“City of New Orleans” by Arlo Guthrie

Steve Goodman wrote "City of New Orleans" after riding the Illinois Central line to visit his wife's family, and cut it first on his self-titled 1971 album, but it was Arlo Guthrie who turned it into a hit in 1972. The song rides the Illinois Central's City of New Orleans train all the way from Chicago down to New Orleans, watching the country roll past the window with equal parts fondness and ache.

Here Guthrie's version turns up on the 1991 album All Over the World. The song's standing has only grown with time: in June 2026 CBS News put it on a list of 250 must-know American songs spanning 250 years of the country.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.