JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In a country as sprawling and diverse as America, there are, of course, many different songs that reflect the country on a large scale. For some, songs in the American folk tradition strike a chord, like, This land is your land.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND")
WOODY GUTHRIE: (Singing) This land is your land, and this land is my land. From California to the New York island.
SUMMERS: And for others...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BORN IN THE U.S.A.")
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) Born in the USA, I was...
SUMMERS: Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The U.S.A." is both an anthem and indictment of America.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA BAMBA")
RITCHIE VALENS: (Singing in Spanish).
SUMMERS: Others, like the Spanish-language classic "La Bamba," reflect our multilingual and multiracial reality. And more recently, Childish Gambino's 2018 hit, "This Is America"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIS IS AMERICA")
CHILDISH GAMBINO: (Singing) This is America. Don't catch you slipping, now.
SUMMERS: ...Confronts issues like racism, violence and the constant distraction of mass media entertainment. And however you come down on these songs, they're part of a body of music that speaks to some essential aspect of the country - the complex and sometimes contradictory identity of America. As the U.S. celebrates its 250th birthday, we're going to talk about some songs that are or deserve to be a part of that canon. NPR Music's Stephen Thompson and Sheldon Pearce join us now. Good to talk to y'all.
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: Good to be here.
SHELDON PEARCE, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.
SUMMERS: OK, I want to get into your personal tastes a bit here. Sheldon, tell me a few of the songs that are on your list.
PEARCE: Yeah, I always think of Public Enemy's "Fight The Power"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FIGHT THE POWER")
PUBLIC ENEMY: (Rapping) Got to give us what we need. Hey. Our freedom of speech is freedom of death. We've got to fight the powers that be.
PEARCE: ...Which, you know, calls for radical resistance in a very distinctly American way. I also think of Dolly Parton's "9 to 5."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "9 TO 5")
DOLLY PARTON: (Singing) Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living. Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving. They just...
THOMPSON: For sure.
PEARCE: A song that is about the...
SUMMERS: It's a good one.
PEARCE: ...Hamster wheel of American work culture. But more recently, I've thought a lot about Kendrick Lamar's "Alright"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALRIGHT")
KENDRICK LAMAR: (Singing) Got us, then we gon' be all right. We gon' be all right.
PEARCE: ...Which, to me, blends hip-hop and jazz, two distinctly American forms, to talk about a specific kind of American perseverance within the Black community.
THOMPSON: Those are...
SUMMERS: Stephen, what about you?
THOMPSON: Those are great picks.
SUMMERS: I know, I love those.
THOMPSON: Yeah. I mean, the first song that jumped to my mind was Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FAST CAR")
TRACY CHAPMAN: (Singing) You got a fast car. I want a ticket to anywhere.
PEARCE: Oh, yeah.
SUMMERS: OK.
THOMPSON: ...Which was really one of the first songs to teach me something about America because, you know, I'm listening to that song that came out when I was 15 or 16 years old. I was living in a small town in central Wisconsin and hearing a song about a woman who works a full-time job and lives in a shelter.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FAST CAR")
CHAPMAN: (Singing) I know things will get better. You'll find work, and I'll get promoted, and we'll move out of the shelter.
THOMPSON: And I remember feeling my eyes opened by that song and kind of this really distinct, vivid journey that she was on. You can love your country and celebrate your country and still recognize that there are barriers to success for an enormous number of people in this country.
PEARCE: Yeah.
THOMPSON: And I appreciate songs that are looking at that struggle from a lot of different perspectives.
SUMMERS: I will throw one in here just because I can. I immediately thought of Green Day's "American Idiot"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AMERICAN IDIOT")
GREEN DAY: (Singing) Don't want to be an American idiot.
THOMPSON: Sure.
SUMMERS: ...Because I remember growing up hearing that in middle school or high school and just feeling like it really just honed in on that idea that you're talking about, that, like, you can love your country, you can be critical of your country and speak out about the things that you don't agree with.
I want to shift gears a little bit here and talk about protest songs, which, of course...
THOMPSON: Sure.
SUMMERS: ...Have this, like, rich and beautiful tradition in the U.S. They're usually quite direct, very intentional. There are two that come to mind for me immediately. The first is "Strange Fruit."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STRANGE FRUIT")
BILLIE HOLIDAY: (Singing) Southern trees bear a strange fruit. Blood on the leaves.
SUMMERS: And then the second is "Ohio."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OHIO")
CROSBY, STILLS, NASH AND YOUNG: (Singing) We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio.
SUMMERS: "Strange Fruit" being, of course, about the lynchings of Black people in America, "Ohio" about the shooting of student protesters at Kent State by the National Guard. I wanted to talk to you guys about these songs specifically but also the way you view protest songs more generally when we think about and talk about the American experience.
PEARCE: I think about all American songs as little status updates on how the American project is going, and so protest songs feel as important to that conversation as any. I don't think you can have any consideration of American history without a critique of that history...
SUMMERS: Yeah, yeah.
PEARCE: ...And also where we're going at any given point - to me, both of these songs represent the ability of artists to translate what is happening at the very top of American culture that we all resonate with and boiling it down into something that you can feel in your soul.
THOMPSON: Absolutely. And, you know, there's been, I think, a dialogue in this country for quite a few years now that kind of boils down to this kind of facile argument about, where are all the protest songs?
SUMMERS: Yeah.
THOMPSON: What happened to protest music during the Vietnam War? We had all these powerful songs, you know, kind of protesting what was going on, and you just don't see that today. And the fact of the matter is, those songs are still being made...
PEARCE: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...Every day. There is absolutely a critique to be made and a discussion to be had about whether and how those songs are amplified, whether it is possible to get those songs played on commercial radio stations, how difficult it might be for those songs to enter the monoculture. But just in 2026 alone, you have kind of classic heavy hitters, you know, household names like U2. Bruce Springsteen had a song called "Streets Of Minneapolis" earlier this year.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STREETS OF MINNEAPOLIS")
SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
THOMPSON: But also, you know, pop artists like MUNA.
PEARCE: Yeah.
THOMPSON: Carci Blanton...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...Has a whole bunch of protest songs out right now that are fresh and new and speak to this moment.
SUMMERS: I wonder, when you think about the canon of sort of songs that reflect America, are there any songs that you feel should be taken out, that maybe just aren't...
(LAUGHTER)
SUMMERS: ...Relevant anymore?
THOMPSON: I mean, it's tricky. I know I'm often a proponent of removing songs from the canon.
(LAUGHTER)
SUMMERS: Sure, sure.
THOMPSON: But at the same time, I don't want to yuck anybody's yum...
SUMMERS: Sure.
THOMPSON: ...Either. And if a song speaks to you, you know - whether it's, you know, the Gulf War era, Courtesy Of The Red, White, And Blue" by Toby Keith or "God Bless The USA" by Lee Greenwood...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOD BLESS THE USA")
LEE GREENWOOD: (Singing) And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free.
THOMPSON: ...That often get held up as projecting a certain amount of jingoism or whatever...
PEARCE: Yeah.
THOMPSON: Like, look, if those songs speak to your American experience, I'm not here to tell anybody that they should be removed from the canon. I think the American public creates the canon of songs about America.
PEARCE: I don't think of relevance as necessarily being key to these songs or how they earn their place in the canon, to your point. I think the people decide the canon as a whole. The people are diverse and vast and as a...
THOMPSON: Famously sometimes wrong.
PEARCE: Yeah, sometimes wrong. And so as a result, the canon should reflect them.
THOMPSON: Absolutely.
PEARCE: And I think the songs that end up in this canon, they must simply embody something about America as a place and as a people, even if that comes to feel like a time capsule that maybe we don't - it doesn't resonate with us in the same way but still speaks to what we know to be the American experience.
SUMMERS: That's NPR's Sheldon Pearce and Stephen Thompson. Thanks so much for joining us.
PEARCE: Thanks so much.
THOMPSON: Thank you, Juana.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE'S "STAR SPANGLED BANNER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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