John Dickinson, the Pennsylvania-Delaware statesman who refused to sign the Declaration of Independence, wrote the lyrics for "The Liberty Song" in the late 1760s, and the old tune already carried the shape of power: a borrowed melody from the Royal Navy march "Heart of Oak." The song promised, "In freedom we’re born, and in freedom we’ll live/Our purses are ready/Steady, Friends, steady." That’s the first trick of patriotic music. It speaks in the language of liberty while moving through the channels of empire, war, and obedience.
Who Gets to Define the Nation
The Associated Press guide said patriotic music is also a story of cultural independence, but the history it traces shows how often that independence came packaged with borrowed authority. Well into the 19th century, writers adapted new lyrics to popular melodies, usually from England, so the songs would be widely known. Loras John Schissel, a senior musicologist at the Library of Congress, said, "Nowadays, it would be like, ‘Here are my new lyrics that I just wrote, and you can sing them to this Beatles song,’" and added, "Everyone would say, ‘Oh, OK, I know that.’" The comparison lands cleanly. Mass culture makes the message familiar before anyone has a chance to question who’s speaking for whom.
"Yankee Doodle," a traditional song with an original date unknown, was once a British marching song used by British troops in Boston, but by the end of the Revolutionary War rebels had turned it back on their enemies. It is now the state song of Connecticut and also the title of the Oscar-winning World War II-era film starring James Cagney. The state gets its anthem. The old insult gets laundered into official memory. Same machinery, different flag.
Songs of Protest, Songs of Permission
"My Country 'Tis of Thee" dates to 1831-1832, when Samuel Francis Smith, a theology student, wrote the hymn to freedom and farewell to tyrants with "haughty steps" to the melody of "God Save the King." The song has been quoted during moments of protest, including by the Rev. Martin Luther King during his "I Have a Dream" speech, and sung during moments of unity, including by Aretha Franklin at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration. According to an eyewitness account, after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a gathering of Black people in South Carolina spontaneously sang it upon hearing that the state’s enslaved population had been declared free. That spontaneous singing matters. It came from people hearing a crack in the system and answering it themselves, not from any polished ceremony at the top.
Julia Ward Howe, a 19th-century abolitionist, adapted "Battle Hymn of the Republic" from the melody of "John Brown’s Body" after hearing it during a public review of Union troops. She wrote in her memoir, "I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind." The song has since been heard everywhere from the 1971 Super Bowl to last year’s funeral for President Jimmy Carter. The same hymn can be marched out for war, spectacle, and state ritual. That’s the point. Power loves a tune it can reuse.
What the Bosses Call Belonging
Irving Berlin wrote "God Bless America" in 1918 and revised it in 1938. The song was first intended for a World War I era revue, then set aside until the late 1930s when fears of a new world war were rising. Stephen Winick, a folklorist at the Library of Congress, said it was a break from earlier patriotic numbers because it was written by an immigrant and expressed personal allegiance rather than collective force. Winick said Berlin got mail from people asking, "How is it that you, this Russian Jew, has any right to ask God to bless America?" The question exposes the gatekeeping underneath the anthem. Even devotion has to pass through the right identity filters before the crowd accepts it.
Woody Guthrie’s "This Land Is Your Land" was written in 1940 as a response to "God Bless America." The song includes imagery of "diamond deserts" and "wheat fields waving," and in at least one version Guthrie sang, "As I went walking I saw a sign there/And on the sign it said ‘No Trespassing.’/But on the other side it didn’t say nothing." That line cuts through the patriotic varnish. A sign says who gets in and who doesn’t. The silence on the other side says the rest.
Chuck Berry’s "Back in the U.S.A." came in 1959 after he said he felt homesick during a trip to Australia. The song has been covered by Bruce Springsteen and Linda Ronstadt, among others, and critic Dave Marsh said Berry was aware that many establishments in the 1950s refused to serve a Black man. The anthem of home sits beside the reality of exclusion. The welcome mat was never for everyone.
Don Raye and Al Jacobs wrote "This Is My Country" in 1940 as war broke out in Europe. The song celebrates loyalty and unity across geographic lines, with the line, "What diff’rence if I hail from North or South/Or from the East or West?/My heart is filled with love for all of these." It has been played at Disney theme park fireworks shows and recorded by Pat Boone and the Air Force Heritage of America Band. Curtis Mayfield’s 1968 version, recorded with the Impressions amid the civil rights movement, says, "I’ve paid 300 years or more/Of slave driving, sweat, and welts on my back/This is my country." That version drags the hidden cost into the open. The country’s love song comes with a ledger.
Bruce Robinson wrote "Travelin’ Soldier" in 1996 and rewrote it in 1999. The song tells the story of a lonely American soldier during the Vietnam War corresponding with a young woman back home. It became a hit in 2002-2003 for The Chicks, formerly the Dixie Chicks, during a contentious national conversation about patriotism after 9/11 and before the Iraq War, and it was revived last year by Cody Johnson. Zac Brown Band’s "Chicken Fried," originally recorded in 2003 and released in 2005, became a sleeper anthem because of its third verse, in which Brown sings, "I thank God for my life / And for the stars and stripes / May freedom forever fly, let it ring." Toby Keith’s "Made in America" was written as a power ballad about an old man "livin’ off the land" who is so loyal to American-made goods that he is willing to "spend a little more in the store for a tag in the back that says ‘USA.’" Around the same time, Jay-Z and Kanye West were working on a protest/patriotic rap originally called "Sweet Baby Jesus" and later named "Made in America," with lyrics that include, "Built a republic that still stands/I’m tryna lead a nation, to leave to my little man’s/Or my daughter, so I’m boiling this water/The scales was lopsided, I’m just restoring order." Even here, the language of repair appears inside a system that already tilted the scales.
AP Music Writer Maria Sherman contributed to the guide.