The America 250 Mixtape

250 songs that define the USA at its best, worst, and everything in between.

For 250 years, we have been searching for a more perfect union inside this experiment we call America. Along the way, we’ve stumbled, tripped, crawled, and faceplanted, only to get back up, brush ourselves off, and repeat the process over and over and over again.

Freedom, we’re told, comes at a cost, and after two and a half centuries, that cost fluctuates depending on who you are, where you’re from, who you come from, what you believe, and how you look. And the rights we were told were unalienable are, in fact, only privileges that can be taken away if those in power will it so (and usually at the moment you need them most). Despite all this, we continue to strive for a better world, even if it may all be in vain. It’s the striving that makes us truly American.

So let’s celebrate the good, the bad, the ugly, the just, the unjust, the protests, the revolutions that were and were not televised, the resilience of a people to keep working toward that more perfect union. The 250-song-strong Mixtape below reveals America in all its frustrating contradictions: from the Dust Bowl populism of Woody Guthrie to the revolutionary hip-hop of Public Enemy, the patriotic testaments of some and the fight for justice of others. You’ll find this Mixtape to be party-friendly, thought-provoking, and provocative—sometimes all at once.

Some songs directly address America at its best and worst. Of those, I’ve placed them chronologically within their historical context, where possible. Others detail everyday life: the ramblin’ men, the workin’ women, the blue-collar jobs, the farmers, the families struggling to get by, the marginalized fighting for equality. Then, there are several songs here that act as travelogues across fruited plains and purple mountains’ majesties. We take trips throughout the highways and railways of this great land, whether it’s on the Illinois Central or along Route 66.

While we take time to celebrate our diversity and freedom, we also make room for aggressive jingoism and cheesy propaganda (CCR’s enraged “Fortunate Son” shares space here with Sgt Barry Sadler’s silver-winged chest-thumping “Ballad of the Green Berets;” the Isley Brothers and Public Enemy both “Fight the Power” while Toby Keith puts a boot in your ass and Lee Greenwood…at least knows he’s free, I guess), because they’re also part of America’s long and complicated story. And yes, we also make room for pure all-American cheese. You can’t fully appreciate the good without the bad, after all.

However you celebrate, here’s hoping you have a fun-filled yet peaceful semiquincentennial, and let’s work together to—hopefully, peacefully—make it to our 300th intact.