A series of songs on American life whose refrains are often misunderstood as blindly patriotic. Submit your own recommendation to hello@theatlantic.com.
In my earlier note featuring “Born in the U.S.A.” and “America,” I asked readers if they knew of other songs that convey the kind of complicated patriotism their refrains might betray. One reader who delivers via hello@:
Next in line has surely got to be “Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young. The chorus itself is a great cheer of ambiguity and willful ignorance.
Another reader notes:
You don’t need to read far to get what Neil Young’s saying, but don’t miss the second verse, featuring a hopeless crack addict throwing her infant in a trash can. Uplifting!
The lyrics criticize the George H. W. Bush administration, then in its first month, and the social problems of contemporary American life, directly referencing Bush’s famous “thousand points of light” remark from his 1989 inaugural address and his 1988 presidential campaign promise for America to become a “kinder, gentler nation.” Despite this, the song became the de facto anthem of the collapse of communism, because of its repeated chorus of ‘Keep on rockin’ in the free world’.
The song was used in Donald Trump’s announcement that he will run as a Republican candidate for the 2016 presidency. Young, a longtime supporter of Bernie Sanders, said that Trump's use of “Rockin’ in the Free World” was not authorized.
There's colors on the street
Red, white and blue
People shufflin' their feet
People sleepin' in their shoes
But there's a warnin' sign
on the road ahead
There's a lot of people sayin'
we'd be better off dead
Don't feel like Satan,
but I am to them
So I try to forget it,
any way I can.
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world.
I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away,
and she's gone to get a hit
She hates her life,
and what she's done to it
There's one more kid
that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love,
never get to be cool.
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world.
We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
Keep on rockin' in the free world.
A reader remarks on a video flagged by a previous reader showing old images of U.S. immigrants juxtaposed with David Bowie’s rendition of Paul Simon’s “America”:
The reader claims that the line “they’ve all come to look for America” reflects a “pro-immigrant, anti-nativist.” But the line didn’t refer to immigrants coming to America; it was about disillusionment. See this great response by Ross Barkan in The Observer.
Here’s Barkan:
The irony, though, is that “America” is probably not the song Mr. Sanders’ operatives think it is. Like Ronald Reagan, the Republican president who mistook Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A” for a cheerful patriotic anthem when it was really an indictment of the Vietnam War [illustrated by the haunting mashup seen above, juxtaposing Springsteen’s song with scenes from Full Metal Jacket], the ambience of this spot doesn’t match the meaning of the lyrics in full.
Mr. Sanders, who has an interest in folk music, may know this himself. The crescendo of “America” is not about crowds of ecstatic people coming together in the name of American glory and community. Written by Paul Simon, who like Mr. Sanders is a 74-year-old native New Yorker, the protest song is at best bittersweet, describing the journey of a man leaving Saginaw, Mich. to find his fortunes elsewhere.
The Sanders camp was probably smart to omit the second to last verse of “America” from the ad. In the verse, the true meaning of the song emerges, that of an illusory nation failing to deliver on its lofty promise.
“So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine; and the moon rose over an open field,” the duo sings. ” ‘Kathy, I’m lost,’ I said, though I know she was sleeping. ‘I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.’ ”
The song climaxes with the verse most prominently featured in the ad: “Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, they’ve all come to look for America.” But the listener is not left with the sense of hope fulfilled in the new America. Rather, the image lingers of the young couple riding a bus toward an uncertain destination, anxious and disillusioned. The traffic streams by on a loveless turnpike. They are still looking for America.
Can you think of any other examples of songs that are misinterpreted as patriotic—in a surface-level way at least, ignoring a more complicated patriotism? Please drop me an email. And here are the full lyrics to “Born in the U.S.A” FYI:
Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up
Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Got in a little hometown jam so they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land to go and kill the yellow man
Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "son if it was up to me"
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said "son don't you understand now"
Had a brother at Khe Sahn fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there he's all gone
He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now
Down in the shadow of penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go
Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I'm a long gone daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I'm a cool rocking daddy in the U.S.A.
Update from a reader who was an Air Force veteran in Vietnam:
The charge against Reagan people at the time was that they deliberately ignored the very obvious meaning in the lyrics, believing, no doubt correctly, that most people would just hum the tune. That’s rock for you, in the wrong hands. Your template, your actual lived life, regardless of any minimal element of the sacred, even in a rock song, can be appropriated.
Forgetting is a wonderful thing, except for those who can’t.