It’s the 4th of July, and I promised you ‘Murrica, so I’ll start with Track 9, “Watching You” by Rodney Atkins:
You heard right.
Drivin’ through town just my boy and me
With a Happy Meal in his booster seat
Knowin’ that he couldn’t have the toy ‘til his nuggets were gone.
Thank god he’s teaching his young son that he’ll get a prize when he ingests all of his toxic meat-byproduct bites. Good parenting.
Oh, and isn’t that hilarious, how the boy says, “Shit,” because he wants to be just like his dad? That’s hilarious!
Now, did you listen to the whole song? You really need to. Right after he said, “We got back home and I went to the barn [course he did]/I bowed my head and I prayed real hard,” I was like, “Oh no. Oh NO. NO THE KID’S GONNA SEE HIM PRAYING AND THEN PRAY JUST LIKE HIM AAAAAAAAHHHH HELP ME MY EARS.” And that’s exactly what happened.
Worst.
Actually, I thought it was the Worst. It’s not the Worst. The Worst, found when I landed on another country station, is Track 10 by the same jackass called—can you guess? I bet you can guess. That’s right. It’s called “It’s America”.
I mean, aside from the banal melody and the grating hyperbolic hur-hur-hur of his Southern (patriotic) accent, there’s the lyric. Do you want to know what America is? I’ll tell you. It’s:
- a high school prom (by which he means, teen pregnancy after abstinence-only education);
- a Springsteen song (wonder how Bruce feels about being name-checked here);
- a ride in a Chevrolet (funny, I still feel American when I drive my Mazda);
- a man on the moon (is this our most recent victory?);
- fireflies in June (fuck you, Alaska—where are your June lightning bugs?!);
- kids selling lemonade (capitalism!);
- cities (them places with liberals?) and farms;
- open arms (aw, hugs!);
- a kid with a chance (unless you’re born poor and/or of color lol);
- a rock and roll band (he’s probably thinking Creed);
- a farmer cuttin hay (sure);
- a big flag flyin’ in the summer wind over a fallen hero’s grave (there it is); and
- (most importantly) one nation under Gaaaaaaaaawd.
At one point, Atkins sings about how grateful he is to live in America after he witnesses people collecting canned tuna for “twister” victims. Because did you know that in other countries nobody does that? If your yurt gets swept away by a tsunami anywhere outside the U.S. borders, people (foreigners) just stand there and buff their nails. That’s all those ferners do is buff their fucking nails.
He does admit “we might not always get it right” in one line. One line. He dedicates one line to: slavery, the displacement of Native peoples, Jim Crow, eugenics, Japanese internment, corporate personhood, Monsanto, fracking, and Michele Bachmann.
But you know what? There’s nowhere he’d rather build his life.
You could change absolutely nothing about this song except have Jim Carrey sing it, and it would be a parody.
I wanted to put my car into the Susquehanna.
Fortunately, there were also Tracks 11-14:
Bonnie,
Shumann’s Symphony No. 1 in B Flat,
Prince squealing “Ain’t no particular sign I’m more compatible with!”,
and the new one by Daft Punk,
so I kep on truckin. Through America.
/endroadtrip/