Songoftheday 1/10/23 - Sun coming' up over New York City, school bus driver in a traffic jam...

 

 

"Only In America" - Brooks & Dunn

from the album Steers & Stripes (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #33 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song comes from the country music duo Brooks & Dunn, who staged a big comeback in the summer of 2001 with the lead single from their seventh album Steers & Stripes "Ain't Nothing 'Bout You", which became their longest-running #1 hit on Billboard magazine's Country Songs chart at six weeks. The follow-up, which was released in June, was the at-the-time mildly patriotic "Only In America". Written by the pair's Kix Brooks along with Don Cook and Ronnie Rogers, and sung by the other half, Ronnie Dunn, the upbeat track starts out like it could begin any comedic movie soundtrack (ironically, it ended up starting World Trade Center). Lyrics about dreamers in New York and California that make up the verses were a bit different for a country song (though they mention some may go back to Oklahoma), but it's a rather Hallmark movie city folk pastiche about people with aspirations about making it in the big city, without nary a mention of the "flyover land". I do thing the line "one could go to prison" in a verse about kids' dreams is quite a choice, but otherwise it was an inoffensive ad-worthy ditty ripe for country radio. 

But then, the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 happened, and while radio stations scrambled to remove any song that could be construed the wrong way, they also grabbed tight to anything remotely positive about "the country" (hence the resurrection of the treacly "God Bless The USA" that re-infected the land). And while the lyrics of "Only In America" weren't explicitly jingoistic, people made it so if only for the title alone. And hence, the song got pinned to "patriotism" and that 9/11 moment, even if it was recorded months before (don't give me any conspiracy theories). Brooks & Dunn rode the wave - what else could they do - and the song continued the momentum of the lead singer just by that. Unfortunately, after everything settled down, the song still had that connotation, to the point where every politician of each party co-opted it as a "I love the USA" part of their campaign rallies, staining the song's legacy. To be fair, the bad shadow over the song wasn't deserved of the song itself; it's not high art, but it was at least earnest in its storytelling, and the music video at least was more celebratory than exclusionary, and didn't rely on any of the tropes that infect country music today...

"Only In America" reached the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 in October of 2001. On the radio, the song spent a week at #1 on their Country Airplay chart. Both Brooks & Dunn and the album will return to the series, with my favorite song they ever recorded.

(5/10)

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Here's the duo performing the song on the Country Music Awards in 2001, where they won for Vocal Duo of the year for the ninth time in as many years...

and lastly, at Farm Aid in 2003...

Up tomorrow: The King of Pop gets a rock makeover by a band of extraterrestrial insects.