Mississippi John Hurt
A homesick blues built around the tiny Mississippi hamlet of Avalon, where the singer measures the alienation of the big city…
homesickness rural vs urban life romantic longing
Tony Bennett
A wandering singer catalogs the great cities of Europe and the loneliness of New York only to reject them all in favor of one…
homesickness idealized place as beloved urban loneliness
Rosanne Cash
Rosanne Cash's version of this traditional folk song turns a simple hitchhiker's lament into a meditation on permanent distance…
distance and displacement homesickness regret
Carole King
A road-weary travelogue in which the narrator catalogs the Southern and Eastern towns she's passed through on tour, using each…
homesickness touring fatigue regionalism/East vs West
Waylon Jennings
This is a traditional Civil War-era ballad, recorded by Waylon Jennings for a tribute album, in which a soldier addresses his…
war and loss homesickness romantic devotion
Brandi Carlile
A road-worn singer addresses someone left behind, weighing the cost of a touring life against a vow of permanent devotion. The…
distance and longing touring life vs. domestic life fidelity and devotion
Paul Simon
A young songwriter, physically stranded in London while his love remains in New York, uses the rain outside his window as a…
long-distance love artistic self-doubt displacement/homesickness
Linda Thompson
A traditional Irish-American ballad about famine-era emigration turned cannon fodder, sung here in Linda Thompson's spare,…
forced emigration poverty and displacement broken promises of America
Bill Callahan
Bill Callahan turns the word "America" into a chant, a mantra, and eventually an indictment, roll-calling country singers who…
national identity military service and myth American exceptionalism vs. its violent history
The Chills
A song about the disorientation of exile and the seduction of retreating into memory, sung by a narrator who has left someone…
homesickness and displacement guilt over leaving a relationship nostalgia as both comfort and trap
Pete Seeger
This traditional American work song, sung here by Pete Seeger in his folk-revival style, tells a fragmentary story of a white…
longing and distance cultural and racial encounter exploitation disguised as courtship
Angel Olsen
A meditation on disorientation and self-loss dressed as a plea for retreat, this song sits at the emotional center of Big Time,…
displacement and homesickness grief and mourning identity dissolution
Phoebe Bridgers
A road-trip through American landscapes and personal apocalypse, where the singer's private exhaustion with a relationship and a…
apocalypse (personal and national) homesickness and rootlessness burnout and exhaustion in relationships
Merle Haggard
This is Merle Haggard's rendition of the Irving Berlin standard, a song of longing for an idealized, snow-covered Christmas from…
nostalgia longing for home idealized past