Top Ten July 4th Songs | The Nation

Not enough Americans are aware that much of what we consider our patriotic culture, especially our iconic music, was created by artists and writers of decidedly left-wing sympathies, as Peter Drier and Richard Flacks have documented.

Three years ago, I posted a list of what I called the Top Twelve Most Patriotic Songs Ever. I’ve rethought those selections, consulted with various experts and now can present my heavily revised and highly debatable list of Top Ten July 4th Songs.

To me, these songs, taken together, help distill the American experience and make clear both what’s great about the US and what still needs critical attention. Please use the comments field below to let me know what I missed.

1. Los Lobos with Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir performing This Land is Your Land
This version of the iconic Woody Guthrie song was performed in July 1989 backstage at Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wisconsin between sets on that summer’s Los Lobos/Grateful Dead tour.

2. Bruce Springsteen performing Chimes of Freedom
Sony Music has made it impossible to watch Bob Dylan performing his classic ode to “the refugees on their unarmed road of flight.” Fortunately, Bruce Springsteen acquits himself well in this live 1988 cover.

3. Paul Robeson performing The House I Live In
Written in 1943 by Abel Meeropol under the pen name Lewis Allen and the blacklisted Earl Robinson, this tune became a patriotic anthem during Work War II with its populist evocation of everyday American life.

4. Phil Ochs, The Power and Glory
One of the songs that established Ochs’s reputation, he saw it as a patriotic hymn combining the American dream with selfless faith-based ideals.

5. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir performing The Battle Hymn of the Republic
The Battle Hymn of the Republic was written by abolitionist, social activist and poet Julia Ward Howe in 1861, set to a tune written several years before by William Steffe. Sung here by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

6. Loretta Lynn, Dear Uncle Sam
This Vietnam-era plea on behalf of soldier-husbands everywhere resonated with a non- traditional, antiwar crowd when it was first released in 1968.

7. John Mellencamp, Small Town
This 1985 song distills the essence of Mellencamp’s popularity as the bard of the Midwest giving voice to the dreams and disappointments of so many small communities coast to coast. 

8. Rosanne Cash performing 500 Miles
This song, originally written by Hedy West, became popular in the US and Europe during the 1960s folk revival and was part of a list of 100 essential American songs that Johnny Cash famously gave his daughter Rosanne in 1973. In 2009, she produced a brilliant album featuring her versions of 12 of the 100.

9. Leontyne Price performing America the Beautiful
This song, written in 1893 by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, not only speaks to the natural beauty of America but also expresses Bates's view that US imperialism undermined the nation’s core values of freedom and liberty. In this version, opera star Leontyne Price sings it at a 1992 benefit.

10. Gil Scott-Heron, Winter in America
One of Scott-Heron’s most well-received compositions, this bluesy lament mouns America’s lost promise: “And ain’t nobody fighting, Cause nobody knows what to save.”