This Land is Your Land
Below is the performance of Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land from this afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial. (hat tip) Over the years there has been some controversy about the song’s lyrics, music and copyright. See here, here and especially here. IMHO I would agree with Bruce Springsteen when he said that it is maybe “the greatest song ever written about America” (not that I know too much about the American songbook). Update: If you are wondering why the first video is no longer available, read here.
Bruce Springsteen singing this song in 1985.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Not bad at all, and the energy of the crowd certainly adds to the power of the performance, but I certainly don’t agree that this is “the greatest song ever written about America”. I much prefer America the Beautiful; it is a great pity that the only portion of its lyrics that most people know is the first verse about the land’s natural, physical beauty, and not the subsequent verses concerning self-sacrifice and the moral quality of its people. I prefer, too, the sublimity and formality of both Bates’ lyrics and the perfectly matched melody of Ward to the down-to-earth approachability and folksiness of, well, even a great folk classic. And, of course, I appreciate the religiosity of the song. All of these considerations are behind my love for Battle Hymn of the Republic, too.
Moreover, fundamentally “This Land” is about entitlement and what my country can do for me (and isn’t). “America”, while certainly conceding that we aren’t perfect (“God mend thine ev’ry flaw”, is a celebration of how men have improved the country by striving for an ideal greater than themselves, as expressed in these lovely lines:
O beautiful for heroes prov’d
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.