'This Land Is Your Land': The national anthem we need
Whitney Houston sang the hell out of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” So did Marvin Gaye. The Grateful Dead’s a capella version is both straightforwardly traditional and layered with Deadness. Huey Lewis and the News’s a capella rendition is slicker and swings a little. Of course, Jimi Hendrix kicked the song’s ass.
But lyrically, “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a maudlin paean to military might. While a good portion of the country is certainly happy with this particular song as the American national anthem, count me in the segment that believes our nation’s anthem should express something other than a martial warning and that it is long past time we had a serious movement to change it and rethink its role in civic life.
There is no shortage of songs that would be better than “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Obvious possibilities include “God Bless America,” “America the Beautiful,” and “America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee).” I have also seen less-obvious suggestions like “Lean On Me” or the much more obscure “The House I Live In.” However, the best choice is a song that evokes American promise and potential, and ultimately calls for its citizens to take care of each other: “This Land Is Your Land.”
Woody Guthrie’s
1) It is a simple melody that anybody can learn to sing quickly. While not as musically dynamic as our current anthem, I believe its killer hooks on the lines “This land is your land, this land is my land” and “This land was made for you and me” are about three million times more effective than any of the hooks in “The Star-Spangled Banner” because the music is tied to the lyrics much more intimately than a poem grafted onto an English social club’s theme song can achieve. That social club’s song is actually kind of gnarly for vocalists and lends itself to pyrotechnics, but is not particularly friendly to everyday singers. Musically, “This Land Is Your Land” works on both kindergarten and adult levels.
2) I wager most Americans don’t know what “The Star-Spangled Banner” says, literally or rhetorically, and instead have absorbed it as a general statement of awesomeness. Without getting too far into the weeds, it is a speaker describing his swelling pride that the American flag still flies after a battle, symbolizing the nation’s resilience and will to win. The speaker takes the streaming flag as a metaphor for their country’s indomitable will.
“This Land Is Your Land” operates on a much more direct plane, but also carries hefty symbolic weight. There is little need to parse “this land was made for you and me,” but there is plenty of room to think about what that means as an ethos and in practice. Where “The Star-Spangled Banner” aims to inspire pride in the national strength, “This Land Is Your Land” aims to inspire collective purpose. I consider that a much more noble sentiment.
3) “The Star-Spangled Banner” is not long, but certain singers drag it out unnecessarily. Many renditions of “This Land Is Your Land” play with structure because each verse is essentially the same. The Elizabeth Mitchell version linked above uses the opening — most recognizable — verse as a chorus, which I think is a good solution if it were codified as our anthem. To keep it simple and brief, I would recommend a Verse 1, Verse 7, Verse 1 structure:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.
As much as I love the verse about the “No Trespassing” sign, these are the killer verses that truly make the song, and if we are to whittle it down into a national anthem that everyone can memorize quickly, these are the lines to use. They express that this entire nation belongs to all of us and that the speaker is determined to ensure freedom. While the “No Trespassing” verse speaks directly to my politics, I acknowledge that would be too much for many people to accept, and at the same time these lyrics are virtually unassailable. Who is going to argue against the surface-level sentiment that we are all equal heirs to our nation?
“This Land Is Your Land” does not work as a statement of fact. However, it is a nearly perfect aspirational statement. On those terms, no other song can match it.
(Photo: "Woody Guthrie Mural, Tulsa, OK 8/7/19" by Sharon Mollerus. Used under CC BY 2.0 license.)