Songs Of America Essay Research Paper Songs

Songs Of America Essay, Research Paper

Songs of America

“Singing…bye bye, Miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the levy…but the levy was dry….

These lyrics, this song, sung today by Madonna, and years ago, a song that my Dad probably sung..as written by Don Mclean in the 70’s, symbolized for many an aspect of America of the 60’s and 70’s. Who was the American, and what did it mean to be American. What did America mean or represent.

When I listen to that song, I see different things than what my dad probably saw. To talk to my dad, you’d learn that the song Miss Ameican Pie, contained the entire history of Rock and Roll. He would tell you that McLean wrote the song whenh is idol, Buddy Holly was killed. That McLean opened a bunch of newspapers and read that Buddy Holly was killed, and the song sort of “wrote itself” about things that were beginning to slip away forever from the America that used to be, on to the America that was, and the America it would become. The rite of passage from innocence into maturity. The passing of one era, and the beginning of another.

But when I hear the song today, as sung by Madonna, I may interpret something different, only because I see it more as a song of the late 60’s and 70’s, than I do of a song about the 50’s and I connect it more with the times that it was written in, rather than about the “times” that it refers to in some of the lyrics. I can identify it more with the flower people of the 70’s and the Vietnam war, than to the 50’s. But there is a connection.

I suppose you can say that if the innocence of Rock and Roll passed along with someone like Buddy Holly, so did the innocence of America, pass and leave with the onset of the 60’s and the Vietnam war. What Americans were, what it meant to be an American, and what America represented took on new meaning as the 60’s moved into the 70’s.

The demographics of America changed so that the conservative values of the heartland, or middle America could no longer be found to thrive in the “big cities.” Especially, in cities on the East Coas and West Coast. Cities that once were inhabited by “country folk” that had moved to the city for better jobs and opportunities, cities that had been inhabited by immigrants of European origin, were now swarming with Hispanics and Asians. Ghettos were not limited to only “colored” people in the 50’s and “blacks” in the 70’s but now encompassed areas of Asians and Hispanics as well. Values didnt meld, but rather clashed, and friction occurred.

Eastern influences began to affect the thoughts of young people that could not grasp the values and identities that their parents had foiught for, and they began to question American values rather than defend them. Patriotism once brought together the entire American melting pot and crystlalized it under a common goal during World War II. Americans of every walk of life and European immigrants fought for the right of freedom, the right to vote, the right for a better life. However, in the 60s adn 70’s that “patriotism” was something to fear and in some ways be ashamed of.

Patriotism in the 60’s and 70’s had not become something to rally for, but something to squash. It meant imperialism and to many it meant oppression of forcing the :”American” way of life on others, against their will, for their own good. And so with the onset of the Vietnam War, with the beginning of the Vietnam War protests, America’s youth turned to counter cultures, eastern cultures, mysticism, embraced these, and rebelled against the values of their parents, values they felt as self surving and oppressive. And although it was the America’s Free Speech movement, it seemed to rebel against the freedom that it enjoyed.

Bye bye Miss American pie, to me, speaks of a different passing. To me it speaks of a passing of an America of I Love Lucy, the passing of an America of Leave it to Beaver and Andy Griffith, into the chaos of All In The Family, and the subtle reverse discrimination of the The Jeffersons. To me it is the passing of “mom, and apple pie,” into a generation of physical, emotional and ethical unravelment. It is the passing of an era, it is a good bye to Americana, it is the culmination that we have today of a nation that is no longer a melting pot, but one diversity. We are no longer a nation of American Citizens and Naturalized Citizens, but we are Ethnic Americans.

We stress diversity rather than try to homogenize into a whole. We divide over America,s fight for the freedoms of people in other lands. We take to the streets in defiance to people’s fight for freedom, and return a young boy to a land of communism and oppression. We trample our Constitution and seek to rewrite laws in the name of “the will of the people” because we lose an election.

“Bye Bye Miss American pie, drove my Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry…….”

I suppose, in most cases we sing lyrics and remember tunes, but at times we reaize a deeper “meaning” within a song. The most simple songs can be a reflection not only of the person that wrote it, but the times in which he lived, and what those times held dear and valuable, or what they feared and abhorred. We listen to songs, but maybe we dont hear the messages.

“..Born in the USA…” means what. To who. And why. Bruce Springsteen is known for that song, and it can mean differnet things to different