Happy Birthday To US
A 250th-birthday anthem for the American experiment: Wounded, unfinished, worth fighting for, and still waiting on us.
On our 250th birthday as a nation, we should take time to recognize all the ways America has left the world and humanity a much better place. For all our glaring faults, especially during this period of crisis we are going through, we should not lose sight of the greatness we are capable of. That should be our north star as we redouble our efforts to form a more perfect union.
I had a really difficult time chosing the version of this song as the headliner for this week but I figured a fusion of great American genres of blues and jazz with the Latin influence thrown into the mix as appropriate. Still, I really like how all the different genres turned out for this one. Scroll to the bottom to listen to them.
Lyrics
We crossed an ocean to write something new,
Put the power in the people, said all men are true,
It was said imperfect, we said it half-right,
But we wrote down a promise we’ve been fighting to ignite.
We built the factories, we fed the world’s poor,
Sent boys across the water to end a dictator’s war,
The Marshall Plan, the moon landing, polio’s cure,
Jazz and blues and rock and roll, democracy’s great roar.
We didn’t get it right the first time through,
But every generation strove to make the promise true.
Happy birthday to US, to you and to me,
Two hundred fifty years of trying to be free,
We’re the dream and the wound, we’re the chain and the key,
Happy birthday to US, now who do we want to be?
Harriet walked her people north through snow, mud and fear,
Lincoln paid in blood to make the nation hear,
Suffragettes in Seneca Falls would not be told their place,
César Chávez in the dirt made justice show its face.
We gave the world the internet, we mapped the human gene,
Bob Dylan sang of wounds the powerful kept unseen,
We sent Voyager past Saturn into the infinite black,
And every time we fell from grace, we fought our way back.
We didn’t get it right the first time through,
But every generation strove to make the promise true.
Happy birthday to US, to you and to me,
Two hundred fifty years of trying to be free,
We’re the dream and the wound, we’re the chain and the key,
Happy birthday to US, now who do we want to be?
But look in the mirror, look hard, look long,
A fearful minority is trying to erase freedom’s song,
MAGA waves its flags while the courthouse bends,
And a king in the making says the Constitution ends.
They’re selling out the birthright, they’re burning what we built,
Dressing hatred up in red, white, and blue silk,
But we have seen darkness try to swallow us before,
And every time it tried, we walked back through Liberty’s door.
So light the candles, two hundred fifty strong,
This is not the ending, this is the middle of the song,
We are Madison and Douglas, King and Seneca’s cry,
We are Stonewall and the GI Bill and Armstrong in the sky,
We are flawed beyond forgetting, we are stubborn beyond shame,
We are every generation playing the same impossible game,
And the experiment isn’t over, it’s just waiting on US,
Every one of US, it’s waiting on US.
Happy birthday to US, to you and to me,
Two hundred fifty years of dying to be free,
We’re the dream and the wound, we’re the chain and the key,
Happy birthday to US, now who do we want to be?
Happy birthday to US, we are who we choose to be.
Who do we want to be?
Who do we want to be?
Who do we choose to be...