As the Fourth of July approaches, Americans are firing up their grills, their patriotic spirit, and their vocal chords—because really, the only thing that cries “Freedom!” better than Mel Gibson in Braveheart is belting out a few tried-and-true songs honoring our spacious skies, our broad stripes and bright stars, and our redwood forests. By now, the words to historic U.S. anthems may be as rote as those of the Pledge of Allegiance, but have you ever stopped to learn the backstories behind these tunes? This year, between bites of your burger, tell your friends and relatives how the following five songs became synonymous with this country’s hard-won independence.
“The Star-Spangled Banner”
America’s national anthem actually began as a poem written by a lawyer named Francis Scott Key in 1814. After he witnessed the Americans defeat the advancing British Royal Navy as it attempted to capture Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, in the War of 1812, Key recorded his poignant—and now instantly identifiable—observations of “the rockets’ red glare” and “the bombs bursting in air” in a poem entitled “Defense of Fort McHenry.” Legend has it that Key then set the piece to the melody of (ironically) a well-known British drinking ballad called “To Anacreon in Heaven,” written by John Stafford Smith. In 1889, the U.S. Navy officially recognized Key’s rendition of the song, which the poet later renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and in 1916, former president Woodrow Wilson requested that it be played as the go-to theme song at as many military and other applicable events as possible. Finally, on March 3, 1931, then-president Herbert Hoover declared it the national anthem via a congressional resolution—and the rest is history.
“God Bless America”
From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam, no landscape in the United States is neglected by this song. Penned by renowned composer Irving Berlin in 1918 while he served in the U.S. Army, “God Bless America” was originally intended to be part of the score for a comedy revue he was writing, called Yip, Yip, Yaphank, but ultimately seemed too solemn to include in the performance. Berlin shelved the piece for twenty years but had an opportunity to revive it in 1938, when he repurposed it as a peace song and turned it over to singer Kate Smith, who performed it so memorably on her CBS radio show as to make an indelible imprint on the collective national consciousness. Smith’s rendition was so popular, in fact, that many Americans petitioned to make “God Bless America” the official national anthem. Though it never supplanted “The Star-Spangled Banner,” it did earn a permanent place in our hearts.
“America the Beautiful”
Like “The Star-Spangled Banner,” this song was originally a poem, written in 1893 by Wellesley College English professor Katharine Lee Bates as an homage to several beautiful sights—including now-legendary amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties, and fruited plains—she witnessed on a summer train trip to Colorado Springs. Entitled first “Pikes Peak” and then “America,” Bates’s piece was published in 1895, in a church periodical called The Congregationalist, to commemorate the Fourth of July. Even when the poem began to be sung, it was without a signature melody for a number of years; rather, its words accompanied any tune singers felt inclined to set it to. But finally, in 1904, it secured its life partner in an 1882 hymn called “Materna,” by organist Samuel Augustus Ward. Regrettably, Ward passed away a year earlier and never got to hear his composition paired with Bates’s lyrics. Today, Ray Charles is often credited with performing the most iconic version of “America the Beautiful,” which includes his singing the song’s third verse first.
“This Land Is Your Land”
This beloved folk song has a slightly dark past: acclaimed composer Woody Guthrie wrote it in response to Berlin’s “God Bless America,” which Guthrie, a notorious champion of the people, deemed an unrealistic representation of the state of the nation at the time. Just emerging from the Great Depression, Americans were still reeling from the financial ruin and crippling sense of hopelessness that had characterized that period, and Guthrie felt compelled to capture the truth about their suffering in his lyrics to “This Land Is Your Land”—though many of those verses are no longer commonly sung today.
“America” (“My Country ’Tis of Thee”)
Better known by its parenthetical title, “America” is known to be the 1831 lyrical creation of Reverend Samuel Francis Smith, but its exact genesis is nebulous. As the story goes, while Smith was studying at seminary, he was asked either to translate selected songs from German to English or to compose new words for them. One of those melodies—an excerpt from Muzio Clementi’s Symphony No. 3, but now most recognizable as the tune of “God Save the Queen”—appealed greatly to Smith’s sensibilities, and he wrote the lyrics that forever branded America as the “sweet land of liberty” we sing of so proudly today.
Let Freedom Ring
Barbecues, fireworks, and all things red, white, and blue have become the mainstays of our Fourth of July festivities, but these five songs speak to a time before gas grills and Roman candles, when America’s storied past, unparalleled diversity, and magnificent natural landscapes inspired a group of talented songwriters to commemorate them in song. This Independence Day, we pledge allegiance to their time-tested masterpieces.