Americana Part 1: This Land is Your Land

Americana is currently having a moment in popular culture. Artists like Zach Bryan and Billy Strings are selling out arenas, and even Taylor Swift and Beyoncé dabbled in Americana on recent albums. It has likely never been more commercially popular than it is right now. Over the next few articles, we will explore the history of the genre. On Apple Music, the Americana category is represented by a picture of Jason Isbell. So, what I’ll try to do over this series is draw a line from Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie to Jason Isbell and his peers. Not every artist mentioned is purely Americana, but they influenced those that make it now and added to its sound.