Mainstream renditions usually leave out the verses about private property and public assistance
This song is dope, I remember preferring this over most other of our national songs
Also checkout Guthrie’s Jesus Christ song.
Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land A hard-working man and brave He said to the rich, “Give your money to the poor,” But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave
CHORUS: Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand His followers true and brave One dirty little coward called Judas Iscariot Has laid Jesus Christ in His Grave
He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff He told them all the same “Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor,” And they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.
CHORUS
When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around Believed what he did say But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross, And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.
CHORUS
And the people held their breath when they heard about his death Everybody wondered why It was the big landlord and the soldiers that they hired To nail Jesus Christ in the sky
CHORUS
This song was written in New York City Of rich man, preacher, and slave If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee, They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.
I roamed and rambled, and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
All around me a voice was a-sounding
This land was made for you and me
There was a big, high wall there that tried to stop me
Sign was painted, said “Private Property”
But on the back side, it didn’t say nothing
This land was made for you and me
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people
By the relief office, I seen my people
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
They need to bring these verses back in the mainstream renditions of the song, but it’s obvious why they don’t.
Sign was painted, said “Private Property” > But on the back side, it didn’t say nothing
Genius line. It says so much, so simply. God I wish I could write like this man
when i was in grade school (1970s, minnesota) we had a morning song before classes and another at the end of the day.
the whole school sang.
this one, including these verses, was one of the songs. it was also a staple in a music program each year for one of the grades to do during a performance for the parents.
I just saw Gillian Welch and David Rawlings play. They performed a mashup of this song and I Hear Them All as one of their encores and only used those ^ verses. It was amazing.
I had no idea this song was heroic! I remember singing it in first grade in the 80s. It’s struck me as propaganda for years. Nice reorientation!
Honestly, I find the Star Spangled Banner grating and only the best of the best singers can even kind of pull it off.
This Land Is Your Land has always hit the spot for me.
I prefer America the Beautiful myself.
This Land Is Your Land
That’s communism, comrade.
I remember in high school my band teacher (who was/is perhaps the biggest Trump supporter in the tristate area) played a YouTube video of this song during our Veterans Day program. That was the first time I heard the whole song, and the irony was not lost on me.
This just made me feel old. First reading that someone here was in high school so recently when the whole Trump deal was a thing, then realising that can mean it was 10 years ago…
This motherfucker has been in my mind space for too damn long.
I’m convinced his existence and ascension have taken entire years off my life. I wish I never had to think about that putrid sack of shit ever again.
Guthrie would have opinions. Too bad you couldn’t also show other songs of his, like Farmer-Labor Train and All You Fascists
Gutherie did have opinions on Trump('s dad). He wrote a song that he never recorded.
He’s the Woody we need right now
So when he heard “this land was made for you and me,” he didn’t hear that it belongs to everybody. He heard: this is OUR country.
Damn that changes everything. I never even imagined the song that way.
For someone who based his entire career around music I noticed on multiple occasions that he was either willfully ignorant or just really bad at judging what a song is about
Well, maybe not your land… /s
Oh that is so hard
When I was in grade shcool in California in the 70s, we were forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of class each day (very common in school and government functions across the USA at the time), but also in my school, we would follow the pledge with the whole class singing a verse of This Land is your Land. I didn’t understand or appreciate this until many years later.
Pledge of allegiance is still recited every day in schools
Did you ever try not saying it?
They don’t tell you, but it’s actually optional. You get dirty looks, but they don’t actually force you to recite it. That’s just peer pressure.
At that age, no. And by the time I got to middle school (age 12 I think) it wasn’t a thing the school did any more.
Although if you wanna talk about brainwashing the kids… they used to do random tests of the air raid sirens (which were often located on the school rooftop). These “tests” were meant to warn us of a nuclear missile attack. If they happened while we were at school, the teachers would tell us it was a test, and we had to get under our desks; same as the earthquake drills. If they happened during summer break while you’re just out riding your bike or playing ball with your friends, you just got to ponder whether it was real or just a test. If you build that fear early, it can be very sticky.
They make you sing it everywhere.
See also Jesse Wells. Guy’s cooking rn
Nah, Jessie wells is a useless tool. He talks a good talk, but when asked to speak about genocide he suddenly had nothing to say other than “I can see both sides”.
He is a fence sitting centrist who realized the only way he’d make it is if he seemed like folk protest musician.
He is not.
I dig his message but something about his music just grinds in my ears. I’m not sure exactly what it is, or why I don’t feel the same way about Guthrie. Maybe something to do with finding him on Instagram biased me, but that seems far fetched.
His music has a message but it lacks anything catchy. Rarely a chorus. It’s not the most enjoyable music.
I found him on yt and was also initially trepidatious for that reason. The low production of his videos (pretty much all are one shot/one take playing a song outdoors) and clear lack of algorithmic support have largely assuaged those concerns. There are of course more radical acts I absolutely love, but Wingnut Dishwasher’s Union or Andrew Jackson Jihad are for a much smaller audience. I’m glad he’s doing what he does and appreciate being able to relate to his music along with my family
Don’t they just go by AJJ now?
Quite possibly, you tell me!
Just listened to some of his songs and he just sounds like a cheap imitation of the great folk singers of the 60s and 70s and he’s completely on the nose with his lyrics. Reminds me a lot of James McMurtry and Jason Isbell, but less interesting musically.
I’m going to restate this take more positively: continuing in the tradition of Guthrie and Dylan, Wells’s direct lyricism and simple folk melodies provide a much needed continuity with the American counterculture of yesteryear
I like this take and agree with it.
Cheap imitation is good enough for me. Those guys were all cheap imitations of the artists of the 30s and 40s anyway
Just last night I introduced my partner to the music of Woody’s son, Arlo Guthrie. They had never heard Arlo’s famous anti-draft/anti-police song “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” I was shocked; I grew up with WAMC playing the song every Thanksgiving.
Still play it at Thanksgiving myself, though I’m a little sad I don’t have to sit around the radio at exactly noon anymore.
You just reminded me of the time my friends and I played that song on the jukebox of a small town bar. The looks we got when it kept going for 20 minutes was great.
New challenge unlocked!
If you want to hear it
Here’s the Canadian version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b38UTF-n31U
We used to have to sing that, and “Oh Canada” every morning at school when I was little, although we had our own rendition…
This land Is my land and only my land,
I’ve got a shotgun and you don’t got one,
So if you don’t get off I’ll blow your head off,
This land is mine and only mine,
We had our own version of Oh Canada. Oh Cannabis, our home and native plant…
Alberta?
lol good guess but no. French Immersion school in Manitoba.
The one I learned at recess was
This land ain’t your land, this land is my land
You better go back to Ellis Island
If you don’t get off I’ll blow your head off
This land was made for me not youI remember it as:
“…this land was made for only me”.
That could be too, the 70’s was a looong time ago. I’d imagine there’s more than a few variations too
I’ve had a hard time separating this song from the idea of manifest destiny ever since Jack Layton famously performed it on the campaign trail and faced that criticism. I realise that I’m probably missing the point, and so were the people who “translated” it to ‘canadian’.
15 years later I now hear it as the realization that the american dream is a lie. North America was colonized and the colonizers were promised all of its riches and freedom from serfdom. But there are still no trespassing signs, and people are still dependent on religious and state aid, despite the vast abundance.
I think the song ends with him being like “well fuck you I’m going after that freedom anyways” which doesn’t quite match my interpretation of the lyrics before that part, but we see the world differently in the current era and I’m not sure how much Guthrie might have known about colonialism.
He also didn’t know about climate change.
It’s hard to listen to him singing about the glorious sight of smoke rising from industrial chimneys