By Hannah Nepilova

Published: Thursday, 04 January 2024 at 15:52 PM


Narrowing down the USA’s richly varied folk music tradition to just ten of the best American folk songs is no mean feat. Odds are that we’ve left out some real smashers, and you may well disagree with our choices.

Still, we’ve done our best to put together a list that at least whets the appetite for further exploration. Here it is.

Best American folk songs

This Land is Your Land

Written by American singer Woody Guthrie in 1940, ‘This Land is Your Land’ was intended as a critical response to Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America’. Guthrie originally gave it the sarcastic title of ‘God Blessed America for Me’.

But, following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, he returned to supporting the US and its involvement in Europe, renaming his song in the process and dropping verses that were critical of the United States. Nowadays it is often dubbed as an alternative US national anthem.