Todd Snider: Much more than an "alright guy"

We lost a unique storyteller and talent with the passing of alt-country and folk musician Todd Snider.

Todd Snider sang about everything from personal complacency to phony statistics and religion, among other things.

I’m going to miss the guy.

Citing a statement from family and friends, the Associated Press reported Saturday that Snider, 59, died after being hospitalized with pneumonia in Hendersonville, Tenn. Earlier this month, his management team said, Snider canceled a tour after he had been the victim of a violent assault in Salt Lake City. Police there arrested Snider after he threatened hospital staff who refused to admit him overnight, according to the AP and the Salt Lake Tribune.

The still-obscure but troubling details of his final days should do nothing to minimize Snider’s legacy. Over a recording career that spanned four decades, Snider bared his soul and challenged us to do the same.

His fans can point to any number of his recordings as personal favorites. Mine comes from his early days. “Alright Guy,” released on his 1994 album “Songs for a Daily Planet,” indicts the smugness of someone whose moral compass is governed by the conviction that “I know I ain’t perfect, but God knows I try.”

One verse concludes:

I know I get wild and I know I get drunk
Well, it ain’t like I got a bunch of bodies in my trunk
My old man used to call me a no-good punk
And I still don’t know why

With its references to David Letterman, Madonna, and Sinead O’Connor’s infamous “Saturday Night Live” appearance, you might have to be of a certain age to fully appreciate “Alright Guy.” Even so, its message isn’t dated. “Alright Guy” reminds us that there is more to living a good life than simply recognizing “I know I ain’t perfect.” Snider refrains from sermonizing or scolding. He uses humor to get his point across.

In the years to come, Snider continued to produce entertaining and thought-provoking music. In “Statistician Blues” (2002), he uses our dependence on facile and obviously phony numbers to make a broader point about the human capacity to rationalize greed and self-destructive behavior:

They say 92 percent of everything you learned in school was just bulls*** you’ll never need
84 percent of everything you got you bought to satisfy your greed
Because 90 percent of the world’s population links possessions to success
Even though 80 percent of the wealthiest 1 percent of the population
Drinks to an alarming excess
More money, more stress

It’s too much to think about
Too much to figure out
Stuck between hope and doubt
It’s too much to think about

In “Conservative Christian,” Snider invites us to roll our eyes at the stereotypical churchgoing, right-wing male who indulges in “gay bashing,” fears people of color, and hates “hippies like me.” It sounds like he’s letting loose with a full-throated attack on the religious right until he gets to the chorus:

Diamonds and dogs, boys and girls
Living together in two separate worlds
Following leaders up mountains of shame
Looking for someone to blame
I know who I like to blame

This isn’t really an attack on the religious right but rather an indictment of our tendency to stereotype and condemn those with whom we disagree. “Conservative Christian” has a lot more in common with Jesus’s injunction in Matthew to “Pass no judgment and you will not be judged” than it does with SNL skits about Easter.

In a 2014 appearance at a Farm-Aid Concert in Raleigh, N.C., Snider tells the audience “I’m not going to be sharing my opinions with you because I think they are smart, or because I think people need to know them. I’m going to share them because they rhyme.”

He was a little too hard on himself. They are smart, and people do need to know them — especially in 2025.

“Snider strings together non sequiturs that seem seamless as he contemplates love and greed, war and peace, the cycle of life and what matters most,” AP’s Steven Wine wrote in 2023. “Whether he’s singing a song that’s old or new, Snider always sounds like a busker on the corner of sanity and madness.”

That’s the dangerous intersection where a lot of us find ourselves these days. As long as that remains the case, and as long as we need poets and songwriters to help us safely cross the street, Snider’s music will live on.