Gillian Welch
A tenant farmer's plainspoken account of grinding poverty and the death of a child, delivered with the flat cadence of a hymn.…
rural poverty tenant farming/sharecropping parental love and loss
Aesop Rock
Aesop Rock builds a dense allegory around farm-animal escape and surveillance-state paranoia, using the imagery of Animal Farm…
surveillance and control anxiety and hypervigilance complicity versus escape
Howlin’ Wolf
A slow, slinking blues built entirely on barnyard imagery, in which a rooster's absence throws the whole farm into disorder.…
sexual potency and absence domestic disorder masculine boasting
Margo Price
Margo Price lays out an autobiographical ballad of leaving home, losing a farm, and surviving hard years in the city, all in…
economic loss and displacement family loyalty grief and mortality