Community Corner

What's Your Favorite Fourth of July 2014 Patriotic Song? Patch Poll

Some melodies play over and over in our heads – not to mention in the Independence Day parades – during Fourth of July weekend celebrations. Others aren't so obvious, and some we think of as patriotic aren't.

Nothing plays the song of the Fourth of July quite like a rousing version of a John Philip Sousa march – not that we think that’s what you’ll be playing in the back yard when you fire up the grill for an Independence Day party.

We’ve put together a poll with some favorites, including some you may not have thought about and some patriotic songs critics say shouldn’t be on the list at all. The watchdog Media Resource Center lists one of them:

Bruce Springsteen’s 1980s anthem “Born in the U.S.A.” was famously co-opted by then President Ronald Reagan and conservative columnist George Will waxed on about the flag-waving patriotism at Springsteen’s concerts, but The Boss intended it as an anti-war that is harshly critical of what happened to many Americans who were drafted into service during Vietnam War:

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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

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      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

      I'm ten years burning down the road

      Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go

      Born in the U.S.A.    

“People got a need to feel good about the country they live in. But what's happening is … is gettin’ manipulated and exploited,” he reportedly said at the time. “And you see the Reagan re-election ads on TV – you know: ‘It’s morning in America.’ And you say, well, it's not morning in Pittsburgh. It’s not morning above 125th Street in New York.”

Woody Guthrie’s classic “This Land Is Your Land,” one of the most covered songs ever in America, is also on CBS’s patriotic do-not-play list. Written in the early 1940s, it reflects on the extreme poverty Guthrie witnessed during the Great Depression and was a response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” Guthrie thought America had begun to abandon the impoverished and displaced, but schoolchildren continue to sing the song as a tribute to all that is beautiful and pastoral in America.

But we included them anyway, just to get your pulse.

Tell Us:

  • What’s your favorite patriotic song? Take our poll and tell us why you like it in the comments. And if your favorite isn’t on the list, tell us that, too.


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