And it wasn't the only one. I remember a short snippet of Fortunate Son was used to imply it was a patriotic song in a TV ad (Wrangler jeans I think?). The line being "Some folks were made to wave the flag, ooh the red, white, and blue"
The song, released in 1969, is quite clearly a criticism of the US's Vietnam policy. It's not likely to be mistaken for anything else (the way Born in the USA occasionally is), but still was aggressively misused.
> "Born in the USA" was popular because few people actually listened to the lyrics
I hear this repeated often, but is it even true? Couldn’t also be true that the song is popular because people can relate it to their negative feelings about “the system” and a weird sense of patriotism they feel regardless? It’s pretty common to have mixed feelings about one’s country.
Assuming the song is only popular because of ignorance seems far fetched.
This is an impressive bit of historical revisionism, entirely in tune with the pro-war memes saturating American corporate media these days related to the continued war in Ukraine (and the official state opposition to a negotiated settlement). In particular, it manages to entirely avoid mentioning Vietnam! Is the author and editor really unaware of that aspect of Bob Dylan's history? Let's see if we can help them out:
> "Through Bob Dylan’s music, the Vietnam War was able to be fought through the use of music as a means of protest. His songs clearly addressed the war, demonstrating that people were speaking about it, as well as expressing the ambivalence that many in the field felt. Despite the fact that the majority of his anti-war songs were written to protest the Vietnam War, many of them are still used today to express opposition to current-day conflicts... Masters of War, The Times They Are A Changin’, and All Along the Watchtower all discussed the atrocities of the war, whereas The Weight, as well as All Along the Watchtower, addressed the general unrest and unease of the time."
Please tell me that you don't consider the later appropriation of "Let's Roll" to somehow mean that people like Neil Young had committed the original sin of supporting the wars. By that logic, is Todd Beamer guilty of the same?
It's startling the ease and quickness with which some people will see a way ascribe some perceived right-wing guilt to someone like Neil Young. I'm not a fan of Young, and my politics are very different than his, but I certainly won't lay blame at his feet for being too right-wing or supporting wars, as this was never the case.
> Search for the Dixie Chicks, a country group who spoke out against the war, and read about what happened to them.
In case anyone is curious, the group fka the Dixie Chicks spoke out against the Iraq war in 2003. In 2005, they won a Grammy award. In 2007, they won five Grammies, including all three overall major categories (excluding "best new artist" from the four general field categories, because they weren't new). They are also the first female band in chart history to have three albums debut at No. 1.
In 2020, the group dropped the word "Dixie" from their name ... because of cancel culture? In any case, the Chicks then performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Creedence Clearwater Revival may never be endlessly talked about like Hendrix or the Beatles or the Stones but their music will probably outlive most of their 60s contemporaries.
First, everyone loves Creedence and their music crosses the political spectrum big time. Fogerty might be a liberal Democrat but his music hits big with conservatives. This is where the more conservative approach in lyric writing the article points out works in their favor. CCR never really wrote a drug song except for maybe "Lookin Out My Back Door" and that is hardly explicit. "Fortunate Son" isn't anti-war by being against the war, its anti-war by pointing out the injustice of the elite, the powerful, and the decision makers of America not having to put their own children on the line and deal with the consequences of their decision to go to war with Vietnam. The love for CCR is so widespread that Donald Trump used "Fortunate Son" in a campaign rally, unaware of the irony considering he got out of the draft.
Second, most of their songs are pretty easy to pick up and play. And because of the first point, they're all crowd pleasers. I'm in my mid-20s and when I picked up the guitar some of the first songs I learned once I got my chords down were "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" and "Bad Moon Rising". Why? Because everyone knows those songs and my dad get a kick out of it.
Maybe Creedence Clearwater Revival will never hit the philosophical or virtuoso depths of some of its contemporaries, but there is enough substance there to not just be a generic commercial pop song. Yet they are simple and universal enough to enmesh themselves into our American culture.
physical abuse or kinky S&M or even a metaphor relating to those
Did people seriously think that's what the song was about? Their understanding of English is fine, they just underestimated the paranoid creativity of the American cultural reactionary.
Frankly it’s bizarre. He was a fantastic rock musician who seemed to forget where delta blues, jazz, bluegrass comes from. They drew on older traditions but were distinctly American culture. Maybe his point was really that it’s not popular culture but you can criticize any country’s pop culture.
> It's ironic that these Sixties artists who sang about freedom from "the man" are now trying to force a giant corporation to censor another artist.
It would be ironic if artist- and artist-backed-consumer boycotts against giant corporations over actions including political messaging and associations weren't as much a part of the strategy of those same people in the 1960s and the rest of the intervening years as it is today.
Coincidentally I was talking about that time that Tom Petty toured in the 80s using the confederate flag and then many years later he apologized for doing it, no more than an hour ago with a friend of mine
People do change and also understand when they do «downright stupid things», but we have to give them a chance to arrive at that point.
If the post is still online, like the videos and photos of Tom Petty's 1985 tour, that could also be interpreted as a sign of honesty, it's also possible that the author forgot that he wrote it.
I write a lot of things that I don't remember soon after.
It happens to code as well, sometimes I ask myself «who's the genius that wrote this beautiful code» and I'm shocked when I find out it was me years ago, but most of the times I regret writing it.
> You would never expect to hear "ballad of green berets" as top song anymore.
It's very much an outlier--I suspect the "Silent Majority" deliberately pushed that to the top of the charts as a protest against all the hippie counterculture stuff that was in the charts until then.
Excellent article (personal opinion).
..."The controversy surrounding these two country songs did not teach us anything new about contemporary American culture. It was yet another example of the ideological capture of our elite institutions of cultural production and dissemination. The same double standard that was observed in this debate is applied on a regular basis to academic research, news reporting, and other forms of public speech whenever the content contradicts the liberal progress narrative..."
Boom
There are about a hundred other articles on Bob Dylan and his anti-Vietnam war protest songs, if you don't like that particlar one. Here's something from a decade ago for example:
> "HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM (AP) - Bob Dylan, whose anti-war anthems made him the face of protest against a war that continues to haunt a generation of Americans, finally got his chance to see Vietnam - at peace."
Isn't it just a little bit odd that a New Yorker retrospective piece on Bob Dylan doesn't even mention Vietnam? And isn't that most likely due to the corporate media cheerleading for escalation of the war in Ukraine?
It would be ironic if it were deleted by HN. The comment is still there and is generating a lot of healthy debate.
I've listened to the song and it's primary (only?) message is to call out a blatant lie from the news media and that we should all be critical consumers of that media.
I think part of his premise is predicated on the popular notion that there haven't been any protest songs since since the Vietnam era. He's showing that's not the case with more obscure and/or modern protest songs.
Sometimes we have to learn to enjoy things as they are without thinking about the meta context. I think Reagan, like him or loathe him, you know, liked Springsteen's "Born in the USA", despite it being a protest song.
Beside, propaganda is not in and of itself bad. Maybe propaganda has made me more of a conservationist or environmentalist. Should I have disregarded those readings because of the inherent propaganda?
"It may be the best example in all of American culture of a wolf in sheep’s clothing."
Not sure about that. I suspect Springsteen's Born in the USA takes that crown, or perhaps any number of satires that have been taken at face value (looking at you Paul Verhoeven).
If we take the premise to be true, the conclusion to be drawn is that those lyrics are NOT offensive. They way that ridiculous song has been celebrated in the media tells me that’s true.
And it wasn't the only one. I remember a short snippet of Fortunate Son was used to imply it was a patriotic song in a TV ad (Wrangler jeans I think?). The line being "Some folks were made to wave the flag, ooh the red, white, and blue"
The song, released in 1969, is quite clearly a criticism of the US's Vietnam policy. It's not likely to be mistaken for anything else (the way Born in the USA occasionally is), but still was aggressively misused.
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