In 1998, Billy Bragg and Wilco recorded unreleased songs penned by Woody Guthrie.

Woody Guthrie wrote an erotic ode to Ingrid Bergman, which was unearthed years later by Guthrie's daughter.

Listen to Woody Guthrie's 'Columbia River Songs,' the government-commissioned album about Washington state's Columbia River.

Listen to Woody Guthrie's 1940 concept album about agricultural and economic destruction, 'Dust Bowl Ballads.'

Bob Dylan considered Woody Guthrie a foundational influence, a sentiment he immortalized in his 1962 recording 'Song to Woody.'

In the late '80s, Dylan formed the Traveling Wilburys with other rock legends

The word “supergroup” gets tossed around plenty in rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s never been more apt than with the Traveling Wilburys, a late '80s band featuring Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne. At the time, Dylan was feeling creatively adrift and far removed from the passion of his earlier work. The winking alter-egos of the Wilburys reinvigorated him, leading to a great record and a renaissance in Dylan’s solo career.

Before he was known as a folk singer, Woody Guthrie was a popular radio host in Los Angeles.

Watch Bruce Springsteen's 1985 performance of Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land,' which he calls 'the greatest song ever written about America.'

Woody Guthrie emblazoned 'This machine kills fascists' on his guitar, a phrase he borrowed from war machinery.

Why Neil Young is sometimes called 'the godfather of grunge'

The legendary singer-songwriter's work with his band Crazy Horse, especially "Rust Never Sleeps" and "Ragged Glory," married infectious melodies with overpowering guitars, a formula that many grunge acts would replicate. Young would go on to perform with Pearl Jam (like in the performance of "Rockin' in the Free World" below) and record the 1995 album "Mirror Ball" with them.

After the bitter breakup of the Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney only played music together one more time—at an impromptu studio session in 1974, joined by Stevie Wonder.

The FBI tracked Woody Guthrie's politics for years, amassing an enormous file that was only discovered many years after his death.

1982's ‘Nebraska’ was recorded alone at home, a rarity at the time for a major artist

“Born to Run” became a hit in part due to its massive sound, something that was only possible thanks to the magic of the studio. That continued with 1980’s “The River,” which gave Springsteen his first top 10 single. With “Nebraska,” though, Springsteen abandoned the studio, opting to release the spare recordings he made at home, by himself. At the time, such a decision was a rarity for a platinum artist.

Watch an early performance by Bruce Springsteen at a Greenwich Village coffeehouse in 1972.

Dylan's early records were socially conscious folk songs

Dylan's early records were modeled after his heroes Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, meaning they were often acoustic numbers filled with lyrical wordplay and political themes. "Masters of War," from 1963's "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," is a perfect example of the form, railing against politicians and war profiteers.

Woody Guthrie wrote 'This Land Is Your Land' as a sarcastic response to 'God Bless America.'

Dylan's raucous 1976 tour was one piece of an ongoing reinvention

In the mid-70s, Dylan assembled a ragtag group of musicians and poets—including Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, and Allen Ginsberg—he called the Rolling Thunder Revue. Rather than playing stadiums in major markets, they played smaller venues in smaller cities for a more intimate experience. The tour yielded some of the most exuberant versions of Dylan songs, captured in this 1976 performance in Fort Collins, which originally aired on NBC as “Hard Rain.”

Woody Guthrie was briefly a member of the Communist Party USA, but he was kicked out for 'lack of discipline.'

Revisiting the milieu of the Greenwich Village music scene

Few neighborhoods of the world stand out as more productive of a robust music scene than New York City's Greenwich Village, the bohemian launchpad of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and other folk artists of the 1960s and '70s. Expert David Browne discusses why it became so significant in this episode of "Sound Opinions."

Eddie Vedder's humble gas-station attendant roots

The singer was living in the San Diego area when a friend mailed him a demo tape recorded by Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard that lacked vocals. Vedder wrote lyrics for the three songs (one of which would later become the hit "Alive") and tracked his own vocals on the tape, then mailed it back to the band. Two weeks later, they invited him to move to Seattle to join the band.

How 'Nevermind' realigned the music industry

Nirvana's breakout album inspired other major labels to hunt for similarly loud, countercultural bands. That led to a fascinating period in popular music that found defiantly anticommercial indie acts like the Melvins, the Butthole Surfers, and Ween (among many, many others) suddenly offered lucrative contracts.

How Kurt Cobain was influenced by the Beats

Fresh off the success of Nirvana's "Nevermind," band frontman Kurt Cobain reached out to his literary idol, the Beat writer William S. Burroughs, suggesting a collaboration. The correspondence led to "The 'Priest' They Called Him," a hard-to-find recording featuring Burroughs reading a story and Cobain on dissonant guitar.

Bob Dylan deeply admires Willie Nelson

The Nobel Prize-winning songwriter is a big fan of the country troubadour. When Dylan was asked for his thoughts on Nelson for a New Yorker profile, he offered a poetic monologue not unlike his lyrics, including a comparison to "the invisible air."

Bob Dylan wrote and recorded songs that later became hits when they were covered by artists like Jimi Hendrix, Adele, and Guns N' Roses.

Listen to the 'Deep Six' compilation, one of the first collections of grunge

In the '80s, "grunge" was still not a widely used term, though there was a distinct sound coming from Seattle, one that blended punk and metal. C/Z Records decided to document the emerging sound in 1985 by releasing a compilation with six of the city's cutting-edge bands, including Green River, Melvins, and Soundgarden.

Listen to Bruce Springsteen's first band, the Castiles, which he joined when he was still a teenager.

Judee Sill's admirers hear a legend gone before her prime

The singer-songwriter released only two albums in her lifetime: 1971's self-titled and 1973's "Heart Food." Critics and contemporaries (including Graham Nash and David Crosby) praised both, though they were commercial flops. She died of a drug overdose in 1979 and had grown so obscure by then that no obituary was published. In the early 2000s, her recordings were reissued and found a new generation of fans.

The Shaggs weren't good musicians, but they still made a classic

In 1969, the three sisters recorded "Philosophy of the World"; only 100 copies were publicly distributed. The record became a cult classic thanks to its strange backstory (their father forced them into playing music) and the band's amateurism. Critic Lester Bangs wrote, "They can't play a lick! But mainly they got the right attitude, which is all rock'n'roll's ever been about from day one."

'Nebraska' was a sharp pivot inspired by proto-punk band Suicide

After "Born to Run," Springsteen's songwriting turned darker on subsequent albums "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "The River," as he began exploring the harsher realities of adulthood and working-class life, but "Nebraska" was his most gothic, featuring haunted songs partially inspired by the abrasive proto-punk duo Suicide.

According to Kurt Cobain, Wipers invented grunge

Wipers began in Portland, Oregon in 1977, playing a form of punk rock that sounded darker and heavier than their contemporaries in New York, California, and England. The band remained an underground secret for years, influencing countless artists, including Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. "What more can I say about them?" he said in an interview. "They started Seattle grunge rock in Portland, 1977."

'Over the Rainbow' became a widely covered standard

Judy Garland’s original 1939 version won the Academy Award for best original song, though it never appeared on the Billboard pop singles chart (which didn’t appear until 1940). Twenty different versions of the song by other artists—including Willie Nelson, Patti LaBelle, and Israel "Iz" Kamakawiwo'ole—have appeared on numerous Billboard charts.

The Brill Building was a breeding ground for girl group classics

New York City's Brill Building housed the working offices for over 160 music industry professionals, including some of the country's finest songwriters, such as Neil Diamond, Burt Bacharach, and George Clinton. Below is a 1959 picture of three more Brill Building pros: Carole King, Paul Simon, and Gerry Goffin.

Walt Whitman wrote a poem for the official celebration of America's 100th anniversary, but was not invited to read at the event.

The best grunge albums of the 1990s

The best way to understand the music is to immerse yourself in it. This list compiles the definitive albums from the subgenre's peak period, featuring records from the big names associated with the scene (such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden) alongside less obvious picks that released grunge-adjacent classics (including Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, and PJ Harvey).

Listen to the earliest known recording of a whale song

A recording of a humpback whale was taken by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution near Bermuda in 1949, but forgotten for decades. When first captured, researchers didn't know what animal they were hearing, and therefore didn't catalogue the recording. The well-preserved audio was found by the team's archivist in 2025.

The Dylan/Whitman connection

Even before his 2016 Nobel Prize, critics often wrote about Bob Dylan with a seriousness typically reserved for literary figures. In this critical analysis, Jones Hogsed continues the tradition, analyzing Dylan's vision of America alongside Walt Whitman's.

The news feature that broke grunge

The Sub Pop label paid for journalist Everett True, then writing for Melody Maker, to fly to the sleepy northwestern city to check out the scene, which was breeding a curious mix of punk rock and heavy metal. The gambit worked. "The most vibrant, kicking music scene encompassed in one city for at least 10 years," Everett wrote.

Dylan influenced many of his contemporaries

Dylan's groundbreaking approach to songwriting didn't just change his career; it changed the trajectory of American popular music. This podcast from the National Association of Music Merchants' oral history project features interviews with several Dylan compatriots and fans–including Pete Seeger, Emmylou Harris, and Robbie Robertson–who detail how Dylan changed their careers and how they viewed songwriting.

A research study found that Springsteen's popularity is due to his lyrics' authenticity

The Penn State study compiled lyrics from 18 albums and analyzed the words that "convey genuineness and honesty" and those that suggest cognitive activity. They found that Springsteen's songs are often focused on the present and "tend to express positive emotion," which they believe might explain why his fans are so devoted.

Bob Dylan often reworks his vocal melodies, even for his classic songs

Bob Dylan is an unpredictable live artist willing to reinvent his classics as they age. This analysis by Steven Rings, a music professor, breaks down the evolution of the singing style in "A Hard Rain’s A‐Gonna Fall," which transformed in one 1994 performance and then continued growing.

Allen Ginsberg on how Walt Whitman changed poetry

In this 1992 appearance on "Charlie Rose," Beat Generation icon Ginsberg articulates why Whitman mattered not only to the Beats but to all of poetry, arguing that he forever changed the possibilities of the form.

Joan Didion interviewed The Grateful Dead in 1967, before they became music icons.

A comprehensive list of the best Bob Dylan covers

Bob Dylan’s songwriting quickly became part of the great American songbook, thanks in large part to many major artists of the '60s popularizing their own versions of his songs. As this list proves, though, that tradition continued all the way to today. Learn about essential covers of Dylan songs by Adele, Guns N’ Roses, The White Stripes, and others.

Broadway's songwriters began experimenting in the 1920s

Broadway’s early decades were heavily influenced by opera and vaudeville, but songwriters in the 1920s began exploring more narrative-based songwriting and psychologically complex characters. That trend would continue in the following decades, though it would evolve in even more nuanced ways.

Allen Ginsberg debuted his poem 'Howl' at San Francisco's Six Gallery in 1955, kicking off the nationwide interest in the Beat Generation.

Daniel Johnston's home recordings have inspired countless rock legends

The singer-songwriter self-released cassettes in the early '80s that were not fit for the radio—their sound quality was poor, and the songs were often little more than an organ and Johnston's high-pitched voice, singing about things like Casper the Friendly Ghost. The tapes eventually found their way to alternative tastemakers, who lauded the songs' brilliance and inspired a cult following that has admired Johnston's music for decades.

In 2016, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his lyrics, marking the first time a rock songwriter had won the award.

Long before Coachella, Steve Wozniak attempted a similarly-minded festival

In 1982, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak was on a hiatus from Apple after a near-fatal plane crash. In his spare time, he decided to throw a festival that would bring together cutting-edge music and technology—a Woodstock for the 1980s. The result was the US Festival, an early ancestor of Coachella that brought world-class acts like Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, Talking Heads, the Grateful Dead, and the Ramones to a rustic venue outside Los Angeles.

'A Boy Named Sue,' made famous by Johnny Cash, was written by Shel Silverstein, a writer best known for his children's poetry.

A teenage Springsteen struggled with his father

Springsteen's father didn't understand why his son was interested in pursuing a music career, leading to a tense relationship that was often exacerbated by his father's struggles with mental illness.

How Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman grappled with the American Civil War

Whitman, whose brother was injured while fighting for the Union, was often overt in his pro-Union poems. Dickinson, whose brother paid to have someone enlist under his name, was more subtle, though equally as affected, as this comparative analysis makes clear.