workout that still stands as a sterling example of how much expressive depth can be achieved with relatively few ingredients. According to legend, "So What" got its name courtesy of Davis' sparring partner Dennis Hopper, who shrugged off every punch he threw with the titular two-word rejoinder.

Willie Nelson, "Crazy"
The most popular version of this song will always be Patsy Cline's, but it was also part of the songwriting rush that really started Willie Nelson's incredible career, so the question of which version to include basically came down to a toss-up. In the end, I went with this one, if for no other reason than the indelible mark Nelson has left on American music throughout his remarkable, nearly seven-decade career. Although I'm generally allergic to most strains of country music, there's no arguing with Willie.

The Ronettes, "Be My Baby"
Yeah, Phil Spector was a violent psycho. And yeah, Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight" tainted this song by slathering its desperate yearning with gormless nostalgia. On the other hand, I'm not sure there's a song that more potently captures the waves of excitement billowing out of America's youth culture in the early '60s, or lays out a more prescient blueprint for so much of the music that followed. There's a whole world in these two minutes and 42 seconds.

Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A-Changin'"
A hackneyed choice, perhaps. But I can't come up with any real argument against including it here.

John Coltrane, "Pursuance"
This one is a bit of a cheat, because A Love Supreme isn't really meant to be broken into parts; it's an album-length expression of musical exaltation so distinctive and powerful that it inspired its own goddamn church. This is a post about American tunes, not American records, and yet I think I'd be awfully remiss if I didn't make room to acknowledge Coltrane's paradigm-shifting effect on American musical expression in general. Playing and/or listening to music is nothing if not an act of communion, an attempt — whether conscious or not — to connect with something beyond ourselves, and Supreme ranks among the purest, most fundamentally human examples of this searching, all conducted using some of the most deeply American musical vocabulary that exists.

The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"
Even Brian Wilson's simplest songs reveal an utterly unique approach to composition, but I can't talk about music theory intelligently enough to have a sensible discussion about that, so instead of picking one of those deathless (and, c'mon, rather corny) early hits, I'm choosing a song that makes his era-defining genius abundantly, inescapably clear. "Good Vibrations" is perfect from just about any angle you could choose — as an example of how advances in recording technology allowed artists to use the studio as an increasingly sophisticated instrument; as a thrillingly sophisticated piece of pop songwriting; as a reflection of the boundless potential imagined by Americans as they made their final westward surge toward ever more desperate dreams of endless abundance.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, "Tears of a Clown"
The people of my generation grew up with a Smokey Robinson whose late-career comeback coasted on corn syrup-coated ballads, but in his prime, he fused the furtive musical urgency of the rock era with the ruthless songwriting economy of Tin Pan Alley. The old story about Dylan calling Smokey America's greatest living poet seems like it's probably bullshit given the patina of truth through endless repetition; still, whoever came up with it had a point. Listen to "Tears of a Clown" and imagine Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg nodding in approval, if not outright envy.

Otis Redding, "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay"
Built on a crazy dream, successful against all odds, filled with tremendous potential, and finally fucked to death by corporate malfeasance and greed, Stax Records might be the quintessential American record label. Once you get me started on the Stax catalog, it can be hard to get me to stop; under slightly different circumstances, I might be inclined to fill this entire list of with songs from Stax albums. There are lots of solid arguments to be made for including others instead of this one, too — songs that spoke more overtly to the Black experience, or that made pointedly political statements. There's also an argument to be made as far as "Dock of the Bay" being so thoroughly subsumed into American pop culture that people don't even really think about it anymore; the fact that Michael Bolton wasn't beaten half to death after covering it in 1987 supports this thesis. On the other hand, "Dock of the Bay" is an absolutely perfect recording that has lost none of its appeal since it was released, and it's swimming in that Stax sound.

Aretha Franklin, "Spirit in the Dark"
Like a lot of the artists mentioned in this post, Aretha Franklin recorded so many stone classics that choosing one as "the" example of anything feels like an exercise in foolishness. I'm falling back on "Spirit in the Dark" because of the way it so beautifully illustrates the fundamental tension between gospel and rock during the latter's early years, and how artfully artists like Aretha had to toe the line between the sacred and the (perceived to be) profane. That tension — itself deeply American — fueled so much of what followed that it's hard to hear it now unless you're leaning in to listen.

Paul Simon, "American Tune"
Released in 1973, "American Tune" captures a country still reeling from the violent upheaval of the '60s, and still only dimly aware of the trust-shattering slew of political scandals to follow. In spite of the fact that Simon wrote it in response to a specific point in time, his observations were so timeless that the song has felt achingly current for five decades and counting. In some ways, this is not such a good thing; in others, it remains a comfort to be reminded that our hope for a better, truer America has remained resolute in the face of persistent fuckery. (There are obviously other Simon songs a person could pick for something like this, and reams could be written about how Simon and Garfunkel altered pop culture in general by breaking with the tradition of Anglicizing Jewish surnames in show business. But we have other business to attend to here.)

Herbie Hancock, "Chameleon"
Anything, no matter how inventive it might be, can eventually become formula. This goes double for anything that's commercially successful, and jazz fusion is a perfect case in point. Early on, you had some of jazz's most distinctive voices breaking genre boundaries in genuinely exciting ways — but the more popular those experiments grew, the less experimental the music became. At its sales zenith, fusion became a four-letter word, spawning a slew of paint-by-numbers "jazz" records whose only real goal was to serve as musical wallpaper designed to be heard while sipping wine coolers. In some respects, it's kind of amazing that a musical style that started out with this much fire in its belly ended up giving us Kenny G; in others, however, it's 100 percent American. Fireworks, apple pie, and cashing in by going for the lowest common denominator: Fuck yeah!

Randy Newman, "Rednecks"
Here's an artist whose entire goddamn catalog is quintessentially American — generally in ways that tend to make our less evolved fellow citizens uncomfortable. Compositionally, Newman's bag of tricks is drenched in Americana; lyrically, he stands as a consistently hilarious example of just how little a person needs to do in order to scandalize and enrage the foolish. ("Short People," anyone?)

Some of Newman's targets are so cartoonishly awful that most listeners won't feel targeted, but quite often, he takes aim at facets of American life in ways that make it clear none of us are innocent. I was initially inclined to choose "Sail Away" for this post, because it tackles America's original sin with sharp-witted humor and grace; after thinking about it for a while, however, I had to go with "Rednecks," which uses provocatively (but appropriately) crude language to eviscerate stereotypically Southern prejudices before it finally spins around to make it clear that everyone who's been laughing at those racist rednecks is also the butt of the joke, and it's never really been funny at all.

Bruce Springsteen, "Racing in the Street"
From a distance, the great dichotomy of Springsteen's music is the split between his rafter-rattlingly redemptive E Street Band stuff and the more pensive, occasionally acoustic solo stuff. Look closer, though, and I think it's really between the songs that celebrate the power of a dream and the songs that talk about what happens when dreaming isn't enough. In this way, "Racing in the Street" can be viewed as the flip side to "Born to Run": Dreamers hit the road in the latter, and in the former, the road hits back.

"Racing" was recorded after Bruce earned his big breakthrough, and just as would later happen after Born in the U.S.A., that flush of success turned out to be more and also less than he'd hoped; the resulting reflective mood produced songs that were more nuanced and mature than their predecessors, but also a little harder to love — at least for anyone hoping for a sequel to Run. Still, there's a lot to be said for this flavor of world-weary honesty.

Van Halen, "Jump"
I have, at multiple jobs, declared 5pm on Friday to be "Van Halen O'Clock," a tradition that tall friend of Jefitoblog Michael Parr has carried into his current gig and all of you are welcome to copy as well. Lots of songs celebrate the weekend, but I'm not sure any act has ever embodied the musical spirit of kicking the work week in the nuts quite as spectacularly as Van Halen, and although I will probably always be a Hagar guy in spirit, it's hard to argue with "Jump" as the purest expression of that ideal.

Prince, "Sign O' the Times"
Prince's willfully provocative lyrics made him an easy target for the so-called moral majority, but he was a lot more than a horny, purple-clad little gremlin who was obsessed with fucking. In fact, as often as not, the protagonists in his songs were focused on fucking because the world already seemed like it was fucked. A person could point to any number of Prince cuts that captured and/or spoke to their moment; with very little time spent thinking about it, I'm picking this track, which highlights the hypocrisy of America's budgetary priorities while fretting over the threat of nuclear apocalypse during the waning days of the Cold War.

Tracy Chapman, "Fast Car"
Throughout the mid-to-late '80s, you couldn't take a piss without some well-meaning rock star slathering on the sepia and reminding you of some damn societal ill. The destruction of the environment? The threat of nuclear war? Racism? Poverty? Child abuse? Not necessarily the stuff of hit pop songs, but the charts begged to differ, at least for a little while. Some of those songs have aged better than others; in a lot of cases, the production ended up doing the material few long-term favors. This track is a notable exception — a recording whose musical trappings are as straightforward and unadorned as its lyrical sentiments. The fact that those sentiments remain widely relatable several decades later was underscored when Luke Combs' cover gave the song an unexpected second life on the country charts 35 years later.

Public Enemy, "Fight the Power"
To complacent crackers in the suburbs, "Fight the Power" sounded like a pissed-off cacophony in 1989 — but like I said in this space not so long ago, the future often sounds like nonsense the first time you hear it. Written for Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, "Fight the Power" was Chuck D's attempt to write an anthem for a time that needed one, and in retrospect, it succeeded brilliantly. A lot of attention at the time was focused on his line about Elvis not meaning shit to him (gasp!), but that's just a single moment from a song that packs in a college course's worth of social commentary against the backdrop of an incredibly (and artfully) dense collage of sampled sound. Although PE is still with us, in a lot of respects, the group burned bright and faded away fast; "Fight the Power" stands as a still-impactful reminder of the fact that at their peak, they saw and commented on America with an intelligence and fury few have ever matched.

Rage Against the Machine, "Killing in the Name"
There are thousands of words to written about how "Killing in the Name" ticks a lot of the sonic boxes that people associate with the music of the '90s, but that isn't why it's here. It's here because America was founded on a powder-wigged cry of "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me," and we've kept on throwing that tantrum for nearly 250 years. It's a sentiment that's often been used for the greater good, but these days, it feels like you're most likely to hear it in the wheezing gasps of dying measles patients and/or their mouth-breathing kin. Anyway, this song still rocks.

Beastie Boys, "Sure Shot"
The history of American music is rife with examples of white artists lifting from Black artists and achieving greater mainstream commercial success. The Beastie Boys are definitely part of that story, although they belong solidly in the subset of acts with a true, soul-deep connection to the music. In fact — and this is why I'm including them here — they were among the first widely popular hip-hop acts to use their music as a means of grappling with the genre's misogynistic tendencies, as well as their own complicity:

"I want to say a little something that's long overdue / The disrespect to women has got to be through / To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends / I want to offer my love and respect to the end"

Is it the most brilliant verse in hip-hop history? Well, no. But it may be among the most impactful, kicking a dent in the lyrical boundaries of the era's mainstream rap hits while signaling a fundamental shift in the path ahead for the Beasties. Man, it would have been fun to watch them grow old together.

Kendrick Lamar, "Ronald Reagan Era (His Evils)"
A little more than 20 years ago, I sat across the table from a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, (somewhat drunkenly) outlining the many ways in which Ronald Reagan paid lip service to civil service while aggressively undermining social justice-oriented agencies by appointing people dedicated to the opposite of the mission. "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," said my host. His tune has changed a great deal since then, and he isn't alone; although we have a lot of current fears and worries imposed by continued inexplicable Republican leadership, it's been heartening to witness this country's slow turn against the lie that Reagan was worth a good goddamn as a United States president or human being in general. Kendrick Lamar might very well be the greatest mainstream rapper of his generation, and while a lot of his songs are very personally focused, he's more than capable of commenting on the state and/or history of his country when moved to do so. Here's proof.

George Gershwin, "Rhapsody in Blue"
More than any other — for me, anyway — this song is America.

How about you? What did I miss?