50 Songs That Explain America
I wouldn’t be here—in America, or inside my nervous system as it’s currently constituted—without American music.
That’s no exaggeration.
As a metalheaded, punk-rock-obsessed, hip-hop-curious English teenager, I projected my mind toward America.
The music summoned me: I couldn’t wait to be around it.
On my first trip to New York, 18 years old, I bought cassettes (cassettes!) of LL Cool J’s Radio and Metallica’s Master of Puppets .
Holding them in my hands, I felt touched by some essential binary.
Big spare beats over here, pulverizing guitars over there: Had the dual nature of reality just revealed itself? I chased bands, I chased sounds, city to city: New Orleans, San Francisco, D.C., Boston.
It was a quest.
American music roused me and deepened me.
Sometimes I wondered whether I had an American self: louder, braver, more committed to his own evolution than my smelly-socks English self.
I’ve now lived here for 30 years, and I’m still wondering about that.
As mystifying as this country can be, as merciful and brutal and wildly openhearted, American music has helped me understand it.
But there’s understanding, and then there’s understanding what you’re understanding.
Writing has always been my way of bringing submerged ideas and images into daylight.
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