Best American music of the last 25 years?

Bonus will be heavy .

John Mellencamp for lifetime achievement.

Bonus points for songs that cover the plight of generations or relevant sociopolitical situations at the time.

Most blues for the plight & Maybe C-Span for the sociopolitical part;. That said, why does anyone want to listen to such serious music? Geez, I thought music was an escape from all the BS. Yet I have heard some newer music which is w a y y y too serious for me. I had to turn off Austin City Limits one night when the music seemed suicidal IMO. Not trying to give you a  hard time. Just don't understand. i wish you and her the best in finding good music which enhances the fun factor

Iris Dement, Lucinda Williams, Buddy & Julie Miller, Emmylou Harris, Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, Rodney Crowell, Jim Lauderdale, Marty Stuart, Loudon Wainwright III, Leonard Cohen. Master songwriters, singers, musicians. Who needs bands? ;-)

bdp you forgot Merle Haggard

I’ll add to the artists already mentioned and will recommend the albums I prefer.

Patty Griffin - American Kid

Tom Petty - Wild Flowers

Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne

Son Volt - Trace

Roger Waters - Is This the Life We Really Want

Johnny Cash - American Recordings

Gary Clark Jr - Live

Conor Oberst - Upside Mountain

Better Oblivion Community Center - S/T

And a Whole lotta Wilco, too.

Chris Stapleton - Traveller, From A Room, Starting Over

Not much comes to mind, not in the last 25 years..

Most Is garbage....most not all, before I'm crucified. 

Unfortunately, but in my opinion, most of the best American music came out in the last century.

With that in mind, I will give you my $0.02.

Green Day "American Idiot"

The Black Keys "El Camino"

Eminem "The Marshall Mathers LP"

Johnny Cash "Hurt"

Tool "Aenima"

Tool "Fear Inoculum"

LP "Lost on You"

LP "Heart to Mouth"

Moby "Reprise"

As to "Bonus points for songs that cover the plight of generations or relevant sociopolitical situations at the time."

I may be off base, but most modern music seems to be just a copy of whatever they think will make them rich and famous.

Soulless, vapid and formulaic are words that come to mind.

Rhiannon Giddens - Freedom Highway

Wow, now that is quite a question. I’ll really have to think about that. I am currently listening to Popsicle Toes by Michael Franks… definitely… oh, that is not in the last 25 years… wow, it is 46 years ago… how did that much time go by?

Three sets of two:

Hirth Martinez: Hirth from Earth and Big Bright Street.

Mary Chaplin Carpenter: Stones in the Road and Come On, Come On

Phil Ochs: Rehearsal for Retirement and Pleasures of the Harbor

These are older than 25 but that doesn’t matter. They cover the waterfront, I think. 

@tomaswv 

Hirth Martinez: Hirth from Earth and Big Bright Street. (released 1977)

Mary Chaplin Carpenter: Stones in the Road and Come On, Come On  (released 1994)

Phil Ochs: Rehearsal for Retirement and Pleasures of the Harbor (released 1969)

I believe the OP said the "best American music in the past 25 years.

@rpeluso: Your reminder of Merle Haggard compels me to admit I failed to keep up with this major American artist in his later years. And to admit that I had forgotten---but was reminded by other posters in this thread---of the last series of albums Johnny Cash recorded, perhaps the best of his life.

But how on Earth did I neglect to include Bob Dylan?! I fully understand those who can’t tolerate his current "craggy" voice, but that doesn’t in the least bother me. His 2000’s albums are amongst my favorites of his, and that’s saying a lot.

His early-2000 show at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood was one of my lifetime favorites, and I’ve attended many. I had last seen Dylan ten years earlier, and he was dreadful (so was his 3-pc. band), amongst the worst of my life. Oh that Bob! ;-)

Not expert in any of the following but have heard decent work from them:

Rival Sons, Black Label Society, Kenny Wayne Shepard and the best living blues guitarist, John Mayer.

Definitely Buddy and Julie Miller and I'll add Sarah Jarosz. Her albums really sound beautiful. 

Wilco

White Stripes/Jack White

Beck

Ty Segall

Missy Elliott 

Gillian Welch

In no particular order:

Snarky Puppy

Peter Frampton's Fingerprints (Peter is an American Resident)

Everlast - Whitey Ford Sings the Blues

Sheryl Crow

Sublime

Taylor Eigsti

Joe Walsh - Analog Man

Joe Bonamassa

Lyle Lovette

Bela Fleck

Chris Thile

Warren Haynes

Los Lobos

Pretty much anything by Jason Isbell; Steve Earle;

And Neil Young if you count his music as American.

Drive-by Truckers

The Shins, esp Chutes too Narrow

Battles, Mirrored

Damn, I left out Los Lobos, Steve Earle, and Gillian Welch as well. Richard Thompson, too. Who says there’s no good music being made anymore?! A couple of guys I know who are stuck in 1966 ;-) .

John Prine

Billy Strings 

Eva Cassity

Diana Krall 

Willy Nelson

Counting Crows says Mr Jones!

Try some Malcolm Holcombe. socially and politically relevant songs as well as just plain good american music.

Umphrey's McGee live on stage anywhere.

There are only a few artists that I've bought more than 1 of their albums/CD's over the last 25 years that have not been previously mentioned:

Johnny A

Ryan Adams

Neko Case

Rosanne Cash

Lloyd Cole

The Delays

Mark Eitzel

I Am Kloot

Ivy / Fountains of Wayne

Jenny Lewis

Shelby Lynne

Aimee Mann

Nada Surf

Kim Richey

• Keb' Mo'
• Shawn Colvin
• Badly Drawn Boy
• Counting Crows
• Norah Jones

Alabama Shakes,  Anderson.Paak, Bruno Mars, The B-52's,  Benise, Beth Hart, Billie Eilish, BJ The Chicago Kid, Black Eyed Peas, Boney James, Bria Skonberg, David Byne, Casey Abrams, Cecile McLorin Salvant, Christian McBride, Marcus Miller, D'Angelo, Dave Koz, Ed Sheeran, Eva Cassidy, Garth Brooks, Gregory Porter, Halie Loren, Hugh Laurie, Jacintha, Sade, Jill Scott, John Mayer, Joshua Redman, Joss Stone, Justin Timberlake, Kandace Spring, Keb' Mo', Keith Urban, Kelly Clarkson, Kendrick Lamar, Kygo, Lady Gaga, Leela James, Lianne La Havas, etc., etc., etc.  First haft of the alphabet.

There are so many good artists and so much music that has emerged in the last 25 years that it's almost impossible to catalog. I guess favorite songs is as good a place to start as anywhere else. Take your pick.  

Ray Davies Our Country Americana act 1 and 2 with the Jayhawks. A journey across America and it's inspiration.

Bands and performers that have been popular this century:

LCD Soundsystem. Great electronic

Dead and company sounds like Greatful Dead(misspelling intended)

Chris Stapleton excellent country

Black Keys Grungy but great

Muse Alternative rock

Arcade Fire Alternative

Blood Orange great r and b

Brian Culbertson jazz

Dua Lipa, Maroon 5 pop music

Several jam bands are quite talented. Been my thing lately. Phish, Lettuce, government mule, goose,

I just realized a couple not american bands. Oh well.

How can Bruce Springsteen not yet be on this list? There’s already plenty of stuff here that’s older than 25 years, but all of Bruce’s albums since "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (1995, so 27 years ago) hit both targets: great American music, and great social and political commentary. This list includes "The RIsing" (2002, about urban decline); "Devils and Dust" (2005, about wars in the middle east); "The Seeger Sessions" (2007; self-evidently relevant); "Wrecking Ball" ("2012); "High Hopes" (2014, with important musical contributions from Tom Morello, including "American Skin," about the Diallo shooting); "Western Stars" (2019); and my favorite, "Letter to You" (2020), which I think is one of the E Street Band’s best albums ever, and certainly the best recorded. Including "The Ghost of Tom Joad", as moving a document of American struggle as the Nobel-winning novel it takes its inspiration and title from, there’s ten albums here! But if you extend the dates back to the era of many of the American artists already suggested above, Bruce’s classics from the 1970s are surely among the most important American music ever written.

By the way, my wife is from Europe, I’m a scholar of German intellectual culture, we travel to Europe every year and have many friends there. I don’t know where the OP’s friend is coming from (he doesn’t say), but I can tell you that Bruce is the most well-regarded American musician of them all in Europe.

For good measure, let me also add Kendrick Lamar's "Damn." Few on this list seem to tolerate Hip Hop (and I include myself in that group), but this album is something special, and articulates a perspective on recent American culture in a way that none of the other suggestions here do. That's why it won a Pulitzer. 

surprised nobody mentioned Josh Homme. He formed the heavy Desert Rock genre with Kyuss and has released music that equals David Bowie in depth and imaginiation in the Rock genre with QOTSA and Them Crooked Vultures as well as the Desert Sessions. There really is no other current American Rock musician that equals his brilliance, James Hetfield excepted.

I’m a Keb’ Mo’ fan.

More than one way home from the album, Just Like You, is Americana.

The whole album is good.

@bdp24 - good choices, but Richard Thompson is quite English.... 

@daledeee1 - Muse is a great band, but English....

Tom Waits???

His music straddles the 25 year cutoff but whole albums are dedicated to his music by many of the artists listed below.

Townes Van Zandt didn't make the cutoff date but his music  is still  going strong as covers

Oops, right you are @larsman! And Leonard Cohen is Canadian, but at least that's "North" American. ;-)

Cadillac Black.

Ryan Bingham

Lyle Lovett

The Killers

Fugazi

Sublime

Black Pumas. 

Samantha Fish. 

I forgot to mention Ryan Adams, an artist that has incredibly strong songs, consistently that connect with people in one second....

Gregory Porter - Liquid Spirit

Chris Jones - Moonstruck

Jonny Lang - Wander This World

Michaela Anne - Desert Dove

+1 Lyle Lovett

Don’t forget Lucinda Williams.  Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is hard to beat

Would also add Daniel Lanois.  Acadie and Shine

+1 for most of the above

Tom Petty (RIP) solo and with the Heartbreakers - stayed relevant with excellent tours over 20 of the past 25 years

Allison Krauss and Union Station

Americans invented jazz, but clearly almost nobody here listens to it. I do, and for me (even having been a non jazz musician for a very long time) pretty much everything listed here seems kinda lame and simple compared to the brilliant jazz around these days. Suggestion: Listen to some of Wilco's Nels Cline's non Wilco stuff, especially what he's done with Julian Lage.

"seems kinda lame and simple". And there you have why I have always found Frank Zappa and Steely Dan so not to my liking. As if complexity alone denotes quality. Give me "God Only Knows" and "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted" any day of the week.

"All sound and fury, signifying nothing". Except for look at me, aren’t I smart and/or talented. Gratuitous displays of empty virtuosity, as I am wont to say. See, I’m smart too. ;-)

"No matter how I struggle and strive, I’ll never get out of this world alive." I call Hank Williams the Hillbilly Genius, yet Buddy Rich, as big a Jazz snob as there has ever been, dismissed all Country & Western music as beneath him. F Buddy Rich, no matter how fast and even he could play a double-stroke roll. Big deal. He played in service to his ego, not a great song.

Not that I’m against smart musicianship. Jim Keltner’s playing reveals a great degree of intelligence. But I love what George Harrison said to Jim, as Jim disclosed in an interview: "You don’t have to say everything you think." Leon Russell asked Elton John to dismiss Keltner during the recording sessions of the album they were making together. "He reacts to everything he hears" is how Leon characterized Jim’s playing. As many Jazz great have said, "The notes you don’t play are as important as those you do." That’s called musical wisdom, a quality I value above talent alone.

Like Hank Williams, Levon Helm was a hillbilly. Yet he was as wise a musician as I have ever heard. And, like all my other favorite musicians, he played in service to the song, as noble a calling as I am aware of.

Some of these artists go back more than 25 years.  Of these Nanci Grifith gets the most bonus points in my opinion.  Bela Fleck and Chick Corea are two of the great musician/composers of the late 20th and early 21 centuries.

Bela Fleck

Nanci Griffith

Chick Corea

Sarah Jarosz

Tim O'Brien

Emmy Lou Harris

Keb Mo

Julian Lage

John Prine

John Hiatt

Note that Frank Zappa and Steely Dan have zero in common. Frank simply didn’t care about any opinions regarding his complex and often unlistenable compositions, where Becker and Fagan were obsessing over every semitone to come up with funky yet cerebral pop songs that others may actually like. Their stuff still holds up, although for many it’s simply too complex...or something (my wife hates Fagan, but that could be related to some historic personal trauma or something). It’s the alleged modern "Americana" thing that often seems "lame and simple" which is not to say some talented players aren’t utilized like the aforementioned Nels Cline. I’ve worked as a live sound mixer/recording engineer with some astonishing people in the "singer-songwriter" or "folkie" world...Julian Lage (well, maybe Jazz), Anais Mitchell (stunning solo act as well as Broadway musical genius), etc., and recommend these people frequently. That said, when alone I listen to jazz pretty much exclusively, with other stuff sprinkled in. When I heard a "local boy" I’ve worked with for years was touring with Bonnie Raitt (Duke Levine) I had to hear her new album...and it’s great, although Duke ain’t on it. Tres Hombres and Little Feat get some gear pile exposure here and there as hey, they’re just worth it.