Globally Rational

This is a continuation of the “parsing a country song” series, which I started a couple of weeks ago; click here to see the first article. Here is the third stanza and the chorus:

Now this nation that I love has fallen under attack.
A mighty sucker punch came flying in from somewhere in the back.
Soon as we could see clearly through our big black eye,
Man we lit up your world like the Fourth of July

(Chorus)
Hey Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list,
And the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist.
And the eagle will fly, And there’s gonna be Hell,
When you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell!
It’s gonna feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you…
Brought to you courtesy of the Red, White and Blue!

Oh, Justice will be served and the battle will rage.
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage
You’ll be sorry that you messed with the US of A
‘Cuz we’ll put a boot in your ass
It’s the American way.

(Chorus again)

The first three lines are facts, so I’m happy with them. But then he says “we lit up your world like the Fourth of July”, but I don’t think we really did. We’re supposed to assume that he’s talking to Osama bin Laden… and sure, we lit up his country and killed a lot of innocent people, but he’s still on the run. Again, Toby Keith is using key words like “attack”, “mighty”, “sucker punch”, “back”, “see clearly”, “black eye”, “lit up”, and “Fourth of July” in order to spark your emotions.

The chorus is my favorite part. Apparently, Uncle Sam put Osama’s name at the top of his list… and the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist… and the eagle was flying and there’s gonna be hell… and Mother Freedom was ringing her bell… and the world was raining down on him. Let me paraphrase this chorus:

Everybody got really mad at you and now nobody likes you! Naaa naaa na boo boo!

The chorus is full of more key emotion-stimulating words about what we did to Osama… but the entire time, he just talks about how angry we got. He says that “the whole wide world was raining down on you”, but never really specifies what “raining down on you” actually means (aside from putting your name at the top of a list and the Statue of Liberty shaking her fist).

After that, he goes on to say that there will be a fight and that America will win, but again ignores the facts. I think history will speak louder than any of my words will in this case.

There’s nothing wrong with patriotic songs like “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful”. What bothers me is these songs that promote violence without really presenting any real evidence supporting their claims. People listen to this kind of music and start to support the violence in the Middle East because their emotions conquer their ability to reason. That’s what bothers me about political music in general, but recent country music has been especially outrageous.

Next time: Parsing a hip-hop song.

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