Naomi Fry: This is Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Nomi Fry. 
Vinson Cunningham: I'm Vinson Cunningham. 
Alex Schwartz: And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Well, happy birthday to us. 250 years ago, the United States of America was born. 
Naomi Fry: Happy birthday, America.
Alex Schwartz: And nothing bad ever happened after that. To mark this occasion, we wanted to do something that embraces the whole range of feelings that might come up around this rather significant milestone for our country. And we rarely get to do episodes about music, so today we're doing both.
We've been asking you listeners to send in voicemails telling us about the song that expresses your feelings about America right now. Vinson, this was your idea originally. Sure. Will you just tell us a little bit about it? 
Vinson Cunningham: Well, you know, I, I've been thinking a lot about history, obviously, you know, these a- anniversaries, uh, bring this to the forefront of our mind, and one question that I have for myself always is what kind of history is art?
What kind of, um, reporting from the front lines of experience does art sort of deliver to us? And it seems to me that music especially is a history of the emotions. It's like the very front lines of not only what happened and how it happened and rival interpretations of events, crises, celebrations, et cetera, but how they strike the hearts of people who lived through them.
Mm-hmm. 
And the amazing thing about it is that it then becomes a continual re-experience, reenactment for those of us who glom onto these pieces of art. To listen to a song that you've been listening to for 30 years and then also contemplate how that song interacts with your feeling about the country you've lived in all your life, I think is a really profound thing, and to share that with someone else is the most generous thing you could ever possibly do.
So I would like to be the recipient of that grace, and I would like also to share 
Naomi Fry: it. Oof. Wow. I like that. I just love that. I think, Vinson, you hit the nail on the head when you said in, in, in our hearts, in the heart, right? Mm-hmm. Because there is something about sharing a song that means a lot to you.
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: I think there is something very kind of uniquely heartfelt a- about it. Sure, 
Vinson Cunningham: yeah. 
Naomi Fry: And, uh- 
Vinson Cunningham: You can't share a song ironically. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: It's very hard to do. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah, it's hard to do. Yeah. I mean, even if you share a song ironically, clearly it's moving something in you, you know? 
Vinson Cunningham: You're at least being like, "This is what I find funny."
Naomi Fry: Yes. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: And so yeah, I'm, I'm just really looking forward to hearing these voicemails. 
Alex Schwartz: Me too, and that's what we're doing today. We're gonna listen to your song picks, and we are also gonna share some of our own. We, the hosts, don't know what the other hosts have chosen, so I'm very curious. Amazing.
Together we're creating a playlist that expresses our collective feelings about America, its past, its present, and, our hopes for its future. Are you guys ready? 
Naomi Fry: Are we ever. 
Alex Schwartz: Let’s get into it! That's today on Critics at Large, an American playlist
________________


So if you're familiar with I Need a Critic, this is gonna work similarly. We each have a batch of voicemails from listeners, and the three of us have each picked a song of our own to share. So I think what we're gonna do is we're gonna start out hearing from the listeners, and then we will get to our picks later on.
Who wants to go first? 
Naomi Fry: I, I can go first. 
Alex Schwartz: Cue it up. 
Naomi Fry: I can go first. Okay, so the first voicemail we're gonna play is from a listener named CJ. 
Hi, my name is CJ. I'm from Illinois, and the song I'd like to nominate for the America playlist is Kids in America by Kim Wilde. 
CLIP: Kids in America by Kim Wilde
This one feels like a given, but it was the first one that I thought of just 'cause I think it captures, like, this eternal youthful optimism that I think all Americans have. You know, the song opens talking about, like, looking outside dirty windows, and it's, a bunch of the lyrics are about how difficult and bad life is and how, like, un-ideal the circumstances are.[a][b][c][d]
But, like, that's just, like, a very American trait, trying to have fun despite it all.
Naomi Fry: Whoa. Whoa. I love this. 
Alex Schwartz: So here's the funny thing. First of all, Kids in America has a super strong association for me with Clueless, the 1995- Right ... Emmy Heckering movie. Yeah. The one on the Clueless soundtrack was a cover, I think, by The Muffs. Mm-hmm. Like, this is the feeling of that movie. I think it's the opening song in the movie, and when I saw that as a kid in America myself, I was like, "Here it is.
These are my people." The other thing that I love about this choice is that, um, Kim Wilde is not American. She's English. 
Naomi Fry: I know. She, she's English. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Yeah, so I was thinking a lot about that when I was thinking about what my own choice would be, what about... Because of course, America is a concept that the entire world enjoys reflecting on- Mm-hmm Yeah
and making music about. And I like that, too, trying to capture the feeling of America when you're not from America. It reminds me of David Bowie, um- Yeah ... y- you know? It's 
Naomi Fry: around the same time. Yeah. Young Amer- uh, Young Americans- 
Alex Schwartz: Young Americans, exactly ... 
Naomi Fry: from Absolute Beginners. Yeah. You 
Alex Schwartz: know, outside, a new day's dawning.
Outside, 
Naomi Fry: suburbia's sprawling everywhere. 
Alex Schwartz: Like, okay, good, bad? Yeah. I don't know. We're doing it. 
Naomi Fry: Who can, who can tell? But you know what? It sounds really exciting. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. All right. We are just three kids in America, and we are moving on. Vinson? 
Vinson Cunningham: Absolutely. Okay, I got somebody, and I'm really excited about this.
Here is Isabella. 
Hi, critics. My name is Isabella, and the song I'm suggesting for the 4th of July playlist is Miss America by David Byrne. Um, the song was written from the imagined perspective of, uh, an immigrant in the 1990s, uh, but I think that the themes apply just as well today. Uh, it's really about loving a place that doesn't love you back.
CLIP: Miss America - David Byrne
Speaker 54: You'd think that would make for a very sad song, but listening to how upbeat and joyous the melody is, uh, David Byrne clearly finds a lot of hope in the idea that America is a place you could belong one day. Love the show, and I hope you all have a happy 4th of July. 
Vinson Cunningham: Well, first of all, I love the choice. It's almost got, like, a Paul Simon, um, South African drum thing going on under it, the sort of party that's happening in the, in, especially in the rhythm section of that song, and the sort of biting humor but also sorrow of the lyrics. It's just a, a, that mix is such a great way to think of, like, just how we experience the places that we, the places and people that we want but cannot totally have, you know?
Naomi Fry: You know, Vinson, what you said is so true, I think, and I can speak to this personally. As an immigrant, I still, I will never not be an immigrant, a person who wasn't born here, who came here from outside and was kind of struck dumb by America and was incredibly seduced by it, but also, you know, I've, I've also seen its wicked ways.
Uh- ... but, but it, it'll never erase, like, my love for this place. 
Alex Schwartz: Okay. I'm giving us Maya. Take it away, Maya. 
Hi, critics. This is Maya in New York City. The song that I picked is All-American Bitch by Olivia Rodrigo. I am an all-American bitch.
I feel like Olivia Rodrigo just really captures the sense of angst and repression of anger that I think is expected of women. 
CLIP: All-American Bitch by Olivia Rodrigo
I also love that the song starts off sounding very bubbly with just an acoustic guitar backing Olivia's voice, and then transcends into a more pop punk or bit of a riot grrrl sound
And then in the song, Olivia proceeds to scream her head off
To me, that transition feels reflective of the urge I have to end all of my work emails with an exclamation point, even if I'm boiling with rage inside at whatever I'm being confronted with. On a personal note as well, hearing this song written by an Asian American woman that so captures the angst and complex feelings I have often felt as an Asian American myself feels very validating.
And I love that at this particular time, when the question of who belongs in this country feels very exclusionary and very dark, the perspective that a young Asian American woman brings can be considered all American, and, like, it belongs here, too. Thanks so much, critics. I love the show. I hope it's okay that I said bitch.
Naomi Fry: It's more than okay, Maya. 
Alex Schwartz: We welcome it. 
Vinson Cunningham: You wouldn't be the first. 
Naomi Fry: I mean, I think in general it's like, it's, it's a kind of... This belongs to the genre of kind of like- Post-2000, like pop feminism that ha- has kind of like learned the lessons of Riot Grrrl and '90s feminism, um, you know, whether it's like the America Ferrera speech in, in Barbie where it's like, "Women are supposed to be-" The bundle of 
Alex Schwartz: contradictions 
Naomi Fry: speech, yeah.
Yeah. It's like we- Everyone is everything ... we have to be ev- Yeah, we have- we always have to stand up straight, we always have to be grateful, but we also have to be a boss, and we have to be sexy, but also, you know, all of that. Mm-hmm. Or like the, the kind of the cool girl speech from like Gone Girl, you know?
Uh, all of these like how do women nowadays in America, having learned kind of, supposedly learned the lessons of feminism, but are still being held to these- Mm-hmm ... like impossible standards. And I think I find like the Olivia Rodrigo version more convincing and palatable than, than the others, I feel like.
Yeah. I don't know, I feel like I somehow I like believe her, you know? Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: And this thing, this idea of the w- the figure of the woman having to, on some level, embody the ideals of America with more integrity and ardency than even men have to, is like really deeply embodied in Amer- in the American past.
Think of the, the rhetoric at least of the Second World War when women, uh, you know, are back. You know, the men are out fighting and women, you know, work and, and create the, the war machine with their literal hands and sort of supercharge the economy that their husbands come back to and enjoy. Um, I always think about the letter of Abigail Adams to John Adams when, you know, he's off in Pennsylvania, they're working on the Const- all these things.
Um, and she implores him to, um, remember the ladies- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ... uh, in all, in all of, in all of the, the, these, this new legal regime, um, be kinder to us than your ancestors were, it goes, or something like that. Um, that, this idea of having to embody so much and receive so little of the spoils is like, I think, an undersung part of the even just sort of mythological character of, of the nation. 
Naomi Fry: 100%. 
Vinson Cunningham: All right. Who's next? 
Naomi Fry: There's so many really good ones here. Should we just let them roll for a little bit?
Hello critics. Uh, I just wanted to make sure Django Jane by Janelle Monae was part of your playlist about America. 
It came out in 2018. I just remember it being such, like, a source of, like, strength, um, and pride for me, like, in a time where it felt like so much in the country was changing so rapidly. Like, so many of our, our norms and progress were being lost.
CLIP: Django Jane
This song really, it, it reminds us what is truly remarkable about America and Americans, which is their tenacity, bravery, their ability to keep fighting even when they get pushback. It makes me wanna cry, but also join a protest, and it's just got a really sick beat. 
Hello critics, my name is Matt Peel. I am a professor of US history in Texas, and so I've been thinking a lot about the 250th coming up, um, as you have as well.
And I'm recording this message to say that the song that is most on my mind is a song that has actually been on my mind for almost a quarter of a century. Um, I have something of a legacy with this song. I had just started my first year of graduate school as a master's student studying US history when 9/11 happened, and I just have this distinct memory of being at a ceremony, uh, commemorating what had happened in New York and Pennsylvania, and going back to my little cubicle office and putting on my headphones and listening to Billy Bragg's Help Save the Youth of America from 1986.
CLIP: Billy Bragg's Help Save the Youth of America
And those lines towards the end, "The fate of the great United States is entwined in the fate of us all."
And the cities of Europe have burned before, and they may yet burn again. And if you do, I hope you understand that Washington will burn with them. I got chills then. I get chills now. Recently, Help Save the Youth of America has just been coming back to me more and more strongly for this line, "You can fight for democracy at home and not in some foreign land."
And what he's saying in the song is he is trying to essentially wake up the youth of America, who have been distracted into thinking that nothing that happens in the rest of the world touches them or affects them, and, uh, a sort of sense of obliviousness to the course of history. Thanks very much, love the show.
Hi, critics. This is Ariel calling from Philadelphia. I wanna submit the song Almost Cut My Hair by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
        CLIP: Almost Cut My Hair by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
I almost cut my hair It is about somebody who, who's thinking about cutting their long hair, decides they're not going to because they feel like they owe it to someone to let their freak flag fly. I feel like-
We're always talking about owing it to our ancestors, owing it to the people who are fighting for our freedoms. To me, letting yourself be the freak that you are is a show of reverence to those freedoms. It's a show of solidarity to the people who can't live their full freakish ways out loud right now.
I think this is a country full of freaks. Philadelphia's full of freaks. I'm from Georgia. Georgia is brimming with weirdos. And, uh, they inspire me every day. So hope you enjoy. 
Vinson Cunningham: I love David Crosby. 
Alex Schwartz: We love that man. It's Cross, 
Vinson Cunningham: RIP. Um, he's, he's the coolest. I mean, what a mustache. Great lyricist. 
Alex Schwartz: All we need to say is if you don't know what David Crosby looks like, Google him and then listen to Almost Cut My Hair, and try to imagine an alternate reality where David Crosby had cut his hair.
That's not a world we wanna live in, okay? 
Vinson Cunningham: Absolutely not. It was never gonna happen. Um- Absolutely not ... shouts to the Cros, yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: Okay, we've arrived at a rather exciting moment. It's time for you, Nomi, to share your pick. 
Naomi Fry: Oh, my goodness. 
Alex Schwartz: I'm on tenterhooks. 
Naomi Fry: You're on tenterhooks? Okay. 
Alex Schwartz: Absolutely. 
Naomi Fry: Well, you know, it, I, I, I could have, I could have picked many a song, obviously.
You know, we were texting about this. You were like, "Who's gonna do, like, Miley Cyrus' Party in the USA?" Which is a song I, I really like. I was like, "Should I, like, pick up the gauntlet? I don't know." In the end, I, um, went with a song that is near and dear to my heart. Um, I picked, uh, Tom Petty's Free Fallin'. 
Alex Schwartz: Ooh.
Petty's on the list 
CLIP: Tom Petty's Free Fallin'
Naomi Fry: It's about a girl who is this kind of All-American sweetheart, perhaps the kind of All-American sweetheart that Olivia Rodrigo is kind of, like, vocalizing through in, in the song that we just heard. But there's a wrinkle in this, right?
The, the song is sung from the perspective of a boy who has perhaps broken this girl's heart, but There's a wrinkle in this. Not all is well. and there's that refrain 
CLIP: Tom Petty's Free Fallin'
And I was thinking about the free, free falling. I'm free. Like, what is more American? And yet, I'm free- Mm-hmm ... pause, free falling. Yeah. You know? Like- Yeah ... what comes after that freedom? Can that freedom allow us to ascend, or will it end up just kind of like, you know, l- letting us kind of go downhill maybe? Um, it's like is there kind of like a prelapsarian thing happening here? The song came out in late 1989, and in 1990 I came to America for a year. I was in ninth grade. I was very enchanted with it. I think it gave me a very specific feeling about the promise of America and perhaps that dashed promise.
Alex Schwartz: And also, it's exciting to sing this song always. Whenever it comes on- The 
Naomi Fry: best song, also melodically it's just the best. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, it's a great song. Tom Petty also never cut his hair, both in the literal sense- ... and in the spiritual sense. Yeah. Another freak letting his flag fly. 
Naomi Fry: I mean, he must have trimmed it.
Alex Schwartz: Mm. Okay, so maybe cut, maybe he cut his hair a little bit. But, you know. It 
Naomi Fry: was kind of that bowl cut- Yeah, yeah ... that longish bowl cut. Yeah. Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: You could say sometimes it flowed. 
Vinson Cunningham: A freak who nonetheless succumbed to, like, the most American thing, which is like- 
Naomi Fry: The super group? 
Vinson Cunningham: The super group. That, yes, but also never ever really getting over high school.
Naomi Fry: Oh, yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: Mm. So, like, the, the imagery, like the bad boy, the good b- Yes ... that so much of our- 
Naomi Fry: Ah, 
Vinson Cunningham: yes ... the, the tropes that we employ- Yes, yes ... especially in pop music, but all over the place, John Hughes m- movies, et cetera, et cetera- Absolutely ... has to do with the situation of high school and how it describes the kind of social hierarchy of the nation.
Naomi Fry: Yes. 
Vinson Cunningham: He'd, like, we, we never let it go, and To- and Petty uses it to, to all these different ends. Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: So true. Okay. I have Andrea, and I think Andrea's song is going to strike a chord of nostalgia with many people. 
Naomi Fry: Uh-oh. I mean, or oh, yes. 
Hi, critics. This is Andrea. I would like to suggest the song America by Simon and Garfunkel, which I realize is a very literal answer to your songs about America.
But I also think it's just a really, really great song. It has this beautiful imagery of, um, a couple on a road trip. "
CLIP: America - Simon and Garfunkel
There's a whole bunch of different, um, American towns that are kind of name-checked and states that are discussed, um, where this couple is on a bus, and they're people-watching, and they're making fun of people behind their backs, and [e][f][g][h][i]they're smoking cigarettes, and they're eating something called a Mrs.
Wagner's pie. And it's such a beautiful and tender song, and then of course it, like, billows out to the, the line, "They've all come to look for America." 
CLIP: America - Simon and Garfunkel
This idea that he and Kathy, his girlfriend, his first wife I believe, [j][k]are on this trip and they're gonna find America, but that also everybody around them is searching for something as well. And I feel like that's a very American story. So I suspect I am not the only person who has suggested this very obvious song for your playlist, but it's a really good one.
Alex Schwartz: I mean, this is one of those songs where I know where I was when I first heard it. I was in Katie Levy's apartment, we were probably 13-
and her mom said, "Can you believe I had my first kiss to this song?" Like, girls- Oh, wow. Oh, wow ... you can't do better than that in life. And so that is where- You're like, " Mrs. Levy."  It's, it, that gave me a sense, which I think, um, is something I associate with this song, that very specific story that I associate with it.
This is a song that strikes a kind of young, yearning heart afresh in each generation. This is an enduring song for many reasons, but it captures that sense of nostalgic wandering and searching. Mm-hmm. it's like- Yeah ... the same feeling to me that comes up in Fast Car, the Tracy Chapman song- Yeah ... which is another great song about a certain kind of American feeling of escape, wandering, getting free, and hoping that the highway will take you somewhere.
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: And it's also, the, the song came out in '68, and that is the year that canonically everything went wrong. I mean- No, yeah, I figure ... it's, it's one of the years. Yeah. But, but you know. It's like Amer- you know, the, the kind of like, um, transition from the Summer of Love into like the, you know, the Chicago Democratic Convention, Bobby Kennedy.
It, it's like, you know, the part where he sings, "Kathy, I'm lost. I said though I knew she was sleeping. I'm empty and aching and I don't know why." And it's like this kind of like searching, the searching generation like- Totally ... what are we gonna find? Yeah. Maybe we'll find something bad. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, and then, I mean, in one of the great juxtapositions of all time, at that very moving lyric then goes to counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, like- Mm-hmm
oh, he's in hell. Yeah. I get it. I, well, it's 
Vinson Cunningham: funny- I got it. ... I came to Simon & Garfunkel, it, it seems to me, too late. I was, I was already a teenager, but it was still too late. Um, they're one of my favorite outfits. I, I used to, so I, in college, I always took the bus to school from New York, and on the bus, 'cause I was just getting introduced to this...
You know, when you think of what does America sound like, Simon & Garfunkel and the larger category of singer-songwriter, largely guitar-based- Fingerpicking and harmony singing is one of the, you know... And, and this was my introduction to that. Um, and now it's so funny. I thought of bus travel then as an announcement of the fact that I didn't have any money, which I didn't, but now I'm so nostalgic for bus travel.
And just, like, how many different kinds of people. What Andrea said about, like, the billowing into all come, it's so true, and true to Paul Simon's genius. You know, the first time they all come, blah, blah, blah, it's, they're singing in unison, and the second time, you know, Garfunkel just goes into that angelic high harmony, you know?
And it's like even the harmony singing is about a kind of plural living. 
CLIP: America - Simon and Garfunkel
Alex Schwartz: We'll be right back with more of The Critics at Large American Playlist after the break
:: MIDROLL 1:: 
Voicemail: Hi critics. When I was thinking of American music, I thought of the folk movement of the mid-20th century[l][m]. Um, Woody Guthrie, um, and his guitar. This Machine Kills Fascists. This Land is Your Land. If I Had a Hammer. But the song that has always meant the most to me from that era is actually a cover. It's Joan Baez on an album.
It's a live recording of her at a concert where she ends it by asking the crowd to sing along with her to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which I think is the great American song. 
CLIP: The Battle Hymn of the Republic - Joan Baez
John Steinbeck took the title of what you could call the great American novel, The Grapes of Wrath, from The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Um, it's a song that was written during the Civil War by abolitionists, um, explicitly as a pro-Union song. The lyric that has always meant the most to me is, "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free."
CLIP: The Battle Hymn of the Republic - Joan Baez
Um, it is a very righteous song. Um, it is a very, like, clear-eyed song about what it wants, and I think the lyrics and that lyric in particular have always just spoken to me as what I love about America and what I wish America could always be. 
Vinson Cunningham: First of all, Kevin, that was a great voicemail. There are many ways to think of, okay, what is a protest song, and specifically, what is this period that he talks about in the, the, the middle of last century? It's so interesting just with Joan Baez to talk about the figure of the folk singer. Because there's this interesting, the, these dueling impulses, it seems to me, in maybe what we might call American countercultural thinking, which is there's a lot in this country that you cannot trust.  There's a lot, especially in the arena of the political, but also in the arena of commerce, on and on, advertising, messaging, um, you can't trust it. But at the same time, we, we tend to invest a lot of energy and trust in this figure of this sort of, um, authenticity- cool, integrity. The figure who sort of unadorned, naked but for their guitar, and of course, as you hear in that recording, the community around the singer, um, can start to, I don't know, with this really naive and beautiful idea that, okay, if, if, if I can present to you a figure of, um, sufficient integrity, intention, that we can countervail all those big, unnamed, untrustable forces.
It's also just worth saying how these lyrics, "The Battle Hymn of the, the Republic," but also this, the tune, it comes first from the song, um, "John Brown's Body" Mm-hmm. 
Another famous Civil War song, and it's just really interesting to think about how songs almost act like pamphlets in early America.  It's not unlike something like The Federalist Papers or, um, Common Sense. These songs, both "John Brown's Body" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" get, you know, quoted in speeches and enlisted by various movements all down history. So, and then for somebody to sing it, not unlike the way that, you know, Lincoln reinscribed the Declaration of Independence when he quotes it at Gettysburg.
Joan Baez takes this thing, this artifact of the Civil War, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and says, "No, no, no, it still has everything to do with this." There's this, like, almost, like, sermonic impulse. Yeah. And so- Yeah ... I think protest music is about that, too, not just a moment, but, um, it, like- Transmission
gives form to- Mm-hmm ... a set of situations that might also reoccur. It's like this, it's this totem in the present, but also a lasso out to the future. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I love the way some of these submissions expand the idea of what a protest song can be. Let's just play a few in a row 
Hi critics. My name is Brandy from San Jose, California.
You guys asked for songs for the 250th playlist of the United States, and I've been sitting on this one for a minute because every time I think about what I want to add to this, I land in the same place, and that is protest songs. You know, what is the United States without our incredible legacy of protest?
So I grew up on protest songs. You know, we had the whole canon playing in the house, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Marvin Gaye. Um, that was the soundtrack of my childhood, and I've been thinking about how that thread carried down to my siblings and me, and I laugh because a couple months ago, my brother had a box from our parents' house, and it had all these old T-shirts, and we were joking about selling them on eBay.
But when he pulled out the Rage Against the Machine shirt, he was like, "Absolutely not, I'm keeping this one," because obviously the themes of Rage Against the Machine are completely relevant today. So here's my pick for your mix. Um, Sleep Now in the Fire by Rage Against the Machine.
CLIP: Sleep Now in the Fire by Rage Against the Machine
It's what keeps me proud to protest even now, and what keeps me proud to be an American so play some Rage 
Hey critics. This is Greg from Southern California. My pick is John Prine's Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore from 1971. It's a great anti-war protest song. It makes me laugh. Um, it feels like he could have written it today, and that gives me hope, you know, 'cause we've obviously been through stuff like this before and gotten through it.
CLIP: John Prine's Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore
My name is Quinn, and I'm from Fayetteville, North Carolina. The most American song I can think of is the 1969 recording of Compared to What off Roberta Flack's album First Take. The song covers religion and greed, and it also directly mentions abortion and war in ways that just seem as relevant in 2026 as they did in 1969.
CLIP: Roberta Flack - Compared to What
I also think on a larger scale, the song is quintessential Americana to me because, to be upfront, it's a jazz song by Black artists, Les McCann and Flack. Honestly, in 1,000 years, if there's one thing I think or hope America will be known for, it's the music that came from artists like Roberta Flack, Nina Simone, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, or Stevie Wonder. It's music that just pushes us towards better pastures, and I'm just really grateful it exists.
CLIP: Roberta Flack - Compared to What
Alex Schwartz: Vinson, you’re up! What’s your pick for the playlist? 
Vinson Cunningham: My pick is really an artifact of me trying to fit in as much as I could. I too for the listener who did this self-deprecating thing about choosing America by Simon and Garfunkel… I almost went in that direction too. There’s lots of ways I wanted to go. But the song I want to talk about is called Ohio/Machine Gun, and it is a double cover, a kind of medley of, of two songs being reinterpreted by the Isley Brothers. Um, by my lights, if you talk about great American bands, you cannot enter a room where the Isley Brothers are not present. Uh, incredible instrumentalists, unbelievably versatile, which just goes to the point of this song, which I'll, I'll get into that.
Uh, the Isley Brothers cover this song in the context of, uh, one of my favorite albums ever. The album's called Giving It Back, and the Isleys, who famously wrote Shout- Mm ... uh, all these great songs, they were always covered by white bands, which was a, a big feature of musical production in the middle of last century.
Um, white bands taking Black songs, covering them because perhaps with the idea that perhaps their audiences wouldn't want to hear it from someone like the Isley Brothers. They would've wanted- would want to hear it from someone else. Um, and the Isley Brothers, as is, uh, it kinda shows in the title of the album, Giving It Back, says, "You know, we're gonna take a bunch of songs we like from white guys."
So they cover, like- ... Stephen Stills, they cover Neil Young, they take all these wonderful songs. Um, so that's one of the things I wanted to talk about with, like, what's the most American song. To me, the most American song is some- is, is, like, a property that is taken and, and, and deployed in another way. Uh, the Isley Brothers, initially from Cincinnati, Ohio, which I think has a lot to do with their choice to, uh, cover the song Ohio, which was initially sung by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, written by Neil Young, in the wake of the Kent State- Mm
massacre, uh, of 1970. Uh, famously, Ohio State Troopers descended upon the campus of Ohio State to break up a, a Vietnam War protest. The troopers fired into the crowd, and this resulted in the deaths of several students. This is not so much a protest song as a song depicting protests. It's a kind of almost like dialectical songs that says, like, "Here's the power and here is the spectacle of protests."
It, it too, to me, seems almost novelistic in this. It just wants to widen the aperture of, of your, your vision and say, "Here's what a protest is, and here's what the, you know, what the man is like, and here's what happens when they come together." 
CLIP: The Isley Brothers - Ohio / Machine Gun
Another thing, what does America sound like? I think this is so beautiful.
It happens a little bit in the Neil Young version, but so much more here. What does America sound like? if you listen to anything about the American Revolution- ... it's gonna be scored with this fife and drum thing, which to me, I love. I love listening to just straight up 
Naomi Fry: You're a fife and drum 
Vinson Cunningham: man.
I love fife and drum. Who 
Naomi Fry: knew? He's a bit of a fife and drum man. 
Vinson Cunningham: He's a bit of a fife and drum man. It's cool. Just that weird military snare. This is part of the American sound. 
CLIP: The Isley Brothers - Ohio / Machine Gun
Vinson Cunningham: The latter half of the song, under the, the Crosby, Stills, and Nash and Young, um, lyrics, they start to play the chord changes from Jimi Hendrix's, uh, song Machine Gun. And again, what does America sound like? The electric guitar is invented in America in 1932, and Jimi Hendrix, at least to the, the time, certainly of the making of this song, is its sort of popular genius, and he's making it sound like guns and bombs and everything.
There's a point where Ron Isley in this reinterpretation starts to sing like Jimi Hendrix's guitar, this wail. He's like, you know, Hendrix would say it, and he's like, "Oh, oh, oh." He just starts doing this, like, vocal interpretation of the electric guitar. 
CLIP: The Isley Brothers - Ohio / Machine Gun
Vinson Cunningham: and these musicians from Ohio singing this song, talking about violence, talking about sorrow, not only sort of redescribe the protest situation, but also I think implicitly talk about this is kinda what it was like for us Black boys to grow up in this situation as artists. Just the place, just us trying to make it out of the Midwest.
Um, again, about the clash between sort of classes and kinds and, um, I don't know, American figures, but doing it through this, again, very American sound. So just like taking the military drum and putting it on one end of a pole with by the end of the song, the electric guitar. The Isley Brothers are great American geniuses, and so you can't do this without them.
Alex Schwartz: Absolutely love it. You know, Vinson, um, I thought a lot about the song Ohio, not the Isley Brothers versio- version, which I'm so happy to be introduced to now, um, but the CSNY version. I thought about it, um, when Rene Good and Alex Pretti were killed in Minnesota. And this deployment of troops against American citizens protesting, when, you know, you feel like you're going back in the past to a moment that this song describes. So this kind of repetitive nature brings this music back to us, and it brings its power back to us also. 
E Pluribus Unum playlist. Critics at Large and American Playlist will be right back.
:: MIDROLL :: 
Alex Schwartz: You ready for my pick? 
Vinson Cunningham: Oh, yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: Everybody? Yes. I can't wait. It's my turn to share with the class. Um, okay. I'm bringing Bob Dylan's 115th Dream. I don't know if you guys, if that immediately rings a bell. It may very well not. 
Naomi Fry: I'm, I'm not, unfortunately- It 
Vinson Cunningham: doesn't for 
Alex Schwartz: me. Don't, don't- Yeah ... don't be sorry, because it's coming to us now.[n][o]
So this song, Bob Dylan's 115th Dream by Bob Dylan, is from the album Bringing It All Back Home from 1965. Bob Dylan is important to me deeply. He's just woven throughout my own personal history. He is at the heart of, uh, American music for me. Mm-hmm. So when I think of what I love about Bob Dylan and what makes his voice so quintessentially American to me, it's Dylan going electric- Mm
and saying, "Actually, I was about all that, and I was part of the collective, and I still am part of the collective, but I'm also really me." It's about individualism, which is also a very American- Mm-hmm ... quality. This is the album where Dylan goes electric. It's, has Subterranean Homesick Blues. It has Maggie's Farm.
It has Mr. Tambourine Man. Mm-hmm. He's kind of, like, flirting with it and not. But what I love about Bob Dylan's 115th Dream is it's like a comic novel of a song. It's very lyrically dense, and its protagonist, a, a trickster figure, arrives on the Mayflower in America with someone called Captain Ahab.
They've been looking for Moby Dick. They find America instead. 
CLIP: Bob Dylan's 115th Dream by Bob Dylan
Alex Schwartz: The narrator of the song arrives in this place. He says, "I think I'll call it America." Casual little bit of naming. Mm-hmm. I wonder what that reminds us of. Perhaps the real thing. "I So Captain Arab is there and he started writing up some deeds. He said, "Let's set up a fort and start buying the place with beads."
CLIP: Bob Dylan's 115th Dream by Bob Dylan
Alex Schwartz: What I love is that Dylan is taking real things that happened or myths about real things that happened, like the buying of, uh, land in America for wampum for instance. Mm-hmm. And he's making it this kind of joke, this crazy surrealist thing, 'cause that's what American history is.
A crazy thing. It's totally mad. Yeah. It's a mishmash. It's blood, it's guns, but it's also just wild ambition, crazy ego- Mm-hmm ... big weird dreams, uh, God talking directly to you. So all of that is in this song, this sense of a visionary coming, but also a bum. The song is about, um, it's not about rugged individualism.
It's about ragged individualism. Mm. It's about a bum just rambling around and looking at stuff. It's just taking a comic novelist's mind and eye towards this whole thing and making it come alive so that you feel this wild texture of the country. The end of the song is such a great kicker. Is it possibly the greatest kicker ever?
It might be. When, um, the singer is leaving, uh, he sees three ships sailing in. [p][q]
CLIP: Bob Dylan's 115th Dream by Bob Dylan
Alex Schwartz: And that's it his name was Columbus. I just said good luck i hear you i hear you, Bob
Vinson Cunningham: Amazing. Okay, here is an ode to another great American sound through a song that I did not know before, so I'm really appreciative. Here's Zach. 
Hey, critics. For me, the most American instrument of all time has gotta be the banjo. Mm. And if you love the banjo, you've heard the name Nora Brown in the last few years.
I first learned about Nora Brown when I was searching YouTube for another great banjo player's recording of Wild Goose Chase from his album On the Tennessee Line, Virgil Anderson. Eh, but instead I found Nora playing the same song
CLIP: Nora Brown - Wild Goose Chase
She's not an old guy sitting on her front porch. She's a 16-year-old girl. And Instead of being down on Tennessee line, she's sitting in what is very obviously a concrete heavy Brooklyn backyard. And I was so chilled with amazement that she could channel all the very powerful feelings that this music manages to convey, feelings that to me are deeply connected with the love that I have for our country.
Hi, critics. This is Jessica calling from Brooklyn with a song that gives me an American feeling. My choice is That's Life, but not the Frank Sinatra version, the James Brown and the Famous Flames version from his Live at the Apollo album, uh, recorded in 1967. Maybe it's because I work for an environmental nonprofit and I feel pretty beat down right now, but [r][s]this song feels very American to me.
CLIP: That’s Life - James Brown
You know, America can stomp on your dreams. It can make you want to give up. But as sure as this big old world keeps spinning around, I know there's something in us that just won't let us quit. 
Hello, dear critics. I wanted to submit a piece called the Billy the Kid Suite, which is a ballet by the composer Aaron Copland, who you may know.
And I think it's a very beautiful piece or collection of pieces. But I also think that the story of Aaron Copland is so interesting because in kind of the mid-20th century, all these European countries seem to have their national composer. And in the U.S., there were sort of two competing philosophies of what American concert music might be.
There was this composer, Charles Ives, who wrote very complex, basically 12-tone band music. 
CLIP: Charles Ives
Charles Ives was this sort of hyper-masculine New England quintessential WASP. He wrote about how America needed to adopt 12-tone music because that was masculine music, and he had this famous saying, "Take dissonance like a man."
And then on the other side- Wow. ... we have Aaron Copland, this younger gay Jewish guy, um, and he wrote these beautifully consonant pieces like Fanfare for the Common Man and Appalachian Spring and Billy the Kid, very visual pieces in a much more accessible harmonic language
CLIP: Billy the Kid suite
And these really became the American canon of classical music far more than anything that w- Ives wrote. 
Naomi Fry: Take that, bully. Yeah. We're 
Alex Schwartz: dunking on you, Charles Ives. 
And I think this song and the story of this composer says something rather beautiful about America, which is maybe that what it means to be American going forward does not have to come from what America, uh, has been.
Alex Schwartz: I knew Vincent was gonna be so psyched. 
Vinson Cunningham: Y- yes, Copland is one of my favorite artists. I, I love Copland. Um, Nathan, this is a genius pick partially because it so well describes what we're trying to do in this episode. Just th- that journey of trying to articulate what does America sound like in the concert tradition is, like, a centuries-long thing.
So, um, and Copland, I think, in so many different ways, you know, gets the closest. And, um, I lo- Nathan, that's... You're the man. 
Alex Schwartz: Well, Vincent, why don't you close us out? We have one more voicemail we're gonna listen to. 
Vinson Cunningham: Um, I'm bringing one of my favorite songs and one of the best songs in American popular music history, honestly.
Here's Anna.
Hi critics. My name is Anna. The song that encapsulates how I feel about the US right now is the 1964 song, A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke
CLIP: A Change is Gonna Come
it will I still listen to this song from time to time to have a good cry and to turn not to despair, but to solidarity and resistance. 
Alex Schwartz: What a great place for us to end. I mean, Sam Cooke, first of all, voice of an angel, one of the most beautiful- Mm emotional, spiritual voices, I think. And then "A Change Is Gonna Come" encapsulates perfectly the era in which it was written. It was released in 1964, in, in the Civil Rights Movement. And you can get into the specifics of what was inspiring Cooke but, that really helped me out, to hear this at this moment, because I will just say, I've been very excited for this episode, for doing music, for choosing songs, hearing the listener songs, but it always embarrasses me to say things like, "Happy Birthday, America."
I mean, my God. What, what we've all been put through- Yeah ... historically. It's a lot to go back to the origin point and wave a little flag and say, like, "Yippee." 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. It's just, it's, it's, it's hard to get down with that, um, for me personally, at times. So I really appreciate being reminded through a lot of this music, and especially through "A Change Is Gonna Come," of the enormous meaning, um, that there is in being an American and trying to, um, create a more perfect union, and that's what that song is about.
And one thing that's really standing out to me, uh, from what the listeners sent in, and from our own choices, is how much the '60s and that moment of turmoil- Yes ... and change and anger and hope is resonating. We've talked a lot, uh, on different episodes and also among ourselves about feelings of the '70s in the current moment, corruption, paranoia, all of that, but the '60s is really coming through very, very strongly here.
We could almost make this an episode just about music from the '60s, and I think that's because the themes of political struggle and communal struggle and finding one another in the midst of all of this really resonate. So that's what I'm, that's what I'm getting from, from the broader playlist. Where are you guys on this?
Naomi Fry: I'm just... Yeah, I, I cosign everything you just said. And, you know, a, a few days ago, I found myself in the position of, of watching the White House UFC fights because I was writing about it. And this was to celebrate both Trump's 80th birthday and to celebrate the, uh, America's 250th birthday, just to see, um, guys, you know, slug each other on the South Lawn.
And just to see that juxtaposition- Mm-hmm ... of, um, our country's most, you know, hallowed, kind of, like, iconic institution be the stomping grounds, the slugging grounds, made me quite depressed. And I, I feel like the... Yeah, just the nuance and the sensitivity and the, um, thought that our listeners put into selecting these songs and sharing them with us- Made me, uh, you know, as, as, as these types of episodes that we do often do, made me feel hopeful- Yeah
um, about the future. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: You know, this is also what America is. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: You know? 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, that's, that question of what, you know, not only America is, but what is a nation, what is a sort of national home, all these questions. Um, paying attention to music, I think, is, is, is helpful, It, it reminds us that, you know, what we think of as nation-building, war-making, all the things that constitute a nation, that's not- At least if you care about art, that's not where the real action is. The, the action is in our creative response to the circumstances that we're given, and that's what music is all about.
It's like, um, who can see best and articulate best what is happening and then point in a new direction? Um, so to hear all these songs is, like, just another great moment of insight into what our l- listeners feel about living and, um, how all of us imagine it could sort of go otherwise. You know, listening to music presents this great counterfactual about what could life be.
So it's just great to hear from you guys. Thank you again. This was the best. 
Alex Schwartz: It's wonderful, and we got so, so many responses that we couldn't use. This makes me wanna repeat this exercise again and again. 
Naomi Fry: Every Fourth of July. 
Alex Schwartz: A critics tradition. This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barasch is our consulting editor, and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer.
Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman, and we had engineering help today from Pran Bandy, with music by Alexis Cuadrado. Critics at Large is off next week. In the meantime, you can find each and every one of our episodes in our archives at newyorker.com/critics.