Let's try this again: US National Anthem

[UrbScotty]

Poll question: Let's try this again: US National Anthem

Sorry about that!

Anyway, I'm posting this in response to this thread about patriotic songs.

[maveric]

1. "Free Bird"!

By Lynard Skynard.

[Don Claybrook]

2. If I Had a Rocket Launcher

by Bruce Cockburn.

:)

[carols]

3. Oh beautiful for specious lies...

George Bush's America the Beautiful

Oh beautiful for specious lies
And fake bin Laden tapes
For yellow-cake uranium
and evidence that’s baked.
America, America
There’s oil don’t you see?
Though it’s a sham,
I’ll bomb Saddam
So there’ll be more for me!

More..George Bushs America the Beautiful

[UrbScotty]

5. LOL! How Hilarous!

Oh My Goodness!

[DivinBreuvage]

4. Battle Hymn of the Republic!

That's the one I'd pick, were I dictatrix

[starroute]

6. Uh...too Christian? too warlike? too damn many metaphors?

Surely you've got to be kidding.

[DivinBreuvage]

9. No. The purest and most perfect distillation of what America should be

And it is all in that one penultimate line: "Let us die to make men free."

You dislike it because it's warlike and Christian. Some people dislike it because it was a Union song, or inspired by an earlier tune about that wicked old evil horrendous religious fanatic John Brown. Not only that, but the author herself was a (gasp!) feminist.

If both liberal and conservative America can find something in this song to irritate their delicate ideological sensitivities, that proves it's a good choice.

[Valerie5555]

7. Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree

Just for the sake of playing peverse mind games with the Americans.



On edit: Is someone going to ask me Penne Laingen, is that you????????????

[amber dog democrat]

8. Columbia the Gem of the Ocean

or US Blues by the Grateful Dead

[terrya]

10. Singers from every genre of music have tackled the "Star Spangled Banner"

And they ALL have had trouble with it.

Why? Because it's a CRAPPY piece of music...virtually unsingable.

"America the Beautiful"...because it's a nice, positive piece of music.

[OneBlueSky]

11. again, it's gotta be "This Land Is Your Land" . . .

both for the obvious meaning of the song and to honor a great American song writer . . . "this land was made for you and me!" . . .

[Andyjunction]

12. Leave it alone

Don't give Americans any ideas or we'll end up with Lee Greenwood's Proud to be an American as our national anthem. Or maybe Darrel Worley's Have You Forgotten? Then you'd be sorry you brought it up :7

[blondeatlast]

17. Too horrible to think about . . .

Even lots of Repugs prefer "America the Beautiful."

[Catshrink]

13. America, you're so fine

America, you're so fine,
You're so fine, you blow my mind.
America.


~ by Bart Simpson

[SmileyBoy]

19. Wait - you forgot the armpit fart he did at the end.

:D:D:D

[CanuckAmok]

14. My Sharona.

At least you'd know everyone would be singing along in their cars.

[fortyfeetunder]

15. Boozy background of the Star Spangled Banner (SSB)

I bet the average American didn't know the SSB tune was an old English drinking song, To Anacreon in Heav'n.



http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~gilbertn/Star-Spangled-Banner.html

John Stafford Smith, to whom the tune was attributed, was an important English music historian, as well as a singer, organist and composer of glees. Smith's melody originated as To Anacreon in Heav'n, sung at each fortnightly meeting of London's Anacreontic Society, a club of wealthy amateur musicians founded in 1766. Anacreon (c. 563-478 B.C.) had been a classical Greek poet who wrote of love and wine: Ralph Tomlinson's six verses (http://www.ingeb.org/songs/toanacre.html) to Smith's ode each end with "... twine / the myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine."

Come to think of it, after a few glasses of the fermented stuff, anyone could possibly sing the SSB!

Hence, my vote for America the Beautiful

[elperromagico]

16. What about "We Will Rock You"?

[JVS]

18. The International