The songs below recall the original spirit of the Fourth of July, when 249 years ago Americans engaged in an act of protest against tyranny. Some of the songs have become such popular anthems that people forget their origins, just as some forget the original meaning of the Fourth of July.
Woody Guthrie: This Land Is Your Land
Guthrie wrote the song in 1940 in response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”
“…In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?…”
Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA, 1984
“…Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go…”
The Freedom Singers: We Shall Not Be Moved, at the 1963 March on Washington
Paul Robeson: Ballad for Americans
“…Out of the cheating, out of the shouting, out of the murders and lynchings, out of the windbags and patriotic spouting, out of the uncertainty and doubting…our marching song will come again…”
Billie Holiday Strange Fruit
“Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees…”
Pete Seeger: Which Side Are You On
“My daddy was a miner
And I’m a miner’s son
And I’ll stick with the union
‘Til every battle’s won”
Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam
Joan Baez: Birmingham Sunday
“On Birmingham Sunday the blood ran like wine
And the choir kept singing of freedom….”
Tracy Chapman: Talkin’ Bout A Revolution,
A Tribe Called Quest: We The People, 2016
“…All you Black folks, you must go
All you Mexicans, you must go
And all you poor folks, you must go
Muslims and gays, boy, we hate your ways
So all you bad folks, you must go…”
Sam Cooke: A Change Is Gonna Come, 1964
Aretha Franklin: Never Gonna Break My Faith
the audio was rediscovered two years after her death in 2018, and released as a music video in June 2020
K’naan · Snow Tha Product · Riz MC · Residente: Immigrants We Get The Job Done
from the Hamilton Mixtape, the song addresses the ne
Woody Guthrie again, Deportees
A group called The Last Internationale revive a Woody Guthrie song about an enraging moment in the history of U.S. treatment of migrants — suddenly and shockingly timely.
Check out my more traditional 10 Patriotic Songs for the 4th of July, which I put together in 2013, a different era. and Women’s Declaration of Independence: 10 Songs for the 4th of July.
At the beginning of the second Trump administration, Rolling Stone put together a songlist of the 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time
