General Discussion

Miles Archer

(18,837 posts) Wed Jan 18, 2017, 06:54 PM Jan 2017

Lee Greenwood doesn't want his annoying, jingoistic POS novelty hit to be "used politically"

When country singer Lee Greenwood wrote the thoroughly patriotic hit "God Bless the U.S.A." in 1983, he'd done so in the wake of a tragedy: The Soviet Union had shot down a Korean Air flight that had departed from the U.S., killing 269 passengers including a member of the House of Representatives. "That event made me pay attention to international news, but I'd wanted to write 'U.S.A.' for an awful long time," he tells Rolling Stone. However, he says, he did not intend the single, which came out in the spring of 1984, to be political.

"I just wanted to have something that would seed the culture and really give everybody something to cling onto, to unite," he says. "And then it was because Ronald Reagan became president and the use of that song for the campaign, but it was not necessarily for the Republican Party, because I really didn't want it to be used politically and still don't. … In the ensuing years, it was Katrina, the Gulf War and then the (9/11) attack on America, and each time it became a little bit more in the fiber of America."

Despite not wanting the song to be taken politically, Greenwood, age 74, has performed it at the inaugurations of three presidents – Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush – and will do so again on Thursday, January 19th, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial alongside Toby Keith and 3 Doors Down, among others, as part of Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration" concert. The singer's reaction to his invitation, as he tells Rolling Stone, was, "Man, this is going to be awesome."

I think he's going to be a great president. I love his slogan, "Let's make America great again," and I'm confident that he'll take a good shot at it.

http://www.rollingstone.com/country/features/inauguration-singer-lee-greenwood-trump-is-a-patriot-w461498