"This Land Is Your Land" is a song by American folk singer Woody Guthrie. One of the United States' most famous folk songs, its lyrics were written in 1940 in critical response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". Its melody is based on a Carter Family tune called "When the World's on Fire". When Guthrie was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing "God Bless America" on the radio in the late 1930s, he sarcastically called his song "God Blessed America for Me" before renaming it "This Land Is Your Land".
The popular short version was first released on the 10-inch album This Land Is My Land: American Work Songs (Folkways FP 27) in 1951. However, the song itself became well known due to that it was copyrighted and included in many songbooks from the mid-1940s through the 1950s.
In 1989, a 1947 recording on the Asch record label was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
In 2002, "This Land Is Your Land" was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. In 2021, it was listed at No. 229 on Rolling Stone's "Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time," and in 2025, it was listed at No. 11 on its list of "The 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time." In June 2026, CBS News included the song in its list of the 250 essential American songs of the past 250 years.
Contents
Melody
Guthrie's melody was very similar to the melody of "Oh, My Loving Brother", a Baptist gospel hymn that had been recorded by the Carter Family as "When the World's On Fire" and had inspired their "Little Darlin', Pal of Mine." He used the same melody for the chorus and the verses.
Lyrics
Original 1940 lyrics
The original lyrics were composed on February 23, 1940, in Guthrie's room at the Hanover House hotel at 43rd St. and 6th Ave. (101 West 43rd St.) in New York. The line "This land was made for you and me" does not appear in the original manuscript at the end of each verse, but is implied by Guthrie's writing of those words at the top of the page and by his subsequent singing of the line with those words.
According to Joe Klein, after Guthrie composed it, "he completely forgot about the song, and didn't do anything with it for another five years."
1944 version lyrics
In 1944, during World War II, Guthrie prepared another version, which drops the two verses that are critical of the United States from the original: verse four, regarding private property, and verse six, regarding hunger. By 1944, after Germany had invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Guthrie supported U.S. involvement in Europe.
Confirmation of two other verses
The April 1944 recording in the possession of the Smithsonian, the earliest known recording of the song, has the "private property" verse included. This version was recorded the same day as 75 other songs. This was confirmed by several archivists for Smithsonian who were interviewed as part of the History Channel program Save Our History – Save our Sounds. The 1944 recording with this fourth verse was released in 1997, on Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land: The Asch Recordings Volume 1, where it is track 14.
Woodyguthrie.org also has a variant.
A 1945 pamphlet which omitted the last two verses has caused some question as to whether the original song did in fact contain the full text. The original manuscript confirms both of these verses.
As with other folk songs, it was sung with different words at various times, although the motives for this particular change of lyrics may involve the possible political interpretations of the verses. Recordings of Guthrie have him singing the verses with different words.
The verses critical of America are not often performed in schools or official functions. They can be best interpreted as a protest against the vast income inequalities that exist in the United States, and against the sufferings of millions during the Great Depression. The US, Guthrie insists, was made—and could still be made—for "you and me". This interpretation is consistent with such other Guthrie songs as "Pretty Boy Floyd" and Guthrie's lifelong struggle for social justice.
A rewritten Canadian version by Toronto-based folk group the Travellers was the first popular hit version of "This Land Is Your Land", receiving much airplay in Canada (although nowhere else) as early as 1956. Pete Seeger, a friend of both Woody Guthrie and of The Travellers, encouraged the Toronto band to "do something" with the song, which had been recorded by his group the Weavers in an unreleased version—and Seeger felt it would never be released due to his being blacklisted. The Travellers thought making the song about Canada would appeal to their audience, so made the appropriate changes to the chorus, namechecking several Canadian locations in place of American ones. The private property and relief line verses were not included; it is possible The Travellers had never heard them prior to recording their version of the song. The song was an immediate hit in Canada, and remains The Travellers' best-known recording. At the founding convention of the Canadian social democratic New Democratic Party in 1961, the Travellers' version of "This Land Is Your Land" was sung by the attending delegates.
Variations
As is the case with many well-known songs, it has been the subject of an enormous number of variations and parodies. They include:
Versions about other countries
Many variants of the song have been recorded with lyrics adjusted to fit diverse countries, regions, languages, and ethnic groups. They include:
Other variations
The song has been recorded by many performers over the years, ranging from American Country legend Glen Campbell, hardcore band Hated Youth, all the way to Turkish performer Nuri Sesigüzel to reggae group The Melodians.
A few other notable recordings are by:
Peter, Paul and Mary – for their album Moving (1963)
Bing Crosby – for the album America, I Hear You Singing (1964)
The Seekers – in the album A World of Our Own (1965)
Connie Francis – included in her album Connie Francis and The Kids Next Door (1966)
Tennessee Ernie Ford – recorded for his album America the Beautiful (1970)
David Carradine - in the soundtrack album of Bound for Glory, Woody Guthrie's biopic directed by Hal Ashby (1976)
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings – in the album Naturally (2005).
A version called "This badge is your badge", about FC United of Manchester, was written by fan Mickey O'Farrell, and is often sung by fans at the club's matches.
In film, television, internet, books, and advertising
The song has been sung by characters in many film and television productions, including Bob Roberts (1992), Stepmom (1998), Full House, The Luck of the Irish (a Disney Channel original movie), Up in the Air (2009), by Renée Zellweger in the 2010 film My Own Love Song, and by Edward Norton in the 2024 Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.
It has been parodied many times, including:
In the Home Improvement episode "Too Many Cooks" (1994), Tim refers to Al as "Al 'This Land Is' Borland".
A 1999 episode of Friends when Joey meets a man he believes to be his "hand-twin", resulting in the lyric "This hand is my hand."
The Simpsons episode "Lisa the Treehugger" (2000) with the words changed to "This log is my log, this log is your log" in reference to a runaway giant redwood tree.
In 2016, Budweiser temporarily rebranded their flagship beer "America", and included the lyrics "...from the redwood forests, to the gulf stream waters, this land was made for you and me" on their labels.
Pop singer Lady Gaga sang a few phrases of the song at the beginning of the performance of her halftime show of the 2017 Super Bowl.
The FX on Hulu series Mrs. America (episode 8 "Houston") depicts a group of women singing the song with a guitar. Actress Sarah Paulson's character (Alice McCray) joins in by singing one of the variant verses often omitted ("Nobody living can ever stop me, As I go walking that freedom highway; Nobody living can ever make me turn back, This land was made for you and me"). Another character points to McCray that the song was written by Guthrie, referred to as "a socialist" (a point relevant in the dialogue to state a contradiction between McCray's conservative views and her love for the song). This could be the reason to pick such an obscure verse, as this particular verse can only be linked to Guthrie and not to one of the many versions of the song by other artist.
Copyright controversy
A widely published quote of Guthrie's about copyright has been cited by some scholars to suggest that he was against copyright protection for his work:
This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.
Kembrew McLeod suggested this quote was made by Guthrie in reference to "This Land is Your Land", but that claim is inaccurate. The copyright registration number "#154085" referenced in the quote is for Guthrie's song "California!" (also known as "California! California!" or "California! The Land of the Sky!"). The quote was printed under the lyrics to "California!" in a songbook Guthrie made in 1937 – three years before the first draft of "This Land" was written.
A number of different organizations claim copyright for the song.
According to the Carter Family, the melody came from a tune that A.P. Carter had found and recorded with Sarah and Maybelle Carter prior to 1934 and was not original to Guthrie.
In July 2004, the website JibJab hosted a parody of the song, with George W. Bush and John Kerry singing altered lyrics to comment on the U.S. presidential election that November, resulting in The Richmond Organization, a music publisher that owns the copyright to Guthrie's tune through its Ludlow Music unit, threatening legal action.
JibJab then sued to affirm their parody was fair use, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) acting for them. As part of their research on the case they found that the song had been first published by Woody Guthrie in 1945, although the copyright was not registered until 1956. This meant that when Ludlow applied to renew the copyright in 1984 they were 11 years too late as the song had been in the public domain since 1973 (28 years from first publication). The Richmond Organization settled with JibJab shortly thereafter, agreeing that JibJab were free to distribute their parody. In an interview on NPR, Arlo Guthrie said that he thought the parody was hilarious and he thought Woody would have loved it too. Richmond still, however, claims copyright on other versions of the song, such as those appearing in the 1956 and later publications. Legally, such claims only apply to original elements of the song that were not in the public domain version.