I suppose you can see yourself as a lyric guy or a music gal. You can prefer the literary songs of Al Stewart or the sonic exploration of Alan Parsons.
The thing is, when you combine those two impulses – as Stewart did on his 1976 album Year of the Cat – you might just strike gold. Parsons began producing for Stewart on his 1975 album Modern Times, which became the singer-songwriter's first top 40 release. They teamed up two more times for Stewart’s biggest hits – Year of the Cat and Time Passages (1978).
So obviously, on many great songs, it is the match of words to music that carries the day. But today, I’m just going to talk about the words.
How do classic Americana lyrics define the genre?
Americana music – a fairly recent umbrella term which captures an amorphous cross section of country, folk, bluegrass, and heartland-leaning rock and roll – is often known for its lyrics. You don’t find a lot of synths or drum machines in Americana music. There’s not much in the way of the progressive or psychedelic.
Usually, there’s a fairly typical musical approach built on an acoustic guitar. The music can still be complex. The playing can display extreme virtuosity. But more often than not, Americana music is going to live or die with its words.
The antecedents of contemporary Americana can be heard in the songs of Jimmy Rodgers and Woody Guthrie. They translated timeless mountain music for the 20th century. Guthrie, in particular, wrote words that reflected modern concerns, both personal and political. He married them to catchy melodies and essentially invented the template of the Americana song.
Lyrically, Guthrie and those who followed him tended to be plain-spoken. They spoke in the vernacular of the common man, and their vocal delivery matched the conversational tone of the lyrics.
As the field matured, the great poets of Americana – Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen – would expand the lyrical content by adding more literary devices and references. However, even when they began engaging in more complex verbal gymnastics, most of the foremost songwriters never stayed out there for too long.
They pretty much all eventually returned to the plain-spoken ideal that did what all poets set out to do – capture some profound feeling in a simple image or phrase.
Today, we’re looking at a baker’s dozen of classic words that set out the parameters of great Americana lyrical concerns. I’ll warn you up front – I am leaving Guthrie, Dylan, and Cohen out of this one. You could fill this kind of list many times over with Dylan verses and couplets alone. Maybe we’ll do that another day.
For today, we don’t need to rely on those titans. There are too many others who have proven to be capable of writing deeply affecting words that capture something profound about the grand American experience. So let’s begin…
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