Why is that jingoism mixes so poorly with pop music. Not just rock music, but pop music as a whole. Even the National Anthem sucks, and while there is of course “God Bless America”, that’s Irving Berlin so what do you expect.
But worst is 21st Century patriotic songs. Whenever a pop star gets up to write about America, they end up with songs like the worsts ong Paul McCartney ever wrote, his reaction to 9-11. A song so bad, contemporaries Mick Jagger and Pete Townshend refused to sing it with him. A song so bad… well just take a look:
“This is my right, a right given by God
To live a free life, to live in freedom
Talking about freedom
I’m talking about freedom
I will fight, for the right
To live in freedom
Anyone, tries to take it away
Will have to answer ’cause this is my right”
But Neil Diamond’s “Freedom Song (They’ll Never Take Us Down”) is worse. After the Boston Marathon Terrorist Attack, Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Carolina” because the theme song to Boston, as it has been for so many years for the Boston Red Sox, I’m guessing it has something to do with the “good times never felt so good” refrain at least for the Red Sox. For Boston, I guess it was a way to buck themselves up and really, I have no kick. It is a great song. It is such a great song that Diamond should have done a Boston “We Are The World” with various local legends, a Curt Schilling here, a Matt Damon there.
That’s not what Diamond did. No, no, no. no, Diamond wrote the worst song of his career. Look: I swear to you I am a big time pro-American. Big big big time. But even I think it is an embarrassment to hold yourself up as a beacon of freedom when you have the largest per capita prison inmates in the world. Don’t blather to me nonsense, don’t drape yourself in the flag and sing stuff .
Here is what Diamond said to Rolling Stone: “It really was sparked by that performance in Boston and the people that I had a chance to speak to, the first responders. It was a very eye-opening situation and I became very moved by it. I knew I would be, but it was even more moving than I had expected. But a song like this needs to be inspired by something important; it needs to be felt deeply and it was a big thing to chew off.
As I got into it – as with all of my other songs, but this one maybe even more deeply – I wanted to tell the story of a sense of freedom and the obligation I have to freedom in America, which goes back to my grandparents and the home that was offered here for them, and really just to say thanks to all of these people that are defending this freedom. That was the whole point of the song. I wanted it to be spirited and reflect the spirit that I experienced in Boston”
That’s what he wanted to do? With a lyric like “200 years and more and here we are today with freedom as our light, defending it with all our might…” That’s what we’re doing???
Perhaps there is a song to be written that can balance patriotism with steely eyed honesty. Perhaps there is a song that can find the right proportion with which to respond to a terrorist attack… but I haven’t heard it yet. I feel repulsed by this nonsense. It is an insult to people who were either injured or died to turn them into a rallying cry for war, as Diamond in his usual cloth eared soggy brained way, has done so. You might forgive Diamond for righting bathetic pathos like “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”, it is another thing entirely to offer up trash like “the freedom that we’ve found cannot be denied.” the lyric is as clumsy as the song title -what the hell does “Freedom Song (They’ll Never Take us Down” even mean?How much overkill can one song withstand: it buckles at the knees under the strain of its sentiment.
But I could just about forgive him if he actual song was any good. It is atrocious. After a renaissance in the early 21st century, with two pretty good albums to his name, he has reverted to the same old slow verse big chorus and singing by numbers big emotional vocal.
I can forgive patriotism, I can forgive arrogance, I can forgive overblown bullshit but I can’t forgive a bad song. This song is an insult to everybody, nobody more that the “Wounded Warriors” to whom half of the proceeds are going. It makes you wonder if Venezuela might not have a point.
Grade: F