PBS News Hour - Full Show - The music that's shaped America

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Music has long been one of America's most influential cultural exports. In this episode of "In Pursuit of Happiness," Judy Woodruff talks with music historian Ted Gioia and journalist Sidney Madden about the Black and Indigenous roots of American music, the power of protest songs and how music continues to shape our understanding of who we are. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Before the U.S. became a world power, before the far reach of Hollywood, and before big tech, the United States of America became a musical force. For 250 years, we've argued about politics, power, identity, race, and freedom, and what it means to be American through song, and music that changed the world. In this episode, we're going to explore why so much revolutionary music came from the U.S. and what it tells us about our country. I'm Judy Woodruff. This is In Pursuit of Happiness.

Joining me for this conversation are Ted Joya, a prominent American music historian, critic and author. He also writes The Honest Broker, one of the most widely read music and culture newsletters on Substack. And Sidney Madden, she's a music journalist and cultural critic who has covered the evolution of hip-hop, R&B, and the ways music shapes identity and community

in America today. You can subscribe to her newsletter. It's called Substance. That's Sub-Underscores stance. We also, I want to tell you, enlisted some of our NewsHour viewers whom we're going to be hearing from throughout these podcasts. Let's start by talking about how important music is to America's story. And we don't usually think of music when we think of American history, but it's been there going back to the very beginning. Ted, did music even have a presence

at the founding of our country? We know that the folks who came from Europe brought their kind of music. We know certainly those enslaved people brought their music from the African continent. But what was it like at the very beginning? America's always been a melting pot country and people came here and they usually had to give up many things to come here. There were many sacrifices to become an American.

One of the few things you could hold onto your songs. So these took on special importance in American life. And every cultural community fostered their own music, shared it with the next generation and shared it with each other. And a lot of innovation happened that way. The same token, there's sort of a dark underside to American music. In the early days, almost all of the music in the American music business was pirated. We would steal songs from other countries. Music publishers in the U.S. would take songs published in England and elsewhere

and publish them illegally without copyright protection. And so there's this undercurrent of theft that occurs in American music almost from the start, even to the point that our national anthems borrowed from a British song, as is my country tis of thee and the like. So there's this extraordinary mixture of pride, shame, self-expression, and out-and-out robbery that have continued to be major parts of American music ever since that time. It's almost as if music, it is part of our identity.

It's the way, it's one of the many ways we identify ourselves. Ted, when you think about the way music has evolved over time, do you go back that far? Or do you, where do you start when you think about how American music has become what it is today? When I study this, I go back to the Native American music. They had rich musical traditions. Many of them, unfortunately, disappeared. It wasn't until late in the day that people. people tried to preserve these. I've seen books on American history to look at music and start

in 1776, which is a great period as well. But American music has been here actually since the origins of the first peoples. It's so interesting. I think it's fair to say most people have no awareness of that or very little awareness of that. Sydney, has that even come across your radar? Absolutely. I mean, when you think of American music, you have to go back. to the soil. I love and appreciate how Ted gave us that timeline and started with the indigenous people because every genre that we know and love that came out of America is either black birthed or indigenous birth in that way. Even with the nation of immigrants that have come in and added to the melting pot every decade and every generation, it was always built on bringing

the music with them because it's one of the only things you don't You don't need anything. You don't need any tangible elements other than your memory and maybe the gumption to raise your voice and sing in order to carry your culture. So when I think about even Tony Morrison's concept of rememory and the idea of inherited trauma and inherited joy and that mixture that imbues all of the music and any cultural output that we have, it always comes back to the origin, to the soil to the indigenous and black people who built this country. So when you think, Sydney, about what what is, what was American music at the start of our country? What does your mind go to right away? My mind goes to community, to faith, to identity, self-actualization, and the pursuit of freedom in any small form you can grab.

And that was even before the revolution. Of course. Of course. That's the revolution within ourselves, within our hearts, with the ability to create a beat, to share a story, to be a storyteller, to share legend and infamy and trials and tribulations

through music to carry that message. And what about you? Ted, when you think about what was American music at the start, what do you think? I think it's a diverse picture where every group and tradition and cohort had their own songs in a way that's actually very rare to find in other places. The sheer diversity of American music has always been its great strength. You know, I've done a study of musical innovation around the world since the beginning of time, and the most diverse communities have always produced the most innovative music.

You can even go back to ancient Egypt, where there was one community where all the surviving Egyptian songs come from. We only know about the songs because they were preserved in a small village called Derel Medina. Now, what was happening in this village? It was the village where the artisans who helped supervise the building of the pyramids lived. And it was ethnically diverse. There were people from all over came there because they were the finest craftspeople of their day. And they gathered in this one village. I don't think it's coincidence.

That was the same place where the greatest musical innovation came. It was the most diverse place. We saw that again in the Renaissance where the greatest cohabitation of diverse people was in Venice because it was a port city. And that's where we found the birth of the madrigal, the birth of the opera. And you find this even in the British invasion in Rock. It didn't come from London or Buckingham Palace or 10 Downings where you came from Liverpool. Once again, that was a port city with diverse populations because it was on a waterway and a community way.

In the United States, the same thing has always happened. It's diversity brings innovation. It's not surprising to me that the most innovative, musical city in the late 19th century was New Orleans because it was also a port city with diverse populations and intermixing of many people. This has always been the story. Why is it, do you think, that it is these ports, the places of diversity where music has thrived and new music has been generated? Sydney, I know you've given this thought. I think it has to do with the idea that you're living in cities. It's a lot of

honestly, poor and disenfranchise people, people living on top of each other, people working and just trying to make a living. And within that, you don't really have a lot of space to be living in a monoculture, right? There might be different divisions. There might be segregation happening, but the cross-cultural exchange is where that innovation happens. To Ted's point, every time throughout history, that's what it's been. So when you think about jazz or you think about Zytoe, or you think think about hip hop. All of those genres came from moments in history where people were literally just like trying to make space for themselves, figuratively, physically, and metaphysically, all in the same time. And that's what breeds the innovation, the idea that find a way,

make a way, and collaborate with each other, honestly, even if it's just for a moment of of exhilaration and peace and escapism. So I hear both of you, talking about music coming from all around the world, the origins of opera, of frankly, almost every kind of music we can think of. But we know if you jump ahead in time, the United States, America has generated so much music that's influenced the rest of the world. We asked our viewers what they thought about that, about why so much, why the United States, why America has been so influential. My name is Britt Thomas. I'm from Houston, Texas. A lot of it comes from some of our darker paths of the fact that America has a strong history of slavery of black exploitation

that has created a lot of different types of music in our history. My name is Tony Bob. I'm from Boston, Massachusetts. You could definitely ask any artists that they were, when they were growing up in America, at any point in time in its history, who their inspirations were, and you're likely going to see people that weren't born in this country,

people that were brought here, people who decided to make America their home, or perhaps when they went abroad and they heard something and brought it back to America. Ted, why do you think America has become the place the place that's generated so many genres? Well, America has many advantages in terms of landmass and economy, but I think the most decisive reason why American music has become so popular and innovative is the black component,

the African component, because it's really the African-American musical culture that really boosted the American music business. and in many ways. I mean, we have the launch of jazz around 1917, just transformed the whole music industry, first in American worldwide, and that all came out of the Black experience. The blues, spirituals, work songs,

the amount of innovation out of the black population is huge. You could even go back before the Civil War. If you look at the writings of travelers, who went through the American South, and they'll describe the various parties and dances they went to. The musical performers were almost always black even back then. So you have this white dominant society, but the musical entertainment is contributed by the black underclass.

And so this just spread everywhere, and even genres that aren't seen as black today draw on it. The white country singers bend their notes comes out of the blues, the way rock singers perform come out of the blues and jazz. Absolutely. I mean, whether we want to dissect a genre that is categorically seen as a black genre because there are so many black acts who are front facing now like hip hop or R&B, or you want to dissect a genre that traditionally hasn't had as many black superstars, like folk or country or bluegrass, it's always been black Americans and indigenous Americans

who are creating the DNA and the blueprint for those genres. I mean, even Beyonce's Grammy-winning album a few years ago, Cowboy Carter, that was the dissertation, that was the thesis of that entire body of work. This ain't Texas. Ain't no hold on. And it's a building block of a larger body of work she's making, connected to Renaissance for a 2023 album, and another album to come. that's considered act three that is theorized to be about rock and roll.

It's always been at the source. Sydney, why do you think the black experience has been such a powerful force throughout our music? I think it has a lot to do with the building blocks of America, which is collision, contradiction, and low-key violence. Black people were not coming here from their own volition tradition. The American slave trade is a violent path that some people still try to deny happened. But through that and through that survival and resilience, there has been just this influx and over-indexing of storytelling. And listening to that, Ted, so much of that does come from these hard, hard circumstances.

And yet over time, there's been a lot of celebratory music created. Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra. I mean, you know, you go down the list of American artists and different, so many different genres of American types of American music. Is there one thread that runs through American music? Or are there so many threads that it's just impossible to narrow it, Ted? Well, as you know, I have a music newsletter called The Honest Broker, and I have a large number of subscribers. Many of them are professional musicians themselves or other music critics.

So it's a very knowledgeable audience of music lovers. So I asked them last week. I asked them to tell me what was the quintessential American song or songs. So I was wanting to tap into their wisdom. and I got back hundreds of responses immediately. I mean, just the overwhelming number of people commenting on this. So the first thing I realized is that people feel strongly about this. When you ask them, what is an American song?

Everybody has an opinion. And the sheer diversity of answers was amazing. The most popular response was the Star-Spangled Banner is played by Jimmy Hendricks. That's a good one. Number two was American tune by Paul Simon. We come in the ages most uncertain hours and sing an American tune. And it's all right. It's all right.

And the third most popular response is the revolution will not be televised by Gil Scott Herring. You will not be able to plug in, turn on, cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on stag and skip out for beer during commercials because the revolution will not be televised. That shows you the diversity. I mean, we're covering a lot of range, a wide range already. And people went on and they had all sorts of examples from every genre. And there were people that told me, well, you've got to have country music because it's about our country. So you want an American song, it's got to be country. Or people will say, Hip-hop is the most real and rootseous music of them all.

Others think that these rock stadium anthems are just the thing to celebrate their Fourth of July barbecue. Some people wanted intensely patriotic songs and John Phillipsusa marches and Yankee Doodle. Other people wanted protest songs. I mean, the sheer diversity of that was overwhelming. So the only thing I can say is when you ask people about American music, it's a free country and everyone has got their opinion and they're very outspoken about it. And that might be our strength when you get down to it is that we have so many voices and so many passionate views

and people really, really care about music in this country. And that's a nice thing. It is a nice thing. And as you said, the freedom to choose. And thank goodness, we have the freedom to choose what our favorite music is. You know, my producers have been asking me to say, what is my favorite song? What is my favorite kind of music. And I'd like to tell you, there's one kind. There isn't. I like classical. I like, I certainly like rock. I like some country music. A little bit of jazz. I always feel intimidated by jazz because I feel like I don't understand it. But I will say this. As somebody who's covered, I have to bring this up, who's covered politics for a long time and covered presidential candidates going back to Jimmy Carter. I've heard a lot of anthems, if you will,

On the campaign trail, Ronald Reagan. He tried, you know, he tried Bruce Springsteen born in the USA, but then Springsteen spoke out a couple of days after that and said, no, no, no, no, that's not a patriotic song. That's a song of a protest. So then Reagan turned to Lee Greenwood. Bill Clinton, don't stop thinking about tomorrow. Each one of the candidates I've covered, you know, has had an,

music that I would go to sleep at night after covering a couple of loud rallies with that song going through my head. Just indulge me for a minute. Why does it matter that somebody running for president has some kind of music associated with them? Sydney, what do you think? First of all, brag on yourself more, Judy, because that is amazing, that run that you just talked about. And yes, when you have a song that is that drumbeat of your campaign or your campaign promises, that's going to stick with people not only mentally, but emotively. And that's the strength of music. It gives you something to carry the message that you can also carry a tune with. I think it is always important for a political candidate to have a strong anthem or a theme song.

Also, going back to taste, people don't trust people with bad music tastes, right? So as a candidate, you want to be trustworthy. So you better have a good song. to carry your message along the way. I was going to add George W. Bush, Tom Petty, I won't back down. And Barack Obama, we all remember this, Stevie Wonder, signed, sealed, and delivered. Ted, what do you think? What would you add to that? What is it?

How easy or how hard is it to pick a campaign song? I recall when I was doing research into work songs, which I wrote a book about. I was talking to people involved in the labor movement back in the, the old days, like the Great Depression, and they love talking about songs. And I asked them, why when I talk to people in the labor movement, they always talk about music and songs. And what I was told was, Ted, you got to realize, we were organizing workers, and we'd go down to the factory four. Some of them spoke Polish, some spoke Italian, some spoke Spanish. Communicating with them was very difficult. And the way we could get them unified was singing a song. The song

brings them together and unifies the movement. And there's actually a hormonal reason for this because when you sing, hormone is released that bonds you with the people around you. You actually are more trusting with people in a musical environment. This is why I think many people go on romantic dates to a concert. The music brings people together. It's a unifying force. And so politics, it's the same reason. If you really want to unify people, if you really want to put together your team, your coalition, you all get up and you sing the same song. It's an extraordinary process. And I think it will always be part of politics or any other kind of communal movement for them. Yeah, that calls to mind. My husband and I actually went to a Bruce Springsteen concert the other night.

Wow. And what you're saying about, I don't know if it was hormones. but a lot of people were jumping and dancing and completely, completely into it. You know, we've been talking about the music that defines us. So much of that music is protest music. We also talked to our, we asked our viewers, that is, about what was it about, or what is it about protest music that stays with them that is mattered to them. My name is Pilar Free and I live in Albany, California. I was thinking about like, you know, NWA and like public enemy and like raging against the machine where it's like, I don't know.

I think it's really cool that you can put on a song that you can like rock out or like just like go to the mosh pit or like twerk to with your friends and then also be like, I'm also having a political moment now. So I appreciate like that duality of American music where you can you can do both. My name is Lauren Lof and I'm from Annapolis, Maryland. I think it's impossible for anyone to take an American history class and not learn about the social and cultural movements that were happening during different decades without talking about the music that arose from those periods. Each of them have found a way to speak to the times and the pieces of what's happening in American history and how we want it to be better and access different generations. and market those messages in a way that could sometimes be a little sly, which I always appreciate. The protests that are expressed in music comes through in ways, it seems to me, that reaches people that speeches can't and don't. What do you think, Sydney?

I absolutely agree. I think it was activists and filmmaker and author. Tony K. Bambara, who said, and I'm going to paraphrase a little bit, the mission or the purpose of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible, right? To give it that drumbeat, to give it that rallying cry, to give you something to move your body to, along with just moving your mind and changing your mind about a subject, that emotive center that carries the message through the music. And I think it's so interesting how Ted brought up the chemical. element of how these songs can unify us. Because at that, it is very serious. It's very real at that level. If you can sit or stand next to a stranger, but then you can find common ground based on this music and then you find a purpose bigger than yourself within a movement that is heralded by the music, that's what's going to create a cultural conversation that can usher in a cultural change. My name is John Quast and I'm from Lakeville, Minnesota. A song that I believe really defines us as we approach the 250th anniversary is Bruce Springsteen's song born in the USA.

The song gets played on every Fourth of July playlist and the song gets played at every political rally. But when you, if you actually listen to the lyrics, Springsteen's kind is asking, I believe in this country and I, you know, love this country, but this country isn't living up to what it's, what it says it is. My name is Ellen Claire Lamb and I live in Arlington, Virginia. Marvin Gay's What's Going On? Mother, Mother. there's too many of you crying.

Brother, brother, brother, there's far too many of you dying. I think that we are not listening to each other. We are not paying attention to each other. We are not taking care of the extraordinary gifts and resources we have that have been entrusted to us. I'm Anne Taylor Rolls, and I live in Richmond, Virginia. There's something about fanfare for the common man to me that strikes that nerve of what it means,

what the founding fathers were talking about and we're building when they built this country. And at the time, it wasn't really for women or people of color, unfortunately. But it's that idea that we all have, have the share common blood. We all, at the end of the day, share humanity. My name is Sable Lover.

I am from Dayton, Ohio. They don't care about us by Michael Jackson. What really struck out to me with this song and why I chose it was him talking about police brutality and like the mistreatment of people in America by these groups that are meant to protect us. This land is your land and this land is my land from California to the New York Island

from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters. This land was made for you and me. This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie. I really think it speaks to the diversity of America and the collective desire to share in the ideals and the values that have been part of America since the beginning of sharing freedom and resources and the desire to be better with one another. What about that? I mean, I'm thinking about people coming together to hear a kind of music who may share political views, but not all of them do. And so,

Does music transcend that or does it define that? How do you come down on that? I think it's natural for music to take on elements that are rebellious and involved in protest. Once again, throughout history, musical styles, innovations, and even commercial music have come from the underclass. And we see that in the U.S., obviously. but this has always been true. And so it's not a surprise when the underclass gets control of the music. This becomes their platform for protest.

This is to be expected. Now what makes this interesting is often the protest has to happen in coded language. It cannot happen openly. It has to be coded in a way that the ruling class will accept it. So this is a fascinating history in its own right. I mean, if you look at the book, blues songs of the 1920s, they're filled with hidden meanings. You can you can spend all day trying to decipher the hidden meanings in these songs. It's what Henry Louis Gates called signifying.

You sing on one level. It's one message, but below it is another. What about that notion of coding, sending a message in the music, but having to be careful about how you do it? When I think about coded language through music, through the lens of black American music. The first place my mind goes is blood on the leaves, on the popular leaves, and Billy Holiday creating a protest song about lynchings in America, but having to be very strategic and methodical and visual in her storytelling, in her songwriting for that. on the leaves and blood at the roots.

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. And from that timeline, I can trace it all the way up to contemporary hip-hop where artists who grow up,

they grew up in Brooklyn or in Atlanta or in Oakland. They have to be very specific about what words they put together and what they're trying to say in their music because hip-hop historically has been criminalized. Like the lyrics have been used against artists in court of law. And there are racist roots associated with that. I think so much of how you tell a story, So much of storytelling in music is not only what you say, but how you say it.

How you bend the syllables, how you dole out the metaphor over three verses in a chorus, or how you build on the foundations of your argument over and over, or how you tell three individual stories to make up your overall thesis. Ted, do you think, I mean, is it your sense that protest music is one of the main, that it is the main American, truly American music or is that, are we pushing that too hard? Yeah, I hear from people

who try to tell me that there is no more protest music and they say, I listen to the radio and I don't hear it. But I think that's absolutely wrong. Periodically, like I say from my newsletter, I just come out with an article with examples of protest music around the world. And there are numerous examples. People have no idea. People are still being put in jail for their songs. They're being censored. I mean, this is a worldwide phenomenon. In many ways, it's more intense outside the United States than it is here. But even here, you know,

the protest music is everywhere. So I do, I don't say that it's the only thing that it's the only of music, and I think commercial music tends to be careful and skeptical about embracing protest music too much, but even in the most commercial genres, you still see it. So I do think that's an important threat of American music, but also an important threat of world music, and once again, always will be. And if I can add on to that point of the misconception that there is no more protest music, I think it has to do with the oversaturation of music. And I think it has to do with the oversaturation of media that we're living in right now specifically. We live in what's called, you know, people call it the attention economy with so many apps and the prevalence of social

media. I call it the dystopia of distraction because we are, we have never lived with so much information readily available at our fingertips and our screens and everything. And also this high level of of distraction. And distraction breeds oversimilization, which breeds apathy and how are you going to have a revolution if everybody's so apathetic, right? But I do think there are pockets of people definitely worldwide to Ted's point, but also in America who are creating protest music, but they are just not people who are beholden to like an algorithmic standard or the radio as a way to get their message out. The way we listen to me. music is clearly changing in this country. The vinyl records seem to be only for special collectors.

Even CDs have gone by the wayside. It's all, it's streaming, it's, and it's what people listen to and watch TikTok and so on. How much is that the way we listen? And frankly, what we're frankly forced to listen to based on choices made by others, changing the kind of music that comes out of this country. Ted? Well, I agree with what Sydney just said. It's very important to look at how music is consumed nowadays. And this is having a tremendous impact.

Probably the most powerful platform right now for music is TikTok. But there are people listen to music in tiny snippets. I heard someone tell me that the ideal TikTok lasts 15 seconds, and that's how you capture people. So what kind of message can you convey in 15 seconds, whether you're talking about protest or a love song or whatever? And it turns our rich musical culture into something that becomes degraded. The process of listening to music and scrolling, it's an addictive process. This is why the interfaces have been designed this way.

I don't think this is good for musicians. I don't think it's good for the listener. I don't think it's good for the culture. But this is, in fact, the reality of song consumption right now. I often argue that we need parallel institutions, a kind of new indie movement, a kind of new alternative musical culture. And it's out there, places like Band Camp or Substack like I'm on. These are where the alternative culture resides now.

And, Sidney, you did raise this a few minutes ago, that the way people listen to music has changed so much and the way that's being controlled. Are you as down on where we're heading or seem to be heading as Ted is? I don't know if I'm down. I'm cautious because even, for example, the song of the summer, there is no common song of the summer anymore. If we were to ask somebody 10, 15, 20 years ago, what is the song of the summer, you would probably have a lot more overlap than you do now,

because we live in such a individualized and splintered space culturally with how we consume music. And I think that has a lot to do with what we're talking about. It has a lot to do with the fact that not everyone is listening to the radio to get their musical diet in. People are not watching TV programs like American Bandstand or MTV's TRL or BETys 106 park to learn about new music. Everyone is seriously very streamlined laser focused on what their taste is, what their discovery is. And to be honest, it's not as exploratory anymore. A lot of it is coming off of algorithms. Another beast that we're battling is the prevalence of AI music. Because

on these apps where we're being serviced and being told what we like and what we should know about, AI music is just all up in the mix now. And it's generative AI. And the problem with it is it's taking, it's extractive in nature. It's taking music that is already out there and really diluting it to be a copy paste type of formulaic example of music. But again, what we've been talking about this whole time is the unique lived experience,

what it means to be American in this country. And these AIs don't have lived experience. you know, these zeros and ones have never been through anything. So they don't know what, if you're talking about losing your job at the factory, if you're talking about moving to a new city and not knowing anybody, and that is being regurgitated and pushed out to you through AI, it's just getting less and less authentic, which is it has, which is what has to be the baseline and the foundation

of any musical movement or song, authenticity. The AI is disturbing in many ways because as she points out, the AI song is all playacting. I mean, AI has never fallen in love. AI has never grieved the death of a loved one. AI doesn't know what it's like to deal with your parents or your children or with the community. I mean, it's all playacting. And so it's the ultimate in musical inauthenticity. And what they're banking on is for people not to know.

They're banking on it to just be in a playlist, and you are passively listening based on apathy, based on distraction, and that you won't notice the difference between someone who's really bearing their soul in a song and an AI that chopped and screwed a lived experience from someone and is just regurgitating it out. And to Ted's point, play acting. Yeah, no, it's absolutely true.

You know, AI companies brag that they've created 50 million new songs. You know, the dominant aesthetic, movement of our time. Somebody asked me this recently. Ted, what's the dominant aesthetic movement in music right now? And I say, I hate to tell you this.

It's called flood the zone. Flood the zone. You create 50 million songs and you dump them on the market. You hope one of them takes off. And you know, and that is, that's not aesthetics. That's just AI swap,

as the term is. So it's, I mean, but don't, I mean, let me take an optimistic standpoint. There's still great musicians out there. There are still creative spirits,

the great songs being written. I have confidence that the audience will eventually be able to figure this out and we will end up in a good place. But there will be a challenge and it's coming from the tech world. Let me just ask each of you, is there one song that today you think defines American music? That is such a loaded question.

That is such a hard question, Judy. I think there is a lot to choose from. And as we, as the times continue to be unprecedented, and we continue to have many revolutions happening and protests happening, I think a quintessential American song is one that grapples with those contradictions, with that conflict and isn't afraid to look it in the mirror. So I would say my choice right now would be,

This is America by Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, which It came out a while ago. It came out about eight years ago. Yeah, this is America. Guns in my area. I got the strap. I got to carry them.

It holds those contradictions of America's love of violence and subjugation, the normalization of gun violence, and the media industry or the music industry's promotion of that violence for pay. It holds all of that messiness together, and it gives you a real real thing. great beat to dance to. So it's doing that work of making the revolution irresistible by packaging something so nuanced and so difficult to carry and to care about sometimes in a piece

of art that you can replay and then sink into more and more. So that would be my pick right now. What about you, Ted? What would you say is his one number, one, that defines American music right now? You know, I'm going back to my poll of my readers, and the top choice they had was the Star-Spangled Banner, and they picked the performance by Jimmy Hendricks. I would just say I think the collective performances of all the performers who've done that song over the years

is probably the single best opportunity for us to get an insight into the diversity of American music. I mean, I think of the great performances of the National Anthem over the years by Whitney Houston, Justin, Marvin Gay, Chris Stapleton, Big Gaga, extraordinary piece. And it's actually a great art song, too, because it's a very difficult song to sing. It requires a range of 19 semitones, which is, you know, twice the range you need to sing twinkle, twinkle little star.

Yeah, the only place I really enjoy seeing the national anthem is in a big crowd, so nobody can hear me, can hear how I'm butchering it. For me, it's an unanswerable question. Just as Sydney said, it's hard. I mean, I think of so many songs and more that we've been talking about through this conversation that define our country. I just want to thank both of you.

This has been such a rich conversation with the two of you about music and about the way music speaks to what, America is, what it can be, what it hasn't been, and we hope what it will be in the future. Sidney Madden, Ted Joya, thank you both so much for talking with us. We appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, thank you.

Of course. Thank you.