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America was meant to be a light on the hill — a place others looked to when they needed to find their own way forward.
If America has ever truly been that light, it came from its music. From the people who suffered the most and somehow still found something worth singing about.
From colonial taverns to protest marches in the Eastern Bloc, from gospel churches to a ghetto in Soweto, American rhythms helped people band together, speak truth, and refuse to quit. Our songs became the world's songs — not because we exported them, but because people who needed hope reached out and claimed them as their own.
American Song tells the stories of the artists who made the music and the people who were moved by it. One era at a time. One genre, one band, one song at a time. Music that started by campfires, in cotton fields, in churches and juke joints — and moved out into the world to become something larger than any one nation could contain.
This is American Song.
56 Episodes
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Get in touch! Five hundred million years ago, ( approximately 1977), something extraordinary happened on the floor of an ancient sea. Life — which had spent billions of years as little more than a few unremarkable blobs drifting in the dark — suddenly exploded into every possible form simultaneously. Claws. Fins. Shells. Eyes. Creatures of impossible elegance and alien strangeness, emerging from the murk and becoming something the world had never seen before. Scientists call it the Cambrian E...
Get in touch! Part 2 Happy New Year, Everybody! (Even if you're reading this in July....) Across the last five seasons of American Song, we've traveled the arc of American music and listened to some of the greatest songs ever recorded, by some of the best loved artists over a century of thrilling music that changed the world. But what about all those artists whose music is as good, if not better, than those "giants", who (but for the fickle finger of fate) never got the massive acclaim ...
Get in touch! Part 1 Happy New Year, Everybody! (Even if you're reading this in July....) Across the last five seasons of American Song, we've traveled the arc of American music and listened to some of the greatest songs ever recorded, by some of the best loved artists over a century of thrilling music that changed the world. But what about all those artists whose music is as good, if not better, than those "giants", who (but for the fickle finger of fate) never got the massive acclaim ...
Get in touch! Part two picks up in the clubs and dives where Bruce and the band are trying to outrun obscurity. We walk with them through the struggle to get the first records heard, the critics who saw the spark, and the brutal work of making Born to Run: months of second-guessing, endless mixes, and the very real possibility that it might all collapse under its own ambition. We hear about Jon Landau’s famous “I saw rock and roll future” review, the Bottom Line breakthrough, the U.K. trip th...
Get in touch! We start the episode in 2025, at Springsteen's show in Manchester, UK where he makes a landmark statement about America's "leadership" before we flash back to his formative years. A cramped house in Freehold. A father smoking in the dark kitchen. A kid staring at the radio like it’s a way out and a way in. In Part one, we meet Bruce not as a legend, but as a working-class American kid learning early what struggle, pride, and community look like. As we follow him into those early...
Get in touch! For over five decades, Jackson Browne has stood at the intersection of melody and message—crafting songs that speak not only to the heart, but also to the conscience. In an age of division and disinformation, his music feels like a lifeline to an older, more grounded sense of American democratic values—truth, empathy, accountability, and moral courage. This episode dives into Browne’s lifelong journey as both a master songwriter and a tireless activist, examining how his music h...
Get in touch! In this episode of American Song, we explore the life and legacy of Warren Zevon, one of America’s most fearless and darkly funny songwriters. Known for his biting wit and uncompromising honesty, Zevon built a career chronicling the messier sides of the human experience—addiction, regret, heartbreak, and mortality. From his early days as a struggling songwriter in Los Angeles to the unexpected success of “Werewolves of London,” Zevon never stopped grappling with the contradictio...
Get in touch! You could think of Randy Newman as a musical Mark Twain. His songs draw up from a range of curiously disconnected observations about life in this era’s America in some of the same ways that Twain’s pen spoke of the America he lived in. Twain’s Mississippi paddlewheels churned the dark waters of that rolling river mixing old and new, sacred and profane and In his songs, Newman is doing the same thing. He draws from American roots music, Tin Pan Alley, the blues, and orchest...
Get in touch! In these days, when people play fast and loose with truth for the purpose of personal gain at the expense of important things like rights, and even survival, I hope this episode, and the next one help us all regain a little sanity and peace. Personal Truth takes you on a powerful journey through the birth of the singer-songwriter era, spotlighting artists who didn't just sing about the world—but cracked themselves wide open to show us their own. Starting in the fertile gro...
Get in touch! By the late 1960’s, folk was beginning to feel “scarred and battered”, so what came next in this tradition was less political, and much more personal. The world was changing politically, socially, and culturally. Some of the new generation of singers and songwriters felt that staying relevant meant they had to move away from folk, towards more personal themes. The ‘70s was the “Me” decade. Instead of drawing from what was happening in the outside world, one group of song-writers...
Get in touch! It seems like every ten years or so, society experiences a great reset. The end of the ‘60s was like that. The idealism and teen-culture of the ‘60’s was ten years older and moving into adult life. Just like everything else in life that was questioned and re-invented, some musicians began pushing the boundaries of what rock music could become. Across the Atlantic, and as Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull put it, English rockers “were trying to be originators...
Get in touch! It seems like every ten years or so, society experiences a great reset. The end of the ‘60s was like that. The idealism and teen-culture of the ‘60’s was ten years older and moving into adult life. Just like everything else in life that was questioned and re-invented. Some musicians began pushing the boundaries of what rock music could become. Across the Atlantic, and as Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull put it, English rockers “were trying to be orig...
Get in touch! It seems like every ten years or so, society experiences a great reset. The end of the ‘60s was like that. The idealism and teen-culture of the ‘60’s was ten years older and moving into adult life. Just like everything else in life that was questioned and re-invented, some musicians began pushing the boundaries of what rock music could become. Across the Atlantic, and as Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull put it, English rockers "were tryin...
Get in touch! Punk may have been born in America, but it had many homes around the world. In every place it went, punk became part of the struggle for social change. Punk's roots are in the blues, music made for expressing struggles and refusing to accept things the way they are. With heritage like this, it should be no surprise that it moved people and shook things up in the powerful ways it did! Join us, as we see how punk expressed the real lives of the people making and list...
Get in touch! America's Punk movement was started on both coasts. Early proto-punks like the MC5 and the New York Dolls were followed by a number of other early iconic acts who played at several New York clubs, including CBGB's (Country Blue Grass and Blues), such as the The Ramones, the Talking Heads, Blondie, and Patti Smith. Meanwhile, LA and San Francisco had a decidedly more political movement propelled by bands like X, The Dead Kennedy's, and Black Flag. These bands ha...
Get in touch! When the dreams and promises you’ve placed your hopes in end up being a mirage, its only human to feel angry. In the mid 1970’s, a lot of teens and young adults found themselves in this camp. The nation’s shift toward a decidedly more cynical era could be heard in anti-war statements such as "War is not healthy for children and other living things" On the equal rights agenda, the demand for black civil rights encouraged a louder beating of the drum as seen in t...
Get in touch! This is the second half of a two-part episode In the late 1960's and early 1970's, Southern rock, a rebellious fusion of blues, rock and roll, and country music, emerged as the defiant cry from the heart of the South. Lynyrd Skynyrd's guitars wailed like banshees, their lyrics echoing the region's resistance to outside finger-pointing and strengthened a determination to preserve their own cultural identity. Never mind the warts and blemishes. The Allman Brothers Ban...
Get in touch! In the late 1960's and early 1970's, Southern rock, a rebellious fusion of blues, rock and roll, and country music, emerged as the defiant cry from the heart of the South. Lynyrd Skynyrd's guitars wailed like banshees, their lyrics echoing the region's resistance to outside fingerpointing and strengthened a determination to preserve their own cultural identity. Never mind the warts and blemishes. The Allman Brothers Band played with improvisations like soaring eagles...
Get in touch! This is part two of a two-part focus on Reggae music. The heart of Reggae music has always been politics and spirituality. In this two part episode, you'll learn about some of the musical and political forces in Jamaica's colorful past that all contributed to the music that we celebrate as reggae today. From Marcus Garvey, the modern-day prophet who had a vision for the black people living in the new world, and Ethiopia's Emperor Hailie Salassie, whose formal tit...
Get in touch! This is part one of a two-part focus on Reggae music. The heart of Reggae music has always been politics and spirituality. In this two part episode, you'll learn about some of the musical and political forces in Jamaica's colorful past that all contributed to the music that we celebrate as reggae today. From Marcus Garvey, the modern-day prophet who had a vision for the black people living in the new world, and Ethiopia's Emperor Hailie Salassie, whose form...
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