Suppose you got to choose what song to be the American national anthem what would you choose?
Single Ladies.
The name of the song is “This Land is Your Land”.
Oh SHIT I posted before the poll went up! I didn’t know The Internationale would be an option! Awesome choice.
My Top Five candidates:
1.Battle Hymn of the Republic
2. The Internationale (If the lyrics are tweaked a bit to limit class hatred.
3. My Country 'Tis of Thee
4. Battle Cry of Freedom
5. This Land Is Your Land
I’ve always been partial to Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land, but I would expect a significant chunk of the U.S. population would rather it be Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., sadly.
I’m also going to have to vote for Johnny Cash’s I Been Everywhere for the quintessential American experience.
Unfortunately, if you put it to a vote, you’ll get God Bless America.
Our national anthem is unsingable, but it isn’t offensive to huge swaths of people.
Except Born in the USA talked about America’s problems surrounding the Vietnam war… but I guess Reagan didn’t realize that.
It’s not built for ensemble singing, but I’ve heard plenty of great (and diverse) individual renditions.
Many countries don’t even have lyrics to their anthems.
The religious references might make it inappropriate for a national anthem, but “America the Beautiful” is to my mind the most beautiful and most anthem-like of the choices.
That said, I don’t think “The Star-Spangled Banner” is so bad, really. Sure, I’m just used to it, but it’s stirring/beautiful enough, and not as hard to sing as people often claim.
He didn’t write it, and in fact it was by an Australian (and “everywhere” are a bunch of Aussie locations). Cash didn’t do it until 37 years later it seems. Many Australians don’t like their own anthem, and want to replace it with Waltzing Matilda. I think the US anthem should be similarly weird. America, Fuck Yeah! is my first choice, but America the Beautiful has the best sound of the main contenders.
Although I like America, the Beautiful, Stars and Stripes Forever and don’t really mind The Star Spangled Banner (other than its difficulty for the average ballpark crowd to sing), This Land is Your Land holds a special place in my heart.
That’s a really good list of songs, although I don’t know number 4.
Here’s Billy Bragg’s version of The Internationale but I reckon we kinda agree lad, about freedom. I adore The Battle Hymn of the Republic - The Mormon Choir are great at this, and 5 is just a great song, so is 3.
Billy Bragg sings much better tunes but, Levi Stubbs Tears
Woody Guthrie This Land is your Land
Here’s an Elvis Costello song, written by someone else (Robert Wyatt), but it is about Royal Navy sailors getting killed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LNB6M7yTBo&feature=related
Neither did Cowboy Bill Watts, who used it as entrance music for himself, and also for Dibiase & Doc after they turned babyface.
The lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic are mostly pretty despicable*, but the tune and (especially) the imagery are just so exquisite. I’d sing along, I think, which I don’t do with the current anthem. Really, I can’t think of another song that, as an anthem, would move me or come near to inspiring patriotism.
- –> If it were from a different time and place and wound up as the anthem of, say, Iran, Sean Hannity would be parading it around as another reason to be terrified of Muslims.
No option for God Save The Queen? 
It’s up there, lyricly reworked.
I’m going with “America the Beautiful” because it was written by a lesbian, Katharine Lee Bates, when she was president of Wellesley College. Her girlfriend, who she shared her life with for almost 30 years, was Katharine Coman, an economics professor at Wellesley. Bates wrote to Coman: “I want you so much my Dearest, and I want to love you so much better than I have ever loved.” Cite: Lillian Faderman, To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America—A History (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), p. 193. Oh, I forgot, you’re not allowed to call anyone in the 19th century lesbian, because nobody used that word back then. OK, I’ll settle for “hot woman-on-woman love,” which can’t be denied when you read their letters to each other.
The “Internationale” is awesome but it ain’t American even a little bit.
I like “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” a lot too. And it’s very American.
Never heard of the “Liberty Song.”
I wasn’t aware that the “Stars and Stripes Forever” had lyrics, or was that a whoosh?
Woody Guthrie’s song is actually titled just “This Land Is Your Land.”
“Loser” by Beck
“Creep” by Radiohead
“Lift Your Head Up High (And Blow Your Brains Out)” Bloodhound Gang