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About This Podcast
American Song is a podcast that traces the origins and development of American - and ultimately world-wide - forms of modern musical entertainment. Over time, we will trace every major genre from its origins through the current day.American Song looks at the development of our music through the lens of social, political, and economic changes that were occurring in each case, and we'll feature the most important musicians in each genre.Every episode is chock-full of the music we love and where possible, we include archival interviews so you can hear about, in the actual words and voices of these great musicians and singers, the motives and passions that drove their creativity.
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Recent Episodes
S6E2 The Greatest Music You've Never Heard: The Songs of Mark Davis (2)
Get in touch!Part 2Happy 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…
S6E1 The Greatest Music You've Never Heard: The Songs of Mark Davis (1)
Get in touch!Part 1Happy 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…
Bruce Springsteen and the American Reckoning: Part Four - Breakups, Ghosts, and Trump’s America
Get in touch!Part Four is where the story cuts close to the bone. Bruce lets the E Street Band go, stares down his own failures on Tunnel of Love, and writes The Ghost of Tom Joad for the people that…
Bruce Springsteen and the American Reckoning: Part Three: Darkness, The River, Nebraska, and Berlin ’88
Get in touch!Factories closing, marriages cracking, the glitter of the ’80s hiding a lot of hurt—Part 3 lives right in that gap between the American dream and the American day-to-day. Bruce digs into…
Bruce Springsteen and the American Reckoning: Part Five - Last Man Standing
Get in touch!Part Five starts with a funeral and a realization: when Bruce's friend and former Castile's band mate, George Theiss, dies, Bruce becomes the last man left from his teenage band. That…
S5E8 Bruce Springsteen and the American Reckoning: Part Two - Born to Run, Bomb Scares, and the Edge of Fame
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…
S5E7 Bruce Springsteen and the American Reckoning: Part One - Freehold to Cherry Hill
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…
S5E6 Lives in the Balance: Jackson Browne and the Fight for America’s Soul
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…
S5E5 Warren Zevon's Beautiful Wreckage
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…
S5E4 God’s Song and Other American Prayers: The Story of Randy Newman
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…
Bruce Cockburn/ The Singer-Songwriters Part Two: Truth to Power
Get in touch!In this haunting and deeply reflective episode, we explore the music of Bruce Cockburn—an artist who persistently challenges our indifference and urges us to reckon with the moral weight…
S5E2 Judi Collins & Joni Mitchell/ The Singer-Songwriters Part Two: Personal Truth
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…
S5E1 Bob Dylan/ The Singer-Songwriters: Part One
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,…
S4E6 Flower Power in Full Bloom - Progressive Rock - Part 3
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…
S4E5 Flower Power in Full Bloom - Progressive Rock - Part 2
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…
S4E4 Flower Power in Full Bloom: Progressive Rock - Part 1
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…
S4E3 Punk - The Shot Heard Round the World
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,…
S4E2 Coast to Coast Chaos: New York and LA Spark the American Punk Revolution (Part Two)
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…
S4E1 Coast to Coast Chaos: New York and LA Spark the American Punk Revolution! (Part One)
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…
S3E7 Southern Rock: Coming to Terms with a Complicated Past (Part Two)
Get in touch!This is the second half of a two-part episodeIn 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…
Frequently Asked Questions
American Song has published 55 episodes since January 2021, covering topics in Arts, Documentary.
American Song is currently highly active with new episodes monthly. Average episode length is 1h 4m.
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