(Note: This is one of an occasional and ongoing series of assessments of my favorite albums, parsed by musical genre. Click Here for a series introduction and list of all genres covered, or to be covered, therein).

Background: “Folk music” takes its name from the word “folklore,” which was coined in 1846 by English writer, demographer, and antiquarian William John Thoms, who defined the word to mean “the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes.” Hmmm. Bit elitist there, good Sir, bit elitist indeed. A more modern definition, courtesy Wikipedia, defines folklore as “the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture, including oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions.”

That oral tradition element is a cornerstone aspect of the emergence of the folk music idiom. Common elements in the musical traditions of myriad countries, nations, and cultures around the world include songs with unknown composers, played on traditional instruments, about cultural or national identity, and performed by custom over long periods of time. In most cases, such music is passed down between generations, orally or casually, without anchor in classical compositional rubrics or commercial recording technologies.

The British Isles stand as one of the most well-documented, far-reaching, and influential sources of frequently-played and widely-recognized folk music, around the world, reflecting the global span of the United Kingdom’s imperial aspirations and successes. Many “patriotic” songs and popular church hymns in the United States take their melodies from old British tunes, and the American Folk Music Revival (circa 1945-1965) closely mirrored contemporaneous happenings in Great Britain. Of course, because Britain’s component nations are much older than the United States, England and its neighbors had actually already been through what’s known as the First Folk Music Revival (circa 1890-1920), when a combination of nationalism and academic fervor led scholars to document what were perceived as dying traditions, first via transcription, then via recordings.

One of the most important documents underpinning the First Folk Music Revival in Britain was the text English and Scottish Ballads (1860), compiled and edited by American scholar Francis James Child. There were 305 “Child Ballads” (as they have come to be known), many of which have been recorded and performed by singers/musicians in Britain, America, and beyond. Domestically, Burl Ives, Joan Baez, Art Garfunkel and even Bob Dylan tapped the Child Ballads in their respective canons, and the great American folklorist/musicologist/mystic Harry Smith included several of them in his seminal 1952 collection, Anthology of American Folk Music.

As Dylan rose to the forefront of the American Folk Revival in the early 1960s, his songs (both those he recorded, and those he demoed/published, without issuing them under his own name) came to serve as a sort of modern Child Ballads for many singers and groups in Britain and elsewhere, including many of the groups and artists who went on the spearhead the British Folk Rock movement. Dylan’s decision to “go electric” was widely derided by folk music purists, both in America and in Britain. One of the most infamous examples of the “Electric Dylan” controversy occurred at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1966, when he sparred with a heckler who had shouted “Judas!” at him.

As Dylan and others dragged American folk music into the rock era (a key contributor to the emergence of Americana, which I covered in an earlier installment of this series), a variety of English performers followed suit, taking up electric instruments to cover Dylan songs, Child Ballads, other British Folk songs, and (eventually) a collection of newly-penned tunes within an emergent “British Folk Rock” genre. Folk purists derided them just as they had derided Dylan, but through bloody-mindedness and persistence in the face of obloquy, an extraordinary body of music emerged, often penned and played by an equally extraordinary body of musicians. British Folk Music also often incorporated unique instrumental or sonic elements from the furthest reaches of the British Empire, with Indian, Caribbean, African, and other “exotic” textures woven into a beautiful and colorful creative tapestry, more rich and diverse (to these ears) than the guitar-and-harmonica fare favored by like-minded Americans of the era.

I noted when I did my earlier Prog installment of Genre Delve that its  temporal span (my top ten Prog albums were all issued between 1971 and 1976) was likely to be the most narrow of any genre I covered. But as I put together a list of my ten favorite British Folk Rock albums, I realized I had been way incorrect in that presumption, as this listing is even more narrowly focused than the Prog one: all of these albums came out between 1967 and 1971, and eight of the ten of them were issues in the last two years of that span. The movement was wide and exceptional for a brief period of time, then some key players went elsewhere, or did other things, while other key players have essentially done variations of the general theme up to present times, without the sorts of innovation and exploration that defined their influential early works. It was a bright, brief burning.

As is also the case with Prog, the British Folk Rock scene was incredibly incestuous, and some of the same musicians appear multiple times below, with different bands. (As a point of practice/principle, I try to cite ten albums by ten artists in these lists, rather than having multiple entries by any one artist). Lineups tended to be very short-lived, as did the bands themselves, with the notable exceptions of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, who soldier on to this day. While my list of ten favorite albums below is narrow in geography and time-span, the breadth of music offered on these discs is surprisingly diverse, even though all of them retain a certain something that clearly ties them to the British folk tradition.

MY TEN FAVORITE BRITISH FOLK ROCK ALBUMS EVER (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

1. The Incredible String Band, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion (July 1967): The ISB began as a straight folk trio, before breaking the mold with this, their sophomore album, when Robin Williamson and Mike Heron emerged as the group’s core. 5000 Spirits is their most balanced between the pair in terms of songwriting, and it marked the true emergence of their sound: folky, freaky, psychedelic, and epic.

2. Fairport Convention, Unhalfbricking (July 1969): If any one group sits central in British Folk Rock’s history, Fairport Convention must surely be it. After beginning as a sort of an English analog to Jefferson Airplane, by this (their third album), Fairport managed to combine traditional, original, and Dylan songs into a distinctive oeuvre, highlighting the epic talents of Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, and associates.

3. Trader Horne, Morning Way (March 1970): Trader Horne were a short-lived band featuring original Fairport singer Judy Dyble and former Them keyboardist Jackie McAuley. They only issued one album, but it sure was a good one. Dyble is a truly delightful talent, somewhat neglected in the historical record by having been replaced in Fairport by the outrageously talented Sandy Denny. She certainly deserved better.

4. Steeleye Span, Hark! The Village Wait (June 1970): Fouding Fairport bassist Ashley “Tyger” Hutchings established Steeleye Span with a pair of singing couples: Maddy Prior and Tim Hart, and Terry and Gay Woods. That original quintet only issued this album before the Woodses left and Prior/Hart became the Span’s ongoing core, but I find Hark! to be the folkiest and most engaging disc in the group’s long discography.

5. Vashti Bunyan, Just Another Diamond Day (December 1970): Vashti Bunyan spent much of 1968 traveling through Scotland via horse-drawn wagon, writing lovely songs about her experiences. Bunyan’s debut, produced by Joe Boyd (another crucial figure in this genre) was a minimalist delight, but its wan sales led to the disillusioned singer retiring from music-making, despite living with The Incredible String Band at the time.

6. Trees, On the Shore (January 1971): Trees were an eclectic quintet who played both traditional and original songs (most of the latter written by Bias Boshell, who went on to work with Kiki Dee and the Moody Blues), with singer Celia Humphris right there with Denny, Dyble, and Pryor among the finest female singers of the era. On the Shore was their sophomore, and final, album, and it is truly brilliant, from beginning to end.

7. Magna Carta, Songs from Wasties Orchard (May 1971): Magna Carta were formed as a trio in 1969, earning significant attention from the rock side of the scene, with the likes of Gus Dudgeon, Rick Wakeman, and Tony Visconti working on their debut disc. Songs from Wasties Orchard was their third album, heavily featuring Davey Johnstone, later Elton John’s mainstay guitarist, to this day. A beautiful, powerful, potent release.

8. Bread, Love and Dreams, Amaryllis (June 1971): Bread, Love and Dreams were a trio featuring David McNiven, Angie Rew, and Carolyn Davis. They issued three albums in three years, then disappeared, easily the most obscure of the groups appearing in this list. That’s a shame, because all three of their albums were great. This was the final one, alas, and also their best, though I know little about it beyond how good its songs are.

9. Fresh Maggots, Fresh Maggots (October 1971): Fresh Maggots were duo featuring Mick Burgoyne and Leigh Dolphin, who were but teens when they issued this, their first album, and its (great) adjacent single, “Car Song,” after which they quickly disbanded. Their disc became a precious collector’s item and rare totem of sorts in the Folk Rock world, leading them to finally issue a second record . . . 49 years later.

10. The Woods Band, The Woods Band (December 1971): After leaving the original incarnation of Steeleye Span, Terry and Gay Woods formed their own band with guitarist Ed Deane and drummer Pat Nash, issuing this self-titled album. The couple performed through the 1970s with a variety of supporting players, before divorcing, personally and creatively. Terry later joined The Pogues, capping an amazing career.

As I do for each installment in the Genre Delve series, I’ve linked my own personally-curated Spotify playlist related to this article, below. I will note that my playlist (which predated this article, and is one of the most regularly played around our house) is a wee bit broader than true “British Folk Rock,” of its core era, as it does include some contemporary artists, as well as other Northern European folk traditions (most notably Scandinavian). But those songs don’t jar my ears in this context, and presumably won’t jar yours either, and they might even open up some new avenues to explore in other traditional genres, both acoustic and electric. As always, I welcome your thoughts and reactions to my list, and your recommendations or suggestions for other things that I might find interesting.

(Note: This is one of an occasional and ongoing series of assessments of my favorite albums, parsed by musical genre. Click Here for a series introduction and list of all genres covered, or to be covered, therein).

Background: In my prior installment of this series, covering Americana, I touched on the “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” aspects of defining what does (and does not) qualify as Folk vs Americana vs Country. But, boy howdy, that arcane genre argument pales in comparison to those often and widely debated in the heavy music world, where genre definition (and related purity tests) have been elevated to an art form unlike many others in the rich world of creative categorization.

Need proof of my assertion? Take a look at the Wikipedia page describing Heavy Metal Genres. At the top level of the hierarchy, 25 different genres are identified, and almost all of them have multiple sub-genres, some of which are then even further subdivided. The differences relate to (among other things) areas/languages of origin, complexity, speed, vocal styles, drum techniques, use of electronics, meter, rhythm, stage costuming, and on and on and on. And the people who favor one metal idiom over another can be most particular about their fields of interest and expertise, and most dismissive of those who confuse Deathcore with Death Metal, or Djent with Blackgaze, or Blackened Crust from Post-Black Metal, etc. etc. etc. (I’m not making any of those genres up, for the record).

Another favorite argument among metalheads hinges around identifying the very first metal record. Some focus on the trademark distorted guitar and power chords of the idiom, and often offer such songs as Link Wray’s “Rumble” or the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” or the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” as the alphas to the genre’s omega. Others focus on the emergence of the sludgy, slower, and longer fare offered in the late ’60s by the likes of Iron Butterfly or Vanilla Fudge. Then there are the technician-centric types who would define the emergence of the idiom around the works of pioneering guitar heroes like Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page or Pete Townsend. Some focus on the over-the-top looks and sounds of the music’s live presentation (e.g. Arthur Brown), others on the lyrical contents (e.g. Steppenwolf’s use of the phrase “heavy metal thunder” in their hit “Born to Be Wild.”)

I suspect that if you surveyed a truly random sampling of 1,000 headbangers, though, that the record that would receive the most votes as metal’s ur-document would be Black Sabbath’s self-titled 1970 debut disc. This sentiment is likely stronger now than usual due to the widely-covered final Black Sabbath concert earlier this year, followed by the death of singer Ozzy Osbourne soon thereafter. The Sabs’ first record featured the slower tempos, the grinding riffs, the tritone “devil’s chord,” the ooky-spooky lyrics and album cover, and numerous other hallmarks that make it a reasonable answer to the “first metal album ever” question. But, interestingly, the sound of that first Sabbath album is incredibly far from the sound of the many of the genres that arose in its name, as elements of electronic/industrial, punk, hardcore, classical, progressive, and other strains of music wormed their ways into the darkened hearts of the form’s practitioners, creating myriad emergent flavors of the hard stuff for those on the hunt for new thrills.

When I set up the various genres that I intended to cover in this series, I originally just put down “Metal” as one of my categories. I’ve never much liked, nor often used, the “heavy metal” term, as it seems to imply some sort of slightly not-right essence given its popularity as as descriptor used by those who don’t actually like or listen to the music. It’s got a whiff of cheese about it, where “metal” is punchy and direct. But as I worked to figure out my ten favorite albums within that idiom, I found myself confronting my own quandaries on what fit and what didn’t, and how I thought about various albums from a categorization standpoint. I listened to lots of what would have been dubbed “heavy metal” at the time of its release in the 1970s, though I don’t, now, really think of any of that as “metal” today.

The crux of the issue for me is the accessibility and popularity of the artists in question. Sure, Led Zepellin and Black Sabbath and KISS and AC/DC and other massively popular artists were (and are, by some) considered “metal,” but non-metalheads can also happily listen to their work without affront or offense, especially after decades of those songs becoming part of American cultural currency. When I think “metal,” I instead think of songs and artists and albums that most casual music listeners would not choose, nor in some cases would even be able, to listen to regularly with any sort of pleasure. “Metal” is an extreme, niche idiom to me, while “heavy metal” is a more accessible, popular one.

So, since I don’t like the term “heavy metal,” I decided that the issue for me was really more about “metal” vs “hard rock,” as I prefer to think of it. Putting ten albums in each of those buckets made things work for me, with less cognitive whiplash or attempts to put square pegs into pentangle shaped holes. But then that “hard rock” bucket offered some of its own challenges, especially when it came to big superstar ’70s rock acts like Led Zeppelin or The Who or Aerosmith. As I pondered the conundrum, I decided that there was actually a meaningful distinction between “hard rock” and “AOR/classic rock,” so I am going to cull what I consider to be emblematic records of the latter category, and give them a Genre Delve of their own. In some ways, I think that one will almost represent “Rock albums that are great, but at bottom line are just rock albums, no subsidiary distinctions necessary.”

Parsing things that way sort of created a temporal spectrum for the “Metal vs Hard Rock” rosters. The Hard Rock pioneers are mostly (but not exclusively) from the 1970s, while the Metal idiom, for me, as I define it, emerged near the end of the 1980s or early 1990s. The heart of the ’80s was, for me (and many others) a terrible time for heavy music, with the mostly awful “hair metal” bands of the era dominating the popular echelons of the movement, while the “good stuff” was often happening in scenes more aligned with post-punk or experimental or hardcore music. (No coincidence that in my widely-read Worst Rock Band Ever survey from 2004, it was an ’80s hair metal band who came out on top).

So with all of that as complicated preview, in this installment of Genre Delve, I’m going to offer a list of 20 albums, parsed between what I think of as Metal, and what I think of as Hard Rock (minus the AOR/Classic Rock contingent). I guess in the end, I too must fall into the “angels on the head of the pin” mindset that so shapes the marketing, consumption, and appreciation of the world’s heavier tunes.

MY TEN FAVORITE METAL ALBUMS EVER (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

1. Godflesh, Streetcleaner (1989): I listened to a lot of industrial music (both of the atonal/irrythmic English variety and the tighter American strain most closely identified with Wax Trax Records) through the latter ’80s. This thread led me to acquiring the debut Godflesh album, which merged electronic beats with crushing low-end guitar and guttural vocals. A key text in hard rock’s morph into metal. Still vital, still brutal.

2. Killdozer, Twelve Point Buck (1989): I’ve written at length about my (controversial) theory that Nirvana’s success really should have been Killdozer’s success; see here and here. The Wisconsin-bred trio were sludgy and heavy, but they made their heavy sludge sparkle, both musically and lyrically, and I still count Michael Gerald as one of America’s greatest musical wordsmiths ever, seriously. A massive metal monument.

3. Ministry, Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs (1992): Chicago’s Ministry went from synth-heavy New Wave dance band to industrial pioneers to metal juggernaut over the course of their first five albums. Psalm 69 was a fierce, fast political polemic, scored with tooth rattling concussions, smart samples, and super-shreddy guitars, setting an oft-imitated, but rarely equaled, template for those who followed.

4. Rollins Band, The End of Silence (1992): California’s SST Records was one of the most influential labels in my development as a music devotee, with owner Greg Ginn’s band, Black Flag, as the pinnacle of American hardcore music through the middle ’80s. The greatest of Black Flag’s several singers, Henry Rollins, went hard into muscular metal after the Flag had run its course, with The End of Silence as his punchiest masterstroke.

5. Sepultura, Roots (1996): Metal is a truly global musical phenomenon, perhaps rivaled only by hip-hop in the ways that musicians from outside the United States have morphed our exports into new things by integrating local flavors. Brazil’s Sepultura are among the most powerful and interesting metal acts anywhere, never more so than on the seminal, dynamic Roots, the last album featuring original lead singer Max Cavalera.

6. Six Feet Under, Warpath (1997): Chris Barnes was the founding lead vocalist for Cannibal Corpse, but he left before the group became sort of the cartoon caricature of the gross quadrant of extreme metal. He’s worked with a variety of players as Six Feet Under since 1993, with Warpath as the group’s second release. It’s heavy, but with many memorably sticky riffs, and Barnes’ Cookie Monster vocals front and center.

7. Scissorfight, New Hampshire (2000): I had not heard of Scissorfight before seeing them open for Clutch (more about them below) in 2002, but then that show turned out to be one of my most memorable ever, so I acquired their back catalog, and found them to be masterfully powerful and often deliriously humorous (a trait not common to metal). They were true riffmasters, and New Hampshire is a smorgasbord of crunch.

8. KORN, Untouchables (2002): KORN are one of the most commercially successful bands on this list of 20 albums, but they’re also one of the most critically derided. I can state categorically in this case that critical conventional wisdom in this case is just wrong. I’m fond of the group and its music, never more so than on their finest disc, Untouchables, which deftly balances brutality and vulnerability like few others can.

9. Napalm Death, Apex Predator — Easy Meat (2015): I would have cited Napalm Death as my very favorite band, ever, for a lot of years, per this article. They were hugely influential in the early years as the fathers of the Grindcore genre, but my favorite material by them came much later, as they were one of the few groups I can think of who just got better and better as they aged. This disc is a metal masterpiece, truly.

10. Gojira, Magma (2016): French metallurgists Gojira might have been the world’s most (in)famous metal group for a period of time after their performance of “Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)” as part of the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics. (If you haven’t seen it, you should). They stand out for me, more so on Magma than anywhere else, for their abilities to positively swing in a mostly stiff musical form.

MY TEN FAVORITE HARD ROCK ALBUMS EVER (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

1. Steppenwolf, Steppenwolf (1968): I’ve liked the hard stuff from a very early age, with Steppenwolf emerging as my first favorite rock band when I was barely of school age. And, yep, this is the album where we first heard about “heavy metal thunder,” giving a genre its name, whether it existed yet or not. This is truly a classic album from an amazing group who had multiple hits while playing harder-than-usual for their times.

2. Black Sabbath, Paranoid (1970): If Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut is generally considered as the first true metal album, then its sequel, released a mere seven months later, is definitely the first great metal album. Iconic cut after iconic cut, with the Sabs really coming into their own here, sonically, lyrically, conceptually, and in terms of proving that their debut was no fluke, but was, instead, a revolutionary statement.

3. Jethro Tull, Benefit (1970): Jethro Tull became a punchline when they won the 1989 Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance, beating out fan favorites Metallica. I love Tull, but I would agree that that award just showed what idiots most Grammy voters were (and remain). The much-earlier Benefit was Tull’s hardest and weirdest album ever, so if they’d given it a metal Grammy instead, I’d have been good with that.

4. Hawkwind, Space Ritual (1973): The Hawkwind Blanga Guide remains my longest-running source of internet notoriety, per this article. The Guide ranked all of the then-current Hawkwind albums on a scale from 1 to 10, based on the power of the “Blanga” (their unique space rock style) contained therein. Space Ritual received an easy 10, and was cited as the perfect example of the idiom. It still holds that honor to these ears.

5. King Crimson, Red (1974): I debated about whether to cite Red as hard rock, or as metal, or as part of the pending “AOR/Classic Rock” article, since it’s smarter than most hard rock, less off-putting than most metal, and not as popular as most AOR fare. But Red rocks hard, and it’s been most influential on generations of technical metal players and their bands, so this seemed the best place to slot an inarguable masterpiece.

6. KISS, Alive! (1975): Masked rock monsters KISS issued three studio albums in 1974-5 to little acclaim, while earning an underground reputation for their spectacular live shows. So, of course, it was Alive! that really served to take that underground cache into the mainstream, nominally capturing a single great concert, if you ignore the multiple sources and overdubs. But, hey, it really rocks! Means justified by ends!

7. Van Halen, Van Halen (1978): The late, great Eddie Van Halen completely uprooted the then-prevalent understanding of what guitar heroes should sound like, look like, and do, on this extraordinary debut album. Yeah, the solo “Eruption” was a landmark in electric guitar, but it wouldn’t be as well remembered as it was without the ten classic songs surrounding it, made resonant by Ted Templeman’s perfect, pristine production.

8. AC/DC, Back in Black (1980): I vacillated on whether to include this album or its predecessor, Highway to Hell, but decided that Back in Black had to be the choice, if only because of how shockingly good and unexpected it was, being released a mere six months after the death of long-time vocalist Bon Scott. New singer Brian Johnson was set up by circumstances to fail, for sure, but became legend instead. The rock abides.

9. Guns N’ Roses, Appetite for Destruction (1987): I was in a club in Washington, DC, sometime in 1987 when the DJ popped “Welcome to the Jungle” onto his turntable. The crowd on the floor went berserk, and when the song ended, demanded that the DJ play it again. Amazingly, the rest of Appetite was almost as great, a true breath of fresh rock air, blowing the nasty hairspray smell of most ’80s metal out the window, forever.

10. Clutch, The Elephant Riders (1998): I never saw The Who in concert before Moon and Entwistle left the building, but based on extant video evidence, I’d not argue with those who cite them as the best live rock band ever. If asked to pick a band I have seen, Clutch would clearly take the title. The Elephant Riders was the first album of theirs that I acquired, and it remains a fave, despite numerous fine released from the group since.

As I will do for each installment in the Genre Delve series, I’ve linked my own personally-curated Spotify playlist related to this article, below. You can sample songs from the albums and artists cited here, and also other genre favorites to give them setting and context. I’ve included both Metal and Hard Rock in the mix, and I suspect that if you spin with open ears, it will clear as to which bucket I think each group fits. As always, I welcome your thoughts and reactions to my list, and your recommendations or suggestions for other things that I might find interesting.

(Note: This is one of an occasional and ongoing series of assessments of my favorite albums, parsed by musical genre. Click Here for a series introduction and list of all genres covered, or to be covered, therein).

Background: Merriam-Webster cites the first known use of the word “Americana” as having occurred in 1841, defining the term as: “materials concerning or characteristic of America, its civilization, or its culture.” Of course, even back in the early 19th Century, “America” meant “the United States Thereof” to many of its jingo-tending citizens, without regard to the scores of other countries across the two continents named for Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci. Which, in turn, reminds me of a fave quote from early 20th Century English humorist E.V. Lucas that I once appropriated for a song called “Comrade Nephew’s Nose,” recorded around 1984: “Americans are people who prefer the Continent to their own country, but refuse to learn its languages.” Indeed. 

I’m guessing I first heard the term “Americana” to refer to a musical genre in the early 1990s, after some period of time when “Country Rock” or “Roots Rock” or “Country Punk” or “Punkabilly” had been coined to describe what was generally seen and heard as a blend of acoustic country-fried music set to electric rock arrangements. Then in the ’90s, we started to get such micro-genres as Freak Folk and Alt-Country and No Depression, the latter named for an influential 1990 album by the group Uncle Tupelo, who went on to spawn both Wilco and Son Volt. (I interviewed Son Volt guitarist Dave Boquist in 1999, and he provided some interesting perspective on that era’s musical labels and evolution).

Around the same time that I interviewed Dave Boquist, the Americana Music Association (AMA) was founded, with the goal of creating a “network for Americana artists, radio stations, record labels, publishers, and others [to develop] an infrastructure [to] boost visibility and economic viability.” You know a cultural movement has reached critical mass when it requires a trade association. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences slowly glommed onto the term in the years that followed, changing the name of the “Best Contemporary Folk Album” Grammy (first awarded in 1987) to “Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album” in 2007, and then splitting those categories into two separate awards in 2011. 

So what, exactly, do the AMA and the Recording Academy consider to be “Americana” at this point? The former defines the genre as “the rich threads of country, folk, blues, soul, bluegrass, gospel, and rock in our tapestry [resulting in] a distinctive roots-oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw.” The Recording Academy, in breaking apart the Contemporary Folk and Americana Grammys, decided that the former had to be based on all acoustic instrumentation, while the latter included electric band arrangements. Okay: angels, head of pin; head of pin, angels.

It gets even more complicated if you try to parse the distinctions between Country Music and Americana. Personally, I like a lot of the latter, and not much of the former, and I would distinguish the two idioms by citing the slick sheen, chart focus, right-wing politics, fake/exaggerated Southern accents, faux cowboy schtick, and NASCAR/Pick-Up Truck culture adjacency of much Country music, many/most facets of which are absent in Americana. You could say that Country is to Americana as New Wave was to Punk: a more popularly palatable alternative to a genre that might be a wee bit too raw for some casual radio listeners and concert-goers.

I’d also argue that Americana’s lyrical concerns are also often more meaningful, “real,” story-based, and creative than the sorts of stock, trope-based words churned out by Country song-smiths (often non-performers) for mass production/consumption by the hunky cowboy and sexy cowgirl singers who consistently top the Country charts, and the fans who love them. Nothing wrong with that, of course, if that’s your thing. I certainly do adore some classic Country artists of the Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton variety, but as a general rule, slick contemporary Country music is one of the very few musical idioms that I can neither embrace nor enjoy. Your own mileage may vary based on usage.

One final nuance: does one have to be “American” (in the sense of “USA-ian” not of “a resident of North or South America”) to be an “Americana” artist? The AMA and Recording Academy would say “no,” with (for example) Englishman Robert Plant having been nominated for multiple Americana Grammies, and the Canadians of The Band having been one of the motive forces of the musical idiom, long before it had its own name. So in my own personal list of my Ten Favorite Americana Albums Ever, I do include performers from beyond the boundaries of our 50 American States.

While the formal definition/recognition of the Americana genre is a relatively recent development, I’m back-dating it to include the sorts of roots, folk, and other musical idioms that have primarily emerged from the Southeastern parts of the country in which my own family history runs deep, and which would have been dubbed “Americana” had the term been in widespread use at the time of their releases. This makes the temporal span of my Americana Top Ten list as broad and long as any other entry in this Genre Delve series has been or likely will be. Which is, I think, a good thing, especially after the extremely tight window I defined in my prior article of my Fave Prog Albums.

It’s good to know that the Americana genre is a living one, and that if I revisit this list some years hence, there’s a chance that new entries could emerge. Living genres are what make me keep buying and exploring new music, which is a favorite pastime (duh!), and the Americana music being made today is as fine as any that has come before, even if it’s perhaps not as revolutionary as it once was.

MY TEN FAVORITE AMERICANA ALBUMS EVER (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

1. Marty Robbins, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs (1959): My dad was a passable guitar strummer and singer, and one of his fave songs to play (often after beers with his friend Arturo Flores) was Marty Robbins’ epic “El Paso,” found on this utterly amazing 1959 album. This mix of original compositions (most impressively “El Paso” and “Big Iron” here) and classic/traditional covers is a recurring feature of the Americana genre.

2. The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969): Gram Parsons’ beautiful (yet tragic) career as an erratic country-rock pioneer was first made widely manifest on the Byrds’ 1968 release Sweetheart of the Rodeo. A year later, Parsons and Byrd bassist Chris Hillman formed The Flying Burrito Brothers, who debuted with this hugely influential album, which formalized sonic templates still widely deployed today.

3. Grateful Dead, Workingman’s Dead (1970): In one of the greatest clutch-burning shifts in music history, The Dead followed their psychedelic Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa released with a pair of brilliant countrified LPs, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. Wordsmith Robert Hunter ensconced himself as a key member of the Dead creative core on this album, where every song is a classic, musically and lyrically.

4. Michael Nesmith, Nevada Fighter (1971): Once and future Monkee Mike Nesmith was an unexpected pioneer in the Americana genre, most especially on his three early albums with The First National Band. Nevada Fighter is the third, and best, of the trilogy to these ears, though the competition is tough. As with Marty Robbins, this disc features a fine mix of original compositions and choice standards, all well delivered.

5. Eagles, Desperado (1973): While Don Henley and Glenn Frey eventually took choking custody of the Eagles brand, in the group’s original incarnation, Bernie Leadon (ex-Burrito Brother) and Randy Meisner (ex-Poco) were co-equal partners, originally assembled to back Linda Ronstadt on tour. Desperado is a Western-themed concept album that maximizes input from all four original Eagles, standing as their best work.

6. Jorma Kaukonen, Quah (1974): Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen was a freaky weird electric player with a deep love for acoustic guitar gospel and blues, which he explored (and continues to explore) in depth with fellow Airplane alum Jack Casady as Hot Tuna. Quah was his first solo album, yet another beautiful mix of fine originals and excellent covers, with a particular focus on the songs of gospel great Rev. Gary Davis.

7. Ween, 12 Golden Country Greats (1996): Am I joking in including jokesters Dean and Gene Ween on this list? And were Dean and Gene joking when they made this album with an army of Nashville’s finest session players? Nope and nope. Ween didn’t eschew their usual irreverent lyrical approaches on 12 Golden Country Greats (which only has ten songs, ha ha!), and that just makes this unique twang-fest all the more, well, great.

8. Kamikaze Hearts, Oneida Road (2006): I closely watched the full creative life cycle of this superb band during my music-criticizing and booking days in Albany, and their final album stands as the best document of their “porch rock” style. (I’m unsure who coined that term at the time, but it fit). Blessed with two fine singer-songwriters (Troy Pohl and Gaven Richard), the KHearts made Upstate-themed Americana without  parallel.

9. First Aid Kit, Stay Gold (2011): Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg provide the strongest argument I can come up with for not restricting Americana to American artists. Their early single “Emmylou” demonstrated their taste, skill, and acuity within the idiom, and Stay Gold is their finest album to date, which is really saying something, since all of their records are outstanding. Beautiful original songs, perfectly delivered.

10. Hurray For the Riff Raff, Life on Earth (2022): Alynda Segarra is of Puerto Rican descent, was raised in the Bronx, spent years jumping trains as a musical hobo, and then settled in New Orleans. Hurray For the Riff Raff (Segarra’s loose-knit group) blend those diverse traditions into an original whole, most notably on this disc, their most well-produced and arranged, with stunning, heartbreaking lyrics as icing on the cake.

As I will do for each installment in the Genre Delve series, I’ve linked my own personally-curated Spotify playlist related to this article, below. You can sample songs from the albums and artists cited here, and also other genre favorites to give them setting and context. As always, I welcome your thoughts and reactions to my list, and your recommendations or suggestions for other things that I might find interesting.

(Note: This is one of an occasional and ongoing series of assessments of my favorite albums, parsed by musical genre. Click Here for a series introduction and list of all genres covered, or to be covered, therein).

Background: I’m labeling this fifth installment of my Genre Delve series “Prog,” because that’s a well-known contemporary label for the sorts of music I’ll cite in my ten favorite albums list, but I must note up front that I am doing so reluctantly, because I don’t like the term, nor do most of the musicians who made the albums on my list.

“Prog” is, of course, short for “progressive rock,” but I can categorically state that during the time when these albums were fresh, and the genre was arguably at the peak of its commercial and critical influence, I never called it by either of those terms, nor did anybody I knew. For me (and I suspect many people of my age), the word “progressive” when applied to music evoked the sounds of “progressive rock radio,” a programming format that emerged in the late 1960s, with the rise and reach of FM stations. The core tenets of progressive rock radio were a focus on album cuts (and sometimes entire albums) rather than singles, and a largely free-form programming aesthetic in which DJ’s were given wide latitude to play what they wanted, rather than hewing to a playlist set by station or franchise management.

I learned so much about music on progressive rock radio stations in the 1970s and early 1980s as I moved around the country, with Long Island’s WLIR, Providence’s WBRU, and Washington, DC’s WHFS standing as most memorable sources of amazing music, providing me with building blocks that uphold my massive listening edifice to this day. Around the time that progressive rock radio stations and their defining programming formats began to disappear in the 1980s (largely because independent stations were increasingly consolidated under regional or national holding companies), the phrase “progressive rock” seemed to shift away from an amalgam of styles, becoming laser focused on the sorts of long-form “art rock” or “classical rock” made by the groups on my list below. As best I can ascertain, “prog” didn’t emerge as a common shorthand for the genre until sometime in the 1990s, often to give credence to an emergent batch of “neo-prog” or “post-prog” acts that also dabbled in the sorts of elaborate, thematic, complex, or long-form songs pioneered by their forebears in the 1960s and 1970s.

Longtime readers will be aware that I’ve written and posted a variety of “Music Tournaments” here over the years, designed to answer some interesting musical questions via head-to-head elimination round pairings, e.g. who was the worst rock band ever, or what was the greatest live album ever, etc. One of the longest and (I think) best of the series was a 2005 one I dubbed March of the Mellotrons: The Best Classic Progressive Rock Album Ever. Even then, I couldn’t bring myself to use the word “prog” in the piece’s title, and its subtitle was longer than usual because I wanted to be clear about what and when I was discussing. Why? Because I tend to be a genre purist with some admittedly contrarian positions when it comes to putting music in buckets, and the time periods that qualify artists to be placed into such buckets.

For example: there’s no true psychedelic music for me beyond the end of the original psychedelic era, which I would place at the date of the Altamont Free Concert in December 1969. (I’d accept an argument that the banning of LSD in 1971 could be used as an alternative and slightly more inclusive endpoint). Psychedelia was both a music and a movement. Yes, many people have put backward tapes and seagull sounds and sitars on songs after that, but once the flower power/Summer of Love age came crashing to a halt (or once acid was outlawed), well, that was the end of true psychedelic music era, for me. There’s also no true Punk for me after the end of 1979. There are lots of great artists making post-punk and hardcore and thrash and other punk-derivative strains, yes, but I don’t consider Green Day and bands that sound like Green Day to be punk, seeing and hearing them instead as just purveyors of high-speed derivative pop-rock. Opinionated much? Yes, of course. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

Getting back to the article at hand, I also defined a very strict time window for “prog” when I wrote March of the Mellotrons: the genre’s temporal field opens with King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King (October 1969), and it closes with Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Love Beach (November 1978). I refuse to accept Dream Theater or Porcupine Tree or Tool or their fellow travelers as prog bands. They were inspired by prog bands, yes, but there are leaders, and there are followers, and the latter are something different from the former. Neo-Prog? Oh, I guess so, if you must. But I choose not to.

Beyond defining the temporal range of the “Classic Progressive Rock” era between In the Court of the Crimson King and Love Beach, I also used a then-current definition from the primordial Wikipedia to lay out defining traits of the genre, with key points as follows:

• Long compositions, often with songs made up of named shorter parts or movements;
• Intricate (or impenetrable) lyrical narratives, often tied together to create single-story concept albums;
• Instruments beyond the conventional drum-bass-guitar lineups deployed by most rock bands;
• Unusual time signatures, tunings, rhythmic techniques, scales, or sounds, to include tape manipulation, studio trickery, and sound effects;
• Wide dynamic ranges, where every bit of pummeling is offset by moments of extreme calm and quiet;
• Featured solos by most every member of the ensemble;
• Integration of cover art and musical themes;
• Appropriation/adoption of classical music compositional approaches; and
• Lots of personnel turnover, including semi-incestuous exchanges of members between bands.

When I developed my list of 64 Classic Progressive Rock albums to be ranked/reviewed in March of the Mellotrons, I had to make some “does it fit, or does it not?” determinations. I mainly stuck to the classical/symphonic core of the canon, with English groups dominating the proceedings. The more jazz-rock oriented Canterbury scene (Soft Machine and descendants) was not included. Pre-King Crimson psychedelic and symphonic rock groups (Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Moody Blues) were not featured. No Krautrock (Can, Neu, Faust, Amon Duul, etc.). No Rock in Opposition (Henry Cow and relatives). No straight synth records (Jean-Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dreams).  I noted at the time that my most controversial exclusion would likely be my decision to drop Brian Eno’s solo albums and Roxy Music from my list, based on the fact that Eno’s “anti-musician” stance was far more punk than prog, even though he had an Allstar Prog Army playing on his first four solo albums. And if Eno didn’t qualify, then Roxy Music (featuring Eno on its first two albums) didn’t either, with their emphasis on singles, romance, and relatively short songs.

Two decades on, I still stand by all of those decisions, and my Ten Favorite Prog Albums Ever list below hews to them as well. Lest I focus strictly on the gatekeeping aspects of my list, I should note that, in real time, the artists featured below dominated much of my listening throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, and (unlike many other people), I didn’t feel the need to eschew their work when I began exploring the punk and post-punk music that emerged, in part, as reaction to the Classic Progressive Rock era. I’ve never experienced any cognitive dissonance in playing The Clash beside Pink Floyd, or The Ramones beside Jethro Tull, or The Damned beside YES. Also, in my various iterations of The Favorite Band Question over the years, I’ve consistently stated that if I had to name the one single band who have given me the longest, continuous joy over my lifetime of listening, that band would clearly be Jethro Tull, featured below. These artists may not be considered cool today, but they made masterful, moving music that thrilled me at a most formative point in my listening life.

Finally, before getting to the list, I note that these are my favorite Prog albums ever, not necessarily the ones that I (as a music critic) would tout as the best Prog albums ever. In a couple of cases here, the albums I’ve selected aren’t even my favorite albums by the artists in question, but are rather the “Most Prog” of each selected group’s top tier albums. As a conceptual point, I’ve decided that the lists in the Genre Delve series must each include ten different artists, so that made for some further tough choices in some cases; absent that self-imposed rule, this listing might include nothing other than Jethro Tull, Genesis, YES, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but that’s less interesting for everybody involved, I think. Since these records were released over a fairly short time span (five and half years from earliest to latest), and since I cite my list in chronological order, I had to include month of release in addition to year of release, in case you notice, and are wondering.

Jeez, that was quite the preamble, wasn’t it? In the same ways that Prog artists tend to run long, writing about Prog artists also tends to make me do the same. So congrats if you’ve made it this far without skipping ahead to the list. I’m not sure that I’d have been that disciplined.

MY TEN FAVORITE PROG ALBUMS EVER (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

1. YES, The Yes Album (February 1971): YES often evoke arguments about the relative merits of their various singers, drummers, and keyboardists, but for me, the group’s magic is anchored in the interplay between the late Chris Squire’s bass and Steve Howe’s guitars. If the two of them are there, I count it as a great YES album. This is the first, and best, album to feature the pair, beside my fave YES keyboardist, Tony Kaye.

2. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Tarkus (June 1971): (Spoiler Alert) After 25,000+ words, I named Tarkus as the greatest Classic Progressive Rock Album at the end of March of the Mellotrons. (Even though, ironically, it’s one of a small number of vintage prog albums to not feature a mellotron). The cover art and title suite are among the most definitive relics of the era, and I also love the short-form (sometimes funny) songs on Side Two.

3. Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon (March 1973): While this record doesn’t feature long songs, its lyrical arc, use of tapes, and instantly recognizable cover art made it an extremely popular Prog staple. Points to the Floyd for charting a hit with “Money,” mostly in a weird 7/4 time signature, and for the titanic and influential synth/sequencer work in “On the Run.” There’s no electronica without that touch point.

4. Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells (May 1973): Another highly popular release in its time, the debut by 19-year old Mike Oldfield (who wrote and played most of the single-song album’s parts, with delightful vocal support from Vivian Stanshall) was the first Virgin Records release, effectively launching Richard Branson’s career. Oldfield played the album live on the Beeb in 1973, backed by an army of Prog players. Worth watching!

5. Jethro Tull, A Passion Play (July 1973): After 1971’s Aqualung was (incorrectly) branded a “concept album” by the music press, Ian Anderson wryly responded by issuing a pair of single-song albums, Thick as a Brick (1972) and A Passion Play. I picked the latter here, as it’s weirder, featuring more sax than flute, more synth than organ, and the controversial “The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles,” which I adore.

6. Focus, At the Rainbow (October 1973): Double and triple live albums were a mainstay of ’70s rock, and Team Prog were no strangers to that idiom. But the best live LP of the era to these ears was this single-disc release by Dutch Masters, Focus, featuring what I consider their definitive lineup. The hits (“Hocus Pocus” and “Sylvia”) are here, fully muscled up, alongside super-tight versions of some long-form suites.

7. King Crimson, Starless and Bible Black (March 1974): An admittedly controversial choice, since the Crim’s landmark debut and final album of the 1970s (Red) are canonically seen as their two greatest works. But in terms of my personal favorites, I like and listen to this one the most, moved by its weird combo of improvised and composed pieces, studio and live cuts, and short songs and epic bangers. Give it a try!

8. Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (November 1974): Peter Gabriel’s final Genesis album is their hardest-hitting, and arguably their most melodic. The lyrics (all by Gabriel, for the only time in the band’s history) are surreal, Brian Eno manipulates tapes on a couple of tunes, the band blend stunning solos with powerful ensemble work throughout, and the album’s tour was legendarily fraught. Epic, in other words!

9. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, One Size Fits All (June 1975): The only American album here, and my fave from within the huge FZ catalog. There are Zappa-standard puerile lyrics, sure, but “Inca Roads” and “Florentine Pogen” are complex masterpieces, played brilliantly by a killer ensemble, including Chester Thompson, who took Phil Collins’ drum stool when the latter became Genesis’ front-man. Tasty!

10. Magma, Üdü Ẁüdü (September 1976): Magma are a French band led by drummer Christian Vander, who invented a language (Kobaïan) and a genre (Zeuhl) for his challenging jazz-based Prog. Most critics cite 1973’s Mekanïk Destruktïẁ Kommandöh as their best album, but I much prefer this one, especially its second-side monster cut, “De Futura,” written by bassist Jannick Top, who later wrote for Celine Dion. Go figure.

As I will do for each installment in the Genre Delve series, I’ve linked my own personally-curated Spotify playlist related to this article, below. You can sample songs from the albums and artists cited here, and also other Prog favorites to give them setting and context. There are only 75 songs, but the playlist still runs to nearly nine hours, given the length of many of the tracks. Plan ahead to listen, it’ll be worth it, I promise! As always, I welcome your thoughts and reactions to my list, and your recommendations or suggestions for other things that I might find interesting.