Best American music of the last 25 years?

• Keb' Mo'
• Shawn Colvin
• Badly Drawn Boy
• Counting Crows
• Norah Jones

Alabama Shakes,  Anderson.Paak, Bruno Mars, The B-52's,  Benise, Beth Hart, Billie Eilish, BJ The Chicago Kid, Black Eyed Peas, Boney James, Bria Skonberg, David Byne, Casey Abrams, Cecile McLorin Salvant, Christian McBride, Marcus Miller, D'Angelo, Dave Koz, Ed Sheeran, Eva Cassidy, Garth Brooks, Gregory Porter, Halie Loren, Hugh Laurie, Jacintha, Sade, Jill Scott, John Mayer, Joshua Redman, Joss Stone, Justin Timberlake, Kandace Spring, Keb' Mo', Keith Urban, Kelly Clarkson, Kendrick Lamar, Kygo, Lady Gaga, Leela James, Lianne La Havas, etc., etc., etc.  First haft of the alphabet.

There are so many good artists and so much music that has emerged in the last 25 years that it's almost impossible to catalog. I guess favorite songs is as good a place to start as anywhere else. Take your pick.  

Ray Davies Our Country Americana act 1 and 2 with the Jayhawks. A journey across America and it's inspiration.

Bands and performers that have been popular this century:

LCD Soundsystem. Great electronic

Dead and company sounds like Greatful Dead(misspelling intended)

Chris Stapleton excellent country

Black Keys Grungy but great

Muse Alternative rock

Arcade Fire Alternative

Blood Orange great r and b

Brian Culbertson jazz

Dua Lipa, Maroon 5 pop music

Several jam bands are quite talented. Been my thing lately. Phish, Lettuce, government mule, goose,

I just realized a couple not american bands. Oh well.

How can Bruce Springsteen not yet be on this list? There’s already plenty of stuff here that’s older than 25 years, but all of Bruce’s albums since "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (1995, so 27 years ago) hit both targets: great American music, and great social and political commentary. This list includes "The RIsing" (2002, about urban decline); "Devils and Dust" (2005, about wars in the middle east); "The Seeger Sessions" (2007; self-evidently relevant); "Wrecking Ball" ("2012); "High Hopes" (2014, with important musical contributions from Tom Morello, including "American Skin," about the Diallo shooting); "Western Stars" (2019); and my favorite, "Letter to You" (2020), which I think is one of the E Street Band’s best albums ever, and certainly the best recorded. Including "The Ghost of Tom Joad", as moving a document of American struggle as the Nobel-winning novel it takes its inspiration and title from, there’s ten albums here! But if you extend the dates back to the era of many of the American artists already suggested above, Bruce’s classics from the 1970s are surely among the most important American music ever written.

By the way, my wife is from Europe, I’m a scholar of German intellectual culture, we travel to Europe every year and have many friends there. I don’t know where the OP’s friend is coming from (he doesn’t say), but I can tell you that Bruce is the most well-regarded American musician of them all in Europe.

For good measure, let me also add Kendrick Lamar's "Damn." Few on this list seem to tolerate Hip Hop (and I include myself in that group), but this album is something special, and articulates a perspective on recent American culture in a way that none of the other suggestions here do. That's why it won a Pulitzer.