A Playlist to Cook By

In this Southern food and drink–lovers’ playlist, you’ll find the classics, old (Jimmy Dean’s “Please Pass the Biscuits”) and new (Kacey Musgraves’s “Biscuits”). You’ll find wisdom (“If a man’s gonna eat fried chicken, he’s got to get greasy,” from Kenny Rogers’ “Tulsa Turnaround”) and warnings (“No whiskey for sale / You get caught, no bail / Salt pork and molasses / Is all you get in jail,” from Ike & Tina’s “Nutbush City Limits”). There’s Ol’ Possum and Tammy, Allen Toussaint, Jimmy Buffett, of course, and the Four Tops, even if they do hail from Detroit. Soul is universal, and so is “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch).” There’s Beyoncé with her hot sauce, Lizzo and her juice, and Lil Nas X cooking up paninis. Collard greens are well represented—from Nina Simone to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Blackeyed peas, too—from R.E.M. to the Dixie Chicks (and, yes, they do look alright to me). You’ll even find a certain Texas native “cooking MCs like a pound of bacon.” Dig in. As Lyle Lovett puts it in “Pantry,” “Nothin’s quite as tasty as what’s cookin’ right at home.”