I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or to fat or to slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or your hard travelling.
I'm out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I'm out to sing songs to prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what colour, what size you are, how you are built, I'm out to sing the songs that make you take pride of yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sort of folks just about like you.
I could hire out to the other side, the big money side and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun on you even more and the ones that make you think you've got no sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to dead before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.
Woody Guthry