American Song

About American Song

America was meant to be a light on the hill — a place others looked to when they needed to find their own way forward. If America has ever truly been that light, it came from its music. From the people who suffered the most and somehow still found something worth singing about. From colonial taverns to protest marches in the Eastern Bloc, from gospel churches to a ghetto in Soweto, American rhythms helped people band together, speak truth, and refuse to quit. Our songs became the world's songs — not because we exported them, but because people who needed hope reached out and claimed them as their own. American Song tells the stories of the artists who made the music and the people who were moved by it. One era at a time. One genre, one band, one song at a time. Music that started by campfires, in cotton fields, in churches and juke joints — and moved out into the world to become something larger than any one nation could contain. This is American Song.

Publisher

Joe Hines

Category

history · music · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Jan 2021

Latest episode

28 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

75 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   28 Sept 2026

   Signal: Static

   Get in touch! At the start, radio was like the Wild West. Anyone could get on the air, and it was all fair game: preachers, farmers, a quack broadcasting from Mexico. But that was before the networks moved in, before the payola hearings took the records out of the DJs' hands, and ultimately before a single law in 1996 sold the dial to a few corporations. Signalis the story of American radio's hundred-year fight between the people who wanted to say something and the people who wanted to sell s...

2. 

   16 Sept 2026

   Signal: Hello World

   Get in touch! In 1920, a radio signal was a rumor with electricity behind it — a handful of amateurs in garages and attics, broadcasting into a void nobody had proven was listening. There were no networks, no formats, no rules, because nobody in power had figured out yet that there was anything here worth controlling. That's the world this episode opens in: the accidental birth of American radio, before it belonged to anyone. "Hello, World" traces how a scattered hobby became a national voice...

3. 

   8 Sept 2026

   Meet Southern California Singer-Songwriter, Anson Corsair

   Get in touch! Today’s episode is an interview with the Southern California based singer-songwriter, Anson Corsair. His remarkably open interview reveals some of the highs and the lows he’s lived through and how he’s processed these events into a growing group of beautiful songs. While American Song generally covers some of the most well-known musicians throughout the canon of popular music, these artists are just the tip of the iceberg. Interviews with people like Anson help us appreciate jus...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 29 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

46

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32

Contact American Song

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.