"America, I Love You!"
by American Quartet
Sheet music courtesy of Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection |
"America, I Love You" changes the attack from a guilt trip into what amounts to a personal, patriotic witness—it is almost a religious experience. After opening with a quotation from "The Star Spangled Banner," the melody leads the lyric into an allusion to "just a little over a hundred years ago" (clearly referring to 1776 and the revolution) and "a handful of strangers / They faced many dangers / To make their country grow," and then to the relatively conciliatory and inviting "it's your land and my land / A great do or die land / And that's just why I sing—" and immediately, in the same brash, brass tones of what could easily be the same brass band, the quartet launches into:
America, I love you
You're like a sweetheart of mine.
From ocean to ocean
For you my devotion
Is touching each bound'ry line
Just like a little baby
Climbing it's mother's knee
America, I love you,
And there's a hundred million others like me.
The recording includes every major relationship any child might have, sweetheart, mother, and makes it clear that he's part of a big crowd—a veritable melting pot of lovers. The pressure to conform seems to be intense. Then the lyric addresses an outsider, someone who is not one of the faithful, but one who is encouraged to become one:
From all sorts of places
They welcomed all the races
To settle on their shores.
They did not care which ones
The poor or the rich ones
They still had room for more.
To give them protection
By popular election,
A set of laws they chose.
They're your laws and my laws
For your cause and my cause
That's why this country rose.
(refrain)
"They" did not care, "They" had more room, "They" will be the object of your affection. The demand for gratitude does not diminish, but now there are laws to protect everybody and they are not laws, perhaps remembering the favored place and treatment of aristocracy in Europe, that favor anyone or which militate against any particular cause. The main idea is still "Put up or shut up." Joining is easier than fighting the current and then the coda, which quotes "O Tannenbaum," "Hail, Columbia," and "The Star Spangled Banner" brings together the principal sources of the pull on American affections, German and British, and ends with the Star Spangled appeal, "Oh, say can you see / First of all our land must be? / (refrain)." The cutesy ending demands allegiances for the good of "our" country. The effect is incalculable, but the idea is intense. The song ends as it began, with "you're like a sweetheart of mine." The idea of America as the sweetheart for the "hyphenated-Americans" matches, rather successfully, the image of the Kaiser and his Iron Bride." Yankee Doodle and Lady Liberty were the perfect couple to deflect the perceived corruption fostered in the Old World.
Listen: Streaming Real Audio | Windows Media Audio
