Songs for the Post-Election World, Part I
Music hath charms to provide a soundtrack for your life, even when it seems like the future is bleak. Here's Part I of my post-election playlist. We're not going back.
The 2024 election results are definitive. Trump won. Harris lost. Come January the GOP will control both the Senate and the House. Like many of you, the presidential race didn’t go the way I voted. But unless you renounce your citizenship, you can’t honestly say “Trump is not my president.” Like it or not, Trump is the fairly elected leader of the United States. Some people are thrilled and others are not. I’m in the latter camp.
The time for anger and sorrow is over. Now we go forward. We are Americans.1 We have the duty to speak out against Trump and his sychophants. Despite our disappointments and frustrations of today and the many days to come, we must use our voices to declare truth to power. That is our American entitlement. Silence is unacceptable.
What many of us need—myself included—is kick-in-the-butt motivation for what’s on the horizon. Don McLean asks in his song American Pie, “can music save your mortal soul?” Maybe yes, maybe no. What we do we know is that music bolsters optimism. We are still the United States of America, every striving to achieve that more perfect union.
So no more tears. Here’s Part I of my personal soundtrack to amp up what’s needed for the second Trump go-around. These songs are rooted in the firm belief that America will continue to thrive, come what may. We are driven forward by our collective might. March to the music.
This playlist is filled with multifacted genres and artists. Some are standards of Americana, some rock, some folk, some Broadway showtunes. In a few cases, there are different versions of the same song. It’s a given that these selections reflect my personal tastes in music. All these songs have a common theme: the solid understanding that our love of country will get us through good times and bad. 2
With one notable exception, these songs don’t attack the upcoming 47th President of the United States. I want the focus off him. Rather, let’s embrace what unites us. It’s our country, come what may. We are ready.
Here’s Part I of my new soundtrack, A to M. I’m attributing these entries to artist and not composer (exceptions noted for when artist is also composer). You’ll see I’ve put both title and sample lyrics in italics so I don’t confuse you with endless quotation marks. According to my two sacred texts, The Elements of Style and The Chicago Manual of Style, song titles should be written in quote marks. Today I’m a heretic, but a forgivable heritic.
Next week is Part II, N to Z. And then, back to the usual shenanigans. Though I generally avoid politics in The Typewriter’s Collage, this time out we need to gird ourselves to fight the good fight.
We’re not going back.
A Change is Gonna Come (Sam Cooke): Cooke’s song, his response to Jim Crow laws of the south, is a call not just for hope, but a demand to act. Many great talents have done their covers of A Change is Gonna Come, but Cooke’s version remains the best. Sample lyric: There's been times that I thought / I wouldn't last for long / But now I think I'm able to carry on / It's been a long, long time coming / But I know a change is gonna come
America (Neil Diamond): Written by Diamond for his starring role in the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer. An arena rock celebration of the dreams immigrants bring to their new home in the United States. Sample lyric: Got a dream to take them there / They're coming to America / Got a dream they've come to share / They're coming to America
America: Fuck, Yeah! (Trey Parker & Matt Stone): From the duo behind South Park: an all-American rip-roaring, delightfully profane anthem from their film Team America: World Police. Team America is a parody of patriotic action films like Top Gun and Red Dawn. Oh, and the cast is all marionettes in an homage to the 1960s television show Thunderbirds and subsequent movie Thunderbirds Are Go. The soundtrack version of AFY is great, but even better is Parker & Stone’s jacked up reworking for the Red Rocks concert celebrating 25 years of South Park. That rendition morphs into a medley of upbeat songs, anchored by Neil Diamond’s America. Sample lyric: Freedom is the only way / yeah!3
America the Beautiful (Ray Charles): Ray Charles’s interpretation of an American standard. Charles added two new verses as introduction to the rest of this familiar work, deepening the song’s meaning within a larger context. We absorb the song in its entirety as though we are hearing America the Beautiful for the first time. Sample lyric: Oh beautiful for heroes proved / In liberating strife / Who more than self, their country loved / And mercy more than life
American Idiot (Green Day): A post-punk anthem, written as a protest against George W. Bush’s presidency, then later revamped to smack down Trump. It’s a cautionary tale of a song, warning Americans not to swallow everything that eminates out of the television. The verses of American Idiot take on new meaning in our age of social media, memes, and other internet tools spreading falsehoods. Green Day is screaming: “stand up for yourself, think for yourself, goddamit!” Good advice, then and now. Sample lyric: Don't wanna be an American idiot / One nation controlled by the media / Information Age of hysteria / It's calling out to idiot America
American Land (Bruce Springsteen): I’m convinced that the older Bruce Springsteen gets, the more he takes on the mantle of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. This song, inspired in part by Seeger’s In The American Land, is, like Neil Diamond’s America, a celebration of immigrant dreams. There’s an Irish lilt to the music, infusing American Land with exuberant energy. Sample lyric: I docked at Ellis Island in the city of light and spire / Wandered to the valley of red-hot steel and fire / Made the steel that built the cities with the sweat of our two hands / We made our home in the American land
American Tune (Paul Simon; Mandy Patikin): Paul Simon’s wistful take on the uncertainty we feel at times. Haunting and beautiful. I also love Mandy Patikin’s version from his album Mamloshen, a celebration of Jewish songwriters. Patakin interprets these songs in Yiddish, the lingua franca of so many Eastern European immigrants. Sample lyric: Oh, we come on the ship they call the Mayflower / We come on the ship that sailed the moon / We come in the age’s most uncertain hour / And sing an American tune
Back in the USA (Chuck Berry) A jumping jiving joyous tribute to American good times. Linda Ronstadt delivered a great cover version, but I prefer Berry’s original. Sample lyrics: Looking hard for a drive-in, searching for a corner cafe / Where hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day / Yeah, and a jukebox jumping with records like in the U.S.A
Beech Haven Ain’t My Home (aka Old Man Trump) (The group US Elevator in a traditional folk song rendition. Also recommended is the kick-ass version by Ryan Harvey) I know I said there would be no anti-Trump songs but this one is irresistible for a lot of reasons, both historical and contemporary. The lyrics are by Woody Guthrie, written in response to the racist covenants of his landlord, Fred Trump, father of future failed casino owner and peddler of similarly failed ventures like name-branded steaks and vodka, Donald J. Trump. Guthrie wrote the lyrics after moving into a Fred Trump-owned apartment building. Appalled by what he saw as a color line, developed and enforced by Trump the Father, Guthrie responded as only he could: turning his anger into song. The lyrics were found a few years ago amidst the archives at The Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Guthrie wrote no music for the piece, but this mantle was taken up by the folk group US Elevator, a band with the perfect pedigree for the job: Sarah Lee Guthire, daughter of Woody’s son Arlo (of Alice’s Restaurant fame) and Johnny Irion, nephew of writer/filmmaker Thomas Steinbeck and great-nephew of author John Steinbeck. Add to that another connection between Guthrie and Irion: her grandfather Woody turned his great-uncle John’s masterwork The Grapes of Wrath into the song Tom Joad, named after the main character of the book. Allegedly, upon hearing Guthrie’s song Steinbeck declared “That fucking little bastard! In 17 verses he got the entire story of a thing that took me two years to write.”4
As for Fred Trump—the real target of Beech Haven Ain’t My Home—he and his son, the future self-aggrandizing reality television star who declared that he would date his hot daughter Ivanka if she wasn’t his progeny, were sued in 1973 for housing discrimination. There was strong evidence that Team Trump had in-house policies against renting to African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and other minorities. Fred and his son, the future founder an eponymous university that sucked many a wallet dry before the grift went sour, fought back. After two years of court wrangling, a consent decree was issued, in which Fred and the future huckster of gold-plated gym shoes and $100,000 watches, would more or less get away with their racism. They admitted no wrongdoing, while pledging they would no longer discriminate “…against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling.”
This is the longest explanation for any entry on my list, for what ironically is the shortest song. But it is well deserved given how the Office of the President of the United States was changed, and not for the better, way back in 2016.5 Sample lyrics: I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate / He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts / When he drawed that color line / Here at his Beach Haven family project
Color Me America (Dolly Parton): Parton wrote this song in the wake of 9/11, an unabashed tribute to the American flag and all that the red, white, and blue stands for. I am of the strong opinion that if you don’t like Dolly Parton, there is something seriously wrong with you. She is the epitome of compassion without judgement. Dolly infuses every one of her songs with what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” Sample lyrics: Oh, sweet freedom may you stay / in our land and lives always / and may peace and beauty fill our hearts anew / and may we all stand up for you / may our thoughts and deeds be true / and be worthy of your stripes... red, white and blue
Do You Hear the People Sing (Les Misérables Original Broadway cast): Yes, a musical about France’s anti-monarchist insurrection of June 5 and 6, 1832, based on the doorstop-thick novel by Victor Hugo, which I read—and loved—long before the show was first produced. Les Misérables was originally staged in France, then translated into English, played in London’s West End, and eventually Broadway, where it picked up a slew of well-deserved Tony awards. I saw Les Misérables twice: once in London and then a touring company in Chicago. It’s a powerful musical, operatic in scope and cinematic in style.
Do You Hear the People Sing is a rousing anthem, one used by protestors around the world: Hong Kong, the Ukraine, South Korea, Iraq, Belarus, and elsewhere. That “elsewhere” does includes two presidential campaigns of known Mafia hanger-on, Donald J. Trump. Trump used Do You Hear the People Sing in his 2016 and 2024 runs, despite the firm disapproval and public anger by the show’s creators Sir Cameron Mackintosh and Alain Boublil.
That said, Do You Hear the People Sing is a glorious motivator for what’s to come over the next four years. Sample lyric: Do you hear the people sing? / Singing the song of angry men? / It is the music of the people / Who will not be slaves again! / When the beating of your heart / Echoes the beating of the drums / There is a life about to start / When tomorrow comes!
Eve of Destruction (Barry McGuire): This 1965 protest song is cry against the era’s social unrest, calling out the many hypocrisies of our nation’s leaders. So why do I think it’s a postive song?
Consider the mid-1960s. People were still reeling from President Kennedy’s assassination, a wound that ran deep in all levels of society. Violent race riots broke out in Harlem, Philadelphia, and elsewhere during the hot summer of 1964. In March 1965, voting rights advocates, including future congressman John L. Lewis, made a long trek by foot from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery. After crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers were clubbed and beaten by Alabama state troopers. Lewis’s skull was broken in the melee. The bridge itself was named after a Confederate war hero who later became a Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan.
Add to all this the ongoing Cold War, a national malaise over nuclear bombs, the escalating fight in Vietnam, conflicts in the Middle East, and more. Three years after Eve of Destruction was released Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Six weeks later, on June 5, Senator Robert F. Kennedy met the same fate as both King and his brother. Riots broke out in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic convention, when cops used clubs and teargas battling anti-war protesters. And on and on. It seemed like we really were on the eve of destruction.
But Eve of Destruction reminds us that we survived as a nation. Somehow we got through the turmoil of the 1960s. It’s time we put our own collective fears to the side. We are not on the eve of destruction. We are striving for a better future. Sample lyric: And you tell me / Over and over and over and over again, my friend / You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction / No no, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction
Eyes on the Prize (Bruce Springsteen): More of Springsteen in his Woody Guthrie/Pete Seeger mode, in his cover of the Civil Rights anthem. There are many excellent recordings of Eyes on the Prize, topped by a heartfelt rendition from Mavis Staples. I love the Springsteen version, his gravelly voice emphasizing that adversity cannot stop us from working towards a greater good. (Also check out Keep Your Hands on the Plow, by Mahalia Jackson and others, which uses slightly different lyrics combined with the same tune.) Sample lyrics: The one thing we did was right / Was the day we started to fight / Keep your eyes on the prize / Hold on
The Gettysburg Address (Johnny Cash) Not really a song, but a reading by Johnny Cash of Lincoln’s iconic speech. Backed up with Cash’s eloquent guitar picking. Lincoln’s themes of renewal and dedication are imbued with eternal American values, written in the midst of the country’s greatest crises. The country survived the Civil War. The country will survive the challenges that lay ahead. Sample lyric: Government of the people / by the people / for the people / shall not perish from the earth
The Hands that The Hands That Built America (U2) Yes, it’s an Irish band but this song, written for Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film Gangs of New York, is in the spirit of Neil Diamond’s America and Springsteen’s American Land, paying tribute to the hard-working immigrants who built this country. An introspective, quiet companion to Diamond’s lively melodies and Springsteen’s upbeat rocker. Sample lyric: It's early fall /
There's a cloud in the New York skyline / Innocence dragged across a yellow line / These are the hands that built America
History Has Its Eyes On You (Hamilton, Original Broadway cast): Lin-Manuel Miranda’s unlikely Broadway hit—the story of Alexander Hamilton, a determined and sometimes unsavory founding father as filtered through modern rap music—is filled with great songs. History Has Its Eyes On You digs deep into the awesome task faced by our revolutionary generation: could a undersized band of leaders and misfits defeat a world superpower, knowing that if they failed the judgement of history would long remember them as villains rather than heroes? Sample lyric: (sung by George Washington) Let me tell you what I wish I'd known / When I was young and dreamed of glory / You have no control / Who lives, who dies, who tells your story
I Hope (The Chicks6): The wish of Emily Robison, Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines for now and for future generations. A delicate prayer, longing for what can be done when we work together. Sample lyrics: But our children are watching us / They put their trust in us / They're gonna be like us / It's okay for us to disagree / We can work it out lovingly
I Won’t Back Down (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers): Tom Petty’s vigourous challenge to stand up against anyone or anything that would dare try to shut us down. Fiesty stuff with a real kickass attitude. I also like the Johnny Cash cover, which gives a meditative contemplation to the lyrics. After Petty’s death, the once and unfortunately future President Trump used the song at a 2020 campaign rally. In response, Petty’s family took out a cease-and-desist order. "Trump was in no way authorized to use this song to further a campaign that leaves too many Americans and common sense behind. Both the late Tom Petty and his family firmly stand against racism and discrimination of any kind. Tom Petty would never want a song of his used for a campaign of hate. He liked to bring people together.” Amen. Sample lyric: Well, I know what's right / I got just one life / In a world that keeps on pushin' me around / But I'll stand my ground / And I won't back down
In America (John Legend) The duality between the promise of United States, where opportunities are plentiful, versus its harsh realities for African Americans past and present. A powerful piece portraying life as it is for all too many, and yet ends with a postive affirmation of the American Dream. Sample lyric: We still gon' fight in America / Won't just stand around / Can't watch it go down / Won't just stand around
Watch it go down… / We'll make it in America
The Internationale (Billy Bragg) Look, I know The Internationale is historically connected with anarchists, communists, democratic socialists, socialist democratics, and yes, the bloodthristy Bolsheviks and their Soviet inheritors. You could reasonably dismiss The Internationale as a club fight song for disaffected leftists on the political fringes, unbending in the belief that their pipe dreams will come true. Fat chance.
But the song has reach beyond those deluded masses. Members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the international union known by its nickname “The Wobblies,” used The Internationale to invigorate the labor movement. Me? I like what the song represents: unity in the face of adversity. Lots of versions out there, but I think the best belongs to British folk-rocker Billy Bragg. His fresh lyrics are a whole lot better than anything conjured by communist cultists. Embrace this rendition, and dismiss those marginal adherents with inflexible dogmatic left-wing polemic ramrods shoved up their collective butts. Sample lyrics: Let racist ignorance be ended / For respect makes the empires fall / Freedom is merely privilege extended / Unless enjoyed by one and all
Is Anybody There? (1776, Original Broadway cast) 1776 took boring history textbooks, blew the dust off cardboard character descriptions, and showed the Founding Fathers for what they really were: a bunch of mismatched politicians caught up in petty fights and self-righteous counter fights. Can an ineffective bunch of elected representatives get anything done? That’s what John Adams ponders as the Continental Congress stands on the precipiece of either rejecting or embracing The Declaration of Independence. Is Anybody There? which incorporates letters written by John Adams to his wife Abigail, fires up a visionary who did more than he’s generally given credit for. I like the original production version the best, with William Daniels as Adams. Sample lyric: I see fireworks! / I see the pageant and pomp and parade / I hear the bells ringing out / I hear the cannons roar / I see Americans - all Americans / Free forever more
It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) (R.E.M) Yes, we may think a second Trump administration is the end of the world but it’s not. Consider the fact-checks in this whipsaw-speed rocker. A world filled with cynicism is mocked, banged around, and sent packing. No sample lyric needed here. Sing along with that refrain: It's the end of the world as we know it / and I feel fine
Land of Hope and Dreams (Bruce Springsteen) Another Springsteen song in his Woody Guthrie/Pete Seeger mode, underscored with gospel music. Woody Guthrie's This Train and the spiritual The Gospel Train: Get On Board are the musical progenitors of Land of Hope and Dreams. The train motif Springsteen relies on is woven into the spirtual fabric of Americana. Sample lyric: This train / Dreams will not be thwarted / This train / Faith will be rewarded / This train / Hear the steel wheels singin' / This train / Bells of freedom ringin'
Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Boys Choir of Harlem; Beyonce): A poem written by James Weldon Johnson in 1900 became the basis for this beautiful song, also known as The Black National Anthem. The message is transcendent. Much has been written about this song, and far better than my ablities to add anything profound to the eloquence this song demands. I have two different version on my playlist. The first is by the The Boys Choir of Harlem, combining lyric, music, and harmony into an almost etheral sound. Then there’s Beyoncé and her dynamic rendition at the 2018 Coachella Music Festival. Beyoncé delivered. The first African American woman to headline Coachella, Beyoncé is backed by muscular support from her band, underscoring the political elements of the song. Include both on your own playlist. Sample lyric: Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us / Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us / Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Living in the USA (James Brown): A rousing number that the Godfather of Soul first performed in Rocky IV, the worst of all the Rocky sequels.7 It became a signature tune in the Brown repitore, and for good reason. Living in America is filled with trademark James Brown energy, the kind of celebratory performance that stays in your head all day. Sample lyric: All night radio, keep on runnin' / Through your rock 'n' roll soul / All night diners keep you awake / On black coffee and a hard roll, woo!
March, March (The Chicks): Defiance in the name of American values. On March 10, 2003, as President George W. Bush geared-up the American military for an invasion of Iraq, Natalie Maines told a sold-out cheering London audience, “We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” Backlash ignited within hours. Radio stations pulled The Chicks’ music, their records burned in public displays, and over-the-top-outrage commentaries about Maines’ words were delivered en masse by right wing pundits.8
Death threats poured in. One anonymous letter to the trio declared “You will be shot dead at your concert in Dallas.” The FBI determined this was a credible threat, and that for safety’s sake, The Chicks should cancel their concert. They didn’t. The show went on as scheduled, but under heavy guard from the FBI, the Texas Rangers, and Dallas police. President Bush himself defended Maines’ declaration, saying “The…Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say ... (I)f some singers or Hollywood stars feel like speaking out, that's fine. That's the great thing about America.”
March, March is a fierce reponse to the bannings, the burnings, the death threats, and the rise of the MAGA cult of personality.9 No punches are pulled. The Chicks put it all out there. The accompanying video is a must-see. Sample lyric: Standin' with Emma and our sons and daughters / Watchin' our youth have to solve our problems / I'll follow them, so who's comin' with me?10
My Country Tis of Thee (Aretha Franklin): The American standard we all know. So many good versions. Best known is the historic performance by Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939. Despite her world-wide acclaim as an opera singer, Anderson was banned from singing at Constitution Hall by The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), who maintained the Hall with a firm policy of “concerts by whites only.” First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a DAR board member, resigned in protest, then arranged Anderson’s Lincoln Memorial concert, attended by over 75,000 people, plus millions of radio listners coast-to-coast. My favorite version of the song is Aretha Franklin’s performance at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration, January 20, 2009. A historic milestone in American history that demanded this singer, this song, this moment. Sample lyric: For all eternity / Let freedom ring
Story Links:
From 1966: the pilot episode of Thunderbirds on YouTube. Wikipedia has a comprehensive history of the show.
More about Old Man Trump and other Woody Guthrie songs at the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Info on the housing discrimination case of Fred and Donald Trump
Our 45th and 47th POTUS—leader of today’s Republican Party—and his well-documented connections with Mafia kingpins
The Gettysburg Address of our 16th POTUS, the first member of the Republican Party to be elected president, at the Abraham Lincoln Museum and Library11
Listen to The Internationale in 40 different languges
The letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, which inspired Is Anybody There, July 3, 1776
The history of Lift Every Voice and Sing at the Smithsonian Magazine
Add your songs for the post-election world to the list on The Typewriter’s Collage Ever Lovin’ Comment Section.
Thanks for reading The Typewriter's Collage. Connect with me at Twitter/X12, Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram at the handle @RealArnieB. I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook under my real name. While you’re at it, click your mouse or trackpad over to my website, www.arniebernstein.com.
And because you made it this far, here’s your bonus content:
Marian Anderson’s performance of My Country ‘Tis of Thee at the Lincoln Memorial, April 9, 1939
Readers who are not American citizens duly noted. I still like you a whole bunch.
Not to say that other musical genres and styles are unworthy of this list. Just like you, I have my peronal go-tos, which this list reflects.
That’s all I’ll give you, lyric-wise. The rest is shotgun blasts of profanities. I’ve only used one swear word for this entry, as it’s the song’s title. Don’t you admire my restraint?
Most likely apocryphal, but it’s still a great quote.
Seems like several lifetimes ago, doesn’t it?
The trio changed their name from The Dixie Chicks to The Chicks in the wake of NASCAR banning the Confederate flag from all races. Like the Stars and Bars, the word “dixie” conjured up images of the Old South and slavery. Said Maines, “If NASCAR can do that, we gotta change our name for sure.”
Not that anyone is asking, but I wish they never made a sequel to the original Rocky. It’s a wonderful film, full of well-written characters and nuances. Stallone penned a great script, made all the better with John Avildsen’s keen direction and wonderful performances by the enemble. Every one of the Rocky sequels ignored what made the original so memorable. Rocky holds up beautifully nearly fifty years after its 1976 release. The sequels, on the other hand, were dated within a week—if not less—after they were dumped into theater multiplexes.
Those record burnings strike me as ineffective self-righteous outrage. If you wanted to burn a Chicks record, you first had to buy the album. The band got the royalties from that purchase. Sort of defeats the purpose, right?
i.e. President Donald J. Trump and all the furies that he unleashed.
“Standin’ with Emma” refers to Emma González, a survior of the Feburary 14, 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Emma was a leading force in forming the gun-control advocacy group Never Again MSD and the March For Our Lives rally in Washington DC, on March 24, 2018, just one month after the Parkland shooting. González now uses the name “X González” and they/them pronouns.
In 1860 the Republican Party was the Party of Lincoln. In 2024 they’re the Party of Trump. I have two words: oy vey. Actually, I have many more words but this post is long enough without an extended diatribe of epic proportions.
I’m thisclose to dumping my Twitter X account, but it’s still active for the time being.
Outstanding curation! Looking forward to Part II.