Song of the Week: 6/30-7/6/2025
Titus Andronicus: "A More Perfect Union"
Titus Andronicus’ “A More Perfect Union” is a tour de force of a song. Without the authenticity that pervades the track it might come across as overwrought or like the colon that separates the title from the subtitle in an academic paper.
Instead, it is Americana.
The blending of high and low culture in the song is, for me, like the 4th of July itself. It’s always funny to see those who do not particularly embrace Independence Day or take pride in being American on the 4th of July—because it is such an American thing to dissent.
The great thing about America is the voice that rises up against her—because America has always gloried in giving that voice a voice; she has borne the scrutiny of her many contradictions.
God bless America, indeed!
Some of my favorite songs are songs with dramatic transitions, and “A More Perfect Union” has them in spades—it’s glorious. The song is about, in part, moving from New Jersey to New England—so that landscape shift can be felt in the tonal contrasts of the song. And there are parts of the song that feel like the dramatic pause before the grand finale of a firework show.
Certain lines in the song provide their own fireworks in 2025 (and perhaps for all time):
If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide.
and,
And when I stand tonight, 'neath the lights of the Fenway
Will I not yell like hell for the glory of the Newark Bears?
and,
Give me a brutal Somerville summer,
Give me a cruel New England winter
Give me the great Pine Barrens
So I can see them turned into splinters
and
Woe, oh woe is me, no one knows the trouble I see
When they hang Jeff Davis from a sourapple tree, I'll sit beneath the leaves and weep
None of us shall be saved, every man will be a slave
For John Brown's body lies a'mouldring in the grave and there's rumbling down in the caves
and,
So we'll rally around the flag, rally around the flag
Rally around the flag, boys, rally once again,
Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom
Rally around the flag, rally around the flag
Glory, glory, Hallelujah, His truth is marching on
The song deserves a dissertation—or at least a thesis—it deserves something that will particularly take the shine off of it—Americanize it, so to speak. As for me, I’ll just sing along as the fireworks blaze through the sunroof of my car in the days leading up to, on, and beyond the 4th of July, and appreciate it for the extraordinary blast of Americana that it both is and that it represents.
“A More Perfect Union”
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some transatlantic giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe and Asia could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio River or set a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide.”
(Abraham Lincoln, address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, IL, January, 1838)''
There'll be no more counting the cars on the Garden State Parkway
Nor waiting for the Fung Wah bus to carry me to who-knows-where
And when I stand tonight, 'neath the lights of the Fenway
Will I not yell like hell for the glory of the Newark Bears?
Because where I'm going to now, no one can ever hurt me
Where the well of human hatred is shallow and dry
No, I never wanted to change the world, but I'm looking for a new New Jersey
Because tramps like us, baby, we were born to die
I'm doing 70 on 17, 80 over 84
And I never let the Meritt Parkway magnetize me no more
Give me a brutal Somerville summer,
Give me a cruel New England winter
Give me the great Pine Barrens
So I can see them turned into splinters
And if I come in on a donkey, let me go out on a gurney
I want to realize too late I never should have left New Jersey
I sense the enemy, they're rustling around in the trees
I thought I had gotten away but the followed me to 02143
Woe, oh woe is me, no one knows the trouble I see
When they hang Jeff Davis from a sourapple tree, I'll sit beneath the leaves and weep
None of us shall be saved, every man will be a slave
For John Brown's body lies a'mouldring in the grave and there's rumbling down in the caves
So if it's time for choosing sides, and to show this dirty city how we do the Jersey Slide
And if it deserves a better class of criminal,
Then I'm'a give it to them tonight
So we'll rally around the flag, rally around the flag
Rally around the flag, boys, rally once again,
Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom
Rally around the flag, rally around the flag
Glory, glory, Hallelujah, His truth is marching on
"I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard."
"(William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist editorial, “The Liberator,” Jan 1, 1831)