It was the legendary American author Stephen King who said, “James McMurtry may be the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation”. At the same time, much closer to home, BBC Radio 2’s Bob Harris called him “the most vital lyricist in America today”. High praise indeed, and yet despite such reverence from those in the know, McMurtry’s rightful position at the top table of singer-songwriters is too often overlooked, as we instead continuously name-check the usual subjects, John Prine, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and Kris Kristofferson. In truth, his reputation as one of America’s greatest living songwriters has been cemented over the last three decades, with John Mellencamp, producer of McMurtry’s debut album back in 1989, stating, “James writes like he’s lived a lifetime”, while the Drive-By Truckers founding member Patterson Hood went on record saying, “McMurtry might be the best topical writer performing right now…”.
Born in March 1962 in Fort Worth, Texas, he is the son of the renowned novelist Larry McMurtry, whose work includes such classics as The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, and what is considered by many to be his magnum opus, Lonesome Dove, while his mother was an English professor. It is therefore of little surprise that a young McMurtry would inherit the passion and craft for the written word, with no less than Michael Nesmith proclaiming, “James McMurtry is a true Americana poet, actually, he is a poet regardless of genre”.
One could argue that with just 12 studio albums and 2 live albums in a career spanning over 36 years, McMurtry’s irregular output has contributed to him being somewhat overlooked when plaudits and accolades within the singer-songwriter tradition have been handed out, and yet one only has to spend time listening to those albums to recognise the meticulous high standard that emanates from each album. There is no filler. Every song earns its place. A fact made all the more clear, as I tried to distil the possible contenders down to an impossible top 10.
However, here at AUK, excuses are not accepted, and therefore, for better or worse, I have compiled a list of what, at this moment in time, I deem to be James McMurtry’s top 10 songs. As usual, all caveats apply, pint into a half-pint pot, etc. I am quite sure this will probably differ in some way from your own. I’d be disappointed, not to mention a little bit perturbed if they didn’t, and I therefore look forward to reading your thoughts and hearing of your personal favourites. In the meantime, don’t forget that McMurtry is coming across to tour the UK this autumn, his first visit in almost 10 years, making it surely top of the list for artists to see this year. Enjoy the article below.
Number 10: Cheyney’s Toy from Just Us Kids (2008)
By the time of the release of the album Just Us Kids in 2008, McMurtry had already written politically motivated songs, including direct criticism of George W Bush, president of the United States between 2001 and 2009. And it is the 43rd President who is once again the direct recipient of his cutting, no-holds-barred narrative, as he opens with the line “Another unknown soldier, another lesson learned. Kick the gas can over, strike a match, step back and watch that sucker burn”. Lyrically. McMurtry never takes prisoners, never sugar-coats the pill, unconcerned over who may be offended, and with Cheyney’s Toy, he cuts straight to the chase. Vocally, the message is delivered in the same acerbic manner, somewhat reminiscent of Warren Zevon at his most contentious, while the musical accompaniment helps maintain the intensity, where a repetitive rumbling guitar riff is subtly complemented with interjections of colour from the trumpet of Ephraim Owens and Ian McLagan on organ, which all build in crescendo to an anthemic and powerful outro. The track would go on to be nominated for Song of the Year at the 2008 Americana Music Association Awards.
Number 9: Copper Canteen from Complicated Game (2015)
There would be a seven-year gap between the release of Just Us Kids and its follow-up, the critically acclaimed Complicated Game, which found McMurtry’s writing veering away from the politically motivated subject matter of his previous two offerings to a more traditional acoustic americana. The album begins with Copper Canteen, whose descending arpeggios create a contemplative mood that sets the tone for the remaining tracks, a five-minute vignette that is as vivid as it is complex. From the opening line “Honey, don’t you be yelling at me while I’m cleaning my gun”, McMurtry’s gift for the cinematic shines brighter than ever, finding big picture themes in small-town life, tapping into the fear and cravings of men who grew up hard and have stuck to that mode of living ever since. Here, he emphasises his knack for repeatedly delivering memorable refrains, offering insights into the lives of his relatable damaged characters, with an unaffected sincerity and familiarity that cuts ever closer to the bone: “We turned into our parents before we were out of our teens”. Since its release, Copper Canteen has become a staple in McMurtry’s live shows.
Number 8: The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy from The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy (2025)
The title track to McMurtry’s most recent album finds the master songsmith trawling through his family’s past for inspiration. Shortly after the passing of his father, McMurtry found himself in conversation with his stepmother, Faye, who told him of the hallucinations his father had before he died. His father had suffered from dementia for some while before his passing, and during this time, he mentioned seeing things, of which his favourite was the black dog and the wandering boy. By taking these two mysterious characters, who only appear to those slipping away from reality, and harnessing them to a narrative that finds a sense of defiant resilience to the oncoming of the night, McMurtry removes any of the morbidity or pity one might incorrectly associate, locating the humour, even in its darkest sense, amidst the sadness. In addition, the arrangement offers up a jagged and restless blues riff that waxes and wanes against a recurring pulse of additional instrumentation from a cast of musicians, which includes McMurtry, regulars Tim Holt, Cornbread, Daren Hess and BettySoo, while production duties saw Don Dixon return to the role he held for McMurtry’s third album.
Number 7: Childish Things from Childish Things (2005)
In many ways, McMurtry’s 2005 album release Childish Things was a game-changer, bringing him relative chart success and critical attention which he had not achieved since the release of his debut album some sixteen years earlier. In fact, it would go on to win both album and song of the year at the 5th Annual Americana Music Awards, though the song in question was not the title track, more about that later. However, the title track is undoubtedly a McMurtry classic, with his lyrical couplets as thought-provoking and evocative as anything he had previously written. Taking the role of narrator, McMurtry uses the passing of time and how it changes our perspective on life as we journey from childhood to middle age, replacing those early dreams of innocence and excitement of what lies ahead with a world-weary apathy and the longing for a comfortable chair. The song opens with a combination of picked and strummed notes from a lone guitar before the opening line, “Aunt Clara kept a bible by her phone in case she needed a quote when she talked to someone,” which immediately grabs the attention, and is typical McMurtry in its minimalistic approach to presenting narrative, deliberately enticing, always drawing you in as you crave just a little bit more.
Number 6: Terry from Too Long in the Wasteland (1989)
Too Long in the Wasteland was McMurtry’s debut album, released in 1989 and produced by John Mellencamp. Two years earlier, McMurtry had been one of six winners at that year’s Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk songwriter contest and sent a demo-tape to Mellencamp, who at that time was starring in a film based on a script by McMurtry’s father. Suitably impressed, Mellencamp agreed to co-produce McMurtry’s debut alongside Michael Wanchic and Larry Cane, which would go on to peak at No. 125 on the Billboard 200 and garner much praise from the music critics. Among a host of excellent songs, one in particular stood out, Terry, an unsentimental lament for a mixed-up rehab boy, that immediately highlights McMurtry’s determination to rebut the tendency of popular country music to sentimentalise rural and small-town life, and instead imbue his songs with a direct, keen-eyed realism, full of flawed but relatable characters that one instantly connects with. McMurtry might have just been starting on his musical journey, but there was no mistaking from the seeds of his first album that his songwriting was in a class of its own.
Number 5: Where’s Johnny from Candyland (1992)
The release of McMurtry’s sophomore album followed three years after his debut, though the release date had been continuously pushed back due to his record label, Columbia Records, having doubts about the quality of the songs, requesting that McMurtry write new material. Thirty-four years later, and the absurdity of that request continues to baffle. Even at this early stage of his career, McMurtry’s writing preferences were already taking shape. He didn’t like to write on the road, choosing the studio as his ideal place of work. He also didn’t like to write about his own personal life, preferring to create characters and place them in an assortment of small-town tragedies of lost love, lost youth and lost ideals that expose unpleasant aspects of America that most people would prefer to deny. The highlight of this album was the opening track Where’s Johnny, a song about a faded high school heartthrob and all-around scolastic achiever who fails to accomplish all that was expected of him in the real world. Though the theme of looking back draws comparison with Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days, the delivery here is far more reminiscent of the gallows humour one associated with Warren Zevon.
Number 4: Choctaw Bingo from Saint Mary of the Woods (2002)
By the time McMurtry released his sixth album, Saint Mary of the Woods, in 2002, any chart success was nothing but a distant memory. However, time spent on the road had seen him hone his live-show craft, which helped garner a strong and loyal following. One track in particular from this album would go on to become possibly his most enduring and popular song, remaining a stalwart of his live performances throughout the following years. Choctaw Bingo was a rowdy, high-energy workout that housed a similar melody to You Can’t Catch Me, a 1956 song from Chuck Berry, with a narrative that recounted the somewhat hilarious tale of a dysfunctional family reunion against a backdrop of the crumbling economy of rural working-class America. Clocking in at close to eight minutes on the studio album, live, the song would stretch out, and yet through its infectious repetitive guitar riff and rapid scattergun vocal delivery, the track never feels like it’s overstaying its welcome, remaining a fan favourite over the following two decades. In 2004, McMurtry released a live album entitled Live in Aught-Three, which offers up a perfect example of the song’s impact in a live setting, while the aforementioned horror writer Stephen King named Choctaw Bingo as one of the songs he would take to a desert island in a 2006 episode of Desert Island Discs
Number 3: Levelland from Where’d You Hide the Body (1995)
McMurtry’s lyrical precision has often been cited as one of his greatest talents, and yet it is his ability to combine what appear to be off-the-cuff expressions or phrases, as if clutching words out of nowhere, with his wonderously succinct verses, that marks him out as a lyricist of the highest order. Levelland, which first appeared on his third studio album, Where’d You Hide The Body, is another perfect example of McMurtry’s unique interpretation of rural America, one that he knew first-hand, having witnessed extended family members strung out on meth in a land full of misfits trying to escape. People like his father and the American author Max Crawford, the communist from central Texas to whom McMurtry dedicated this song, one that would probably go on to become his best known, delivering a devastating critique of claustrophobia induced by small-town normality. McMurtry himself has always claimed to have an outsider persona; for him, he says, “it’s an easy place to write from. Because you’re outside, you can see the whole picture. If you’re in the middle of it, you might not see it quite as clearly”. The album was produced by Don Dixon, who, thirty years later, would resume that role for McMurtry’s most recent studio release.
Number 2: Operation Never Mind from The Horses and the Hounds (2021)
There had been a six-year hiatus before the release of The Horses and the Hounds, which saw McMurtry reunited with both Ross Hogarth, who had worked as an engineer on his first two albums and was now in the producer’s chair, and guitarist David Grissom, who had originally made his name working with John Mellencamp and Joe Ely. Their presence helped to beef up the sound of the new album, creating a driving force that rekindled the aggression of youth, even if narratively the mood was more reflective and sagacious. Stand out song is the overtly political Operation Never Mind, which evokes a similar spirit to that of the caustic anti-Iraq war protest song Cheyney’s Toy, though here the focus and frustration are directed at the distortion of perspective and how the way modern-day war reporting results in a numbing of the senses. As always, McMurtry’s songs are rich in historical roots, and here he cites the revered CBS anchor man Walter Cronkite, who reported on the Vietnam War at a time when there weren’t fifty different cable channels offering their own interpretation of the facts. “Everybody, right, let and centre, listened to Walter, but there was a centre that could hold”, stated McMurtry in an interview with our very own Alasdair Fotheringham back in 2021. With Operation Never Mind, McMurtry turns the spotlight on both today’s establishments’ management of information dissemination as well as the apathy of a society happier to pretend they’re soldiers whilst playing their video games rather than engage with the real world and question why. Over thirty years into his recording career, McMurtry proves once again that he is one of the most supremely insightful and observant songwriters of his generation.
Number 1: We Can’t Make It Here from Childish Things (2005)
Earlier this year, I placed James McMurtry’s song We Can’t Make It Here as the fourth-best americana song of all time. Yes, I did limit my choices to those songs that had been released over the last twenty-five years to correspond with AUK’s pending quarter of a century celebrations that take place later this year, but regardless of this fact, the song, as I stated in that article, is one of the finest within the americana genre. For those who missed my previous eulogy, allow me to offer a precis of my argument.
In 2005, McMurtry delivered his pièce de résistance, Childish Things, an album that found him at his most political, stuffed full of raw roots-driven musical gems that offered a snapshot into all aspects of middle America. The song We Can’t Make It Here in particular stood out as both the best and the longest track on the album, building in intensity as it progresses. McMurtry’s narrative is evocative, some might argue provocative, propelling the song through all of its seven-minute duration, his rugged, bone-dry vocal delivery helping to supply the cutting edge. The song’s theme revolves around the disillusionment of the so-called ‘American Dream’ for the less fortunate of its population, drawing on the hot topics of the period, including the Iraq War, as well as the outsourcing of Walmart merchandise. Here, McMurtry perfectly encapsulates the frustrations and despair of the times without ever overplaying the bitterness towards these situations, remaining the ultimate observer and orator on a song which, despite now being over twenty years old, unfortunately still resonates strongly with the current American political climate. The album, Childish Things, would go on to be voted the Americana Music Awards album of the year in 2006, while the song We Can’t Make It Here, was named ‘Best Song’ of the 2000s decade by esteemed music critic Robert Christgau.
James McMurtry’s canon of work throughout the last four decades has been of the highest order, full of songs worthy of consideration for such a list as this. However, I truly believe that there can be little argument that We Can’t Make It Here is his finest song to date.
