Showing posts with label modern folk. Show all posts

Friday, September 16, 2022

Top 100 Modern Folk Songs: 1980-2022

Modern Folk Songs, 1980-2022:

Top 100 Songs

Songs on this list fall under various banners including folk, folk-rock, modern folk, alt-country, and Americana. Most genre lists at Dave’s Music Database are created by aggregating best-of lists from multiple sources. In this case, it was difficult to find lists focused on modern folk. As such, this list was compiled by pulling together any acts from 1980 forward who appeared on any best-of folk or folk rock song lists and folk/Americana album lists. Those applicable songs were then listed in order of overall ranking on Dave’s Music Database.

Click here to see other genre-specific song lists.

1. Tracy Chapman “Fast Car” (1988)
2. Johnny Cash “Hurt” (2003)
3. The Lumineers “Ho Hey” (2012)
4. Jeff Buckley “Hallelujah” (1994)
5. Passenger “Let Her Go” (2012)
6. Suzanne Vega “Luka” (1987)
7. Tracy Chapman “Give Me One Reason” (1995)
8. Shawn Colvin “Sunny Came Home” (1996)
9. Mumford & Sons “I Will Wait” (2012)
10. k.d. lang “Constant Craving” (1992)

11. Kacey Musgraves “Follow Your Arrow” (2013)
12. Grateful Dead “Touch of Grey” (1987)
13. Leonard Cohen “Hallelujah” (1984)
14. Indigo Girls “Closer to Fine” (1989)
15. Neil Young “Harvest Moon” (1992)
16. Jeff Buckley “Last Goodbye” (1994)
17. Tracy Chapman “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution” (1988)
18. Mumford & Sons “Little Lion Man” (2009)
19. Ray LaMontagne “You Are the Best Thing” (2008)
20. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova as The Swell Season “Falling Slowly” (2007)

21. Brandi Carlile “The Joke” (2017)
22. The Soggy Bottom Boys “Man of Constant Sorrow” (2001)
23. Bruce Springsteen “Atlantic City” (1982)
24. The Lumineers “Ophelia” (2016)
25. Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard “Pancho and Lefty” (1983)
26. Leonard Cohen “You Want It Darker” (2016)
27. Shawn Colvin “I Don’t Know Why” (1992)
28. The Lumineers “Stubborn Love” (2012)
29. Mumford & Sons “Believe” (2015)
30. Chris Stapleton “Tennessee Whiskey” (2015)

31. Bob Dylan “Things Have Changed” (2000)
32. Mumford & Sons “Guiding Light” (2018)
33. Bruce Cockburn “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” (1984)
34. Mumford & Sons “The Cave” (2009)
35. Beck “Lost Cause” (2002)
36. Tracy Chapman “Crossroads” (1989)
37. Indigo Girls “Galileo” (1992)
38. Tracy Chapman “Baby Can I Hold You” (1988)
39. Brandi Carlile “The Story (I Was Made for You)” (2007)
40. Loreena McKennitt “The Mummer’s Dance” (1997)

41. Kacey Musgraves “Justified” (2021)
42. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit “If We Were Vampires” (2017)
43. The Lumineers “Gloria” (2019)
44. Chris Stapleton “Broken Halos” (2017)
45. Bon Iver “Holocene” (2011)
46. Bruce Cockburn “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” (1984)
47. The Head and the Heart “All We Ever Knew” (2016)
48. Suzanne Vega & Joe Jackson “Left of Center” (1986)
49. Kacey Musgraves “Rainbow” (2018)
50. Indigo Girls “Power of Two” (1994)

51. Fleet Foxes “White Winter Hymnal” (2008)
52. Bright Eyes “First Day of My Life” (2005)
53. Bruce Springsteen “The Ghost of Tom Joad” (1995)
54. The Highwomen “Crowded Table” (2019)
55. Kacey Musgraves “Space Cowboy” (2018)
56. Lucinda Williams “Righteously” (2003)
57. Bon Iver “Skinny Love” (2007)
58. Indigo Girls “Hammer and a Nail” (1990)
59. Tracy Chapman “Telling Stories (There Is Friction in the Space Between)” (2000)
60. Bruce Springsteen “Devils & Dust” (2005)

61. The Avett Brothers “Ain’t No Man” (2016)
62. Chris Stapleton “Starting Over” (2020)
63. The Head and the Heart “Missed Connection” (2019)
64. The Lumineers “Life in the City” (2019)
65. Sharon Van Etten “Seventeen” (2019)
66. Mumford & Sons “The Wolf” (2015)
67. Neko Case, k.d. lang, & Laura Veirs “Atomic Number” (2016)
68. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss “Please Read the Letter” (2007)
69. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)” (2007)
70. Sufjan Stevens “Chicago” (2005)

71. Bob Dylan “Everything Is Broken” (1989)
72. Leonard Cohen “Everybody Knows” (1988)
73. Bruce Springsteen “We Shall Overcome” (1998)
74. Suzanne Vega “Solitude Standing” (1987)
75. Bob Dylan “Mississippi” (2001)
76. Suzanne Vega “Tom’s Diner” (1987)
77. Sturgill Simpson “In Bloom” (2016)
78. Neko Case “Hold on Hold On” (2006)
79. The Head and the Heart “Lost in My Mind” (2011)
80. Neil Young “Philadelphia” (1994)

81. Ray LaMontagne & the Pariah Dogs “Beg, Steal or Borrow” (2010)
82. Shawn Colvin “Steady On” (1989)
83. Brandi Carlile “Right on Time” (2021)
84. Tracy Chapman “All That You Have Is Your Soul” (1989)
85. Indigo Girls “Get Together” (1987)
86. Bob Dylan “Dignity” (1994)
87. Shawn Colvin “Round of Blues” (1992)
88. Shawn Colvin “Diamond in the Rough” (1989)
89. The Avett Brothers “Kick Drum Heart” (2009)
90. Fleet Foxes “Helplessness Blues” (2011)

91. The Lumineers “Cleopatra” (2016)
92. Mumford & Sons “Lover of the Light” (2012)
93. Sharon Van Etten & Angel Olsen “Like I Used To” (2021)
94. The Head and the Heart “Rhythm & Blues” (2016)
95. Willie Nelson “City of New Orleans” (1984)
96. Ray LaMontagne “Strong Enough” (2020)
97. Neko Case “Last Lion of Albion” (2018)
98. Jason Isbell “24 Frames’ (2015)
99. Josh Ritter “Getting Ready to Get Down” (2015)
100. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss “Can’t Let Go” (2021)

Resources/Related Links:

Dave’s Music Database: “Other Genre/Category Song Lists”
Dave’s Music Database: “The Top 100 Folk/Folk Rock Songs (up through 1979)”
Dave’s Music Database: “The Top 100 Folk/Americana Albums of All Time”

First posted 9/11/2022; last updated 9/16/2022.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Jason Isbell “If We Were Vampires” released

Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires,
from NPR.org

If We Were Vampires

Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit

Writer(s): Jason Isbell (see lyrics here)

Released: May 18, 2017

First Charted: December 23, 2017

Peak: 29 AA, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.)

Sales (in millions): --

Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 8.21 video, 144.60 streaming

Awards:

Click on award for more details.

About the Song:

Singer/songwriter and guitarist Jason Isbell was born in 1979 in Green Hill, Alabama. He was a member of the rock band Drive-By Truckers from 2001 to 2007 and then went solo. His first album didn’t chart, but every album after that did – each doing better than its predecessor. His peak came in 2017 with The Nashville Sound reaching #4 on the Billboard album chart. It also won the Grammy for Best Americana Album. As of this posting, the song also ranked as the top song of all time by Kansas City radio station 90.9 The Bridge.

“If We Were Vampires,” which was released as the first single from the album, won a Grammy for Best American Roots Song – an award he also won in 2016 with the song “24 Frames.” The bittersweet tune offers reflections on love and the finite nature of life, saying “Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone / Maybe we’ll get 40 years together / But one day I’ll be gone / Or one day you’ll be gone.”

He explained that the song came about when his wife, fellow singer/songwriter Amanda Shires, nagged him to stop watching Hoarders and write songs since he was going into the studio on Monday. He insisted he had enough songs, but she wouldn’t let up. He ended up writing “If We Were Vampires.” ^BT

He said, “I’m really grateful to her for lighting the fire under my ass and making me work that day, because that song turned out to be pretty special to a lot of people…The first few times I tried to play it for [Shires]…I couldn’t even get through it. I had to turn around and leae the room and come back in and try again.” ^BT

Resources:

^BT TheBoot.com (10/11/2018). “Story Behind the Song: Jason Isbell, ‘If We Were Vampires’” by Carena Liptak
^SF Songfacts

Monday, October 21, 2013

Kacey Musgraves “Follow Your Arrow” released