Monthly Archives: April 2006

What’s America all about, anyway? Let’s look to music from the last thirty-five years or so to find out. Last weekend I burned a mix CD of various songs in my iTunes collection with “America” or “USA” in their titles:

1. Billy Bragg — “Help Save the Youth of America”
2. Green Day — “American Idiot”
3. Kid Rock — “American Badass”
4. Glenn Miller — “American Patrol”
5. Bachman-Turner Overdrive — “American Woman”
6. Kim Wilde — “Kids In America”
7. Toby Keith — “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)”
8. Lee Greenwood — “God Bless the U.S.A.”
9. Neil Diamond — “America”
10. Tracy Chapman — “America”
11. Violent Femmes — “American Music”
12. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers — “American Girl”
13. Weezer — “Surf Wax America”
14. Beach Boys — “Surfin USA”
15. Bruce Springsteen — “Born In The USA”
16. 2 Live Crew — “Banned In the USA”
17. John Mellencamp — “R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A.”
18. Simon and Garfunkel — “America”
19. The Proclaimers — “Letter From America (Band Version)”
20. Jefferson Airplane — “Volunteers (of America)”
21. U2 — “The Hands That Built America”
22. Ray Charles with Alicia Keys — “America the Beautiful”

(Okay, so they weren’t all in my music library to begin with. I did go slightly out of my way to find a couple of flag-waving country songs by Lee Greenwood and Toby Keith, and the Ray Charles song was a special request for the cat.)

I first saw Billy Bragg at the 1990 Earth Day concert on C-SPAN (I know, how unusual). Who is this guy telling us all to become “green reds?” He doesn’t have it out for America, per se, but he definitely thinks we can do better, as does Green Day, though far less articulately. These are songs for suburban America during a time of great prosperity, a time when we feel we can do whatever we want but are slavishly looking to our own narrow interests.

Kid Rock takes hedonism to the max (along with misogyny and poor taste) to give the world a view of the ugly American. Good times: drugs, girls, rock and roll. Bad times: all-night conversations, long walks on the beach, sunsets, puppies. The song also exhibits that interesting American phenomena of listing musical influences; Mellencamp does the same thing in “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” Are these subconscious attempts at gaining a wider audience by reminding us of songs that we already like? A kind of musical insecurity? Meanwhile, 2 Live Crew just wants to rap without trouble from The Man.

Strangely, the Violent Femmes’ “American Music” isn’t about music at all. It’s about suburban teenage insecurity, an “American Beauty” to Kim Wilde’s “Pleasantville.” I ha’ no idea what The Proclaimers are tryin’ ta ge’ at; ’tis a gran’ soft tune, tho. Though marginally more comprehensible, Tom Petty’s “American Girl” eludes me. Did she become an American ex-pat or only in her mind? Glenn Miller suggests we can have fun swinging with British girls.

Lee Greenwood and Toby Keith probably are never going abroad. One is proud to be an American, where at least he knows he’s free — even if Vietnam and stagflation and culture wars and atheists and dope-smoking Okies from Muskogee make him wonder about everything else. The other has no doubts about America’s preeminence: “And you’ll be sorry that you messed with / The U.S. of A. / ‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass / It’s the American way.” Thanks Toby, that’s helpful. (Sadly the ditty is maddeningly catchy; it’s a trainwreck.)

Perhaps after a few more years of “accomplishing” our Mission in Iraq, we’ll have another wave of war-related songs. Like Billy Bragg, Jefferson Airplane called on the hippies to storm the barricades. Bachman-Turner Overdrive (covering The Guess Who) even suggested that (like a gender-bending Lysistrata) we shun the American Woman and her war-making machine. BRUCE (wooo!) gives us a glimpse of what happens after the war.

Fortunately the Beach Boys promise we can have fun! fun! fun! with our boards. These days even that’s gone sinister; Weezer tells we can never truly drop out and only drift further out on the undertow.

In my opinion, the most interesting songs concern the central aspect of our collective American consciousness: the immigrant experience. As a youngster I saw Neil Diamond’s “Jazz Singer” and totally missed the point of this quintessentially moody, overwrought ’70s film, but the salient facts are neatly summarized in the song: “They’re comin’ to America.” In a song with the same title, Tracy Chapman says that hopefulness is a load of poppycock: “Found bodies to serve, submit and degrade, / While you were conquering America / Made soldiers and junkies, prisoners and slaves / While you were conquering America.” Reconciling the two, U2 gives us a song about recent immigrants (yes, and September 11th, too) which suggests that those of us who have been here for a while are taking them and the rest of the world forgranted.

Like Simon and Garfunkel, I now go forth to look for America. Well, okay, I’m going to bed. But tomorrow I’ll go forth.