Word: anthem
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...Payment is a classic hard-times complaint about the rent, the banker at the door, and a roof that is crumbling. But the current country songs also hurl Molotov cocktails at the upper classes and the system that favors them. Brooks succeeded last year in making a national barroom anthem out of Friends in Low Places, which turned an abandoned lover's revenge into an act of social protest. "Blame it all on my roots," he sang. "I showed up in boots/ And ruined your black-tie affair...
Only in the French Revolution did nationalism burst forth, complete with flag and anthem. Nationalism became a new religion. Altars were raised to the French nation, with the inscription THE CITIZEN IS BORN, LIVES AND DIES FOR LA PATRIE...
...ever there was a song to quicken the blood of the living and raise the spirits of the dead, surely it is France's national anthem, the Marseillaise, whose music once inspired the men of the Midi to boot out invading Prussians, march on Paris -- whistling the tune as they went -- depose the King and fire the imagination of all Europe. That was 200 years ago. Today the song's robust words, which bristle with righteous anger at la tyrannie and enjoin the children of revolutionary France to "drench our fields" with the "tainted blood" of the enemy, are under...
...version that cuts - out the nastier bits of gristle and gore. Sponsored by such leading lights as First Lady Danielle Mitterrand and soccer hero Michel Platini, the committee points to the research of Armand Thuair, a former fire fighter who conducted an exhaustive survey of 175 national anthems, purporting to prove that "France is the only country in the world to have adopted and preserved a bellicose national anthem...
...really? Try telling that to Denmark, whose anthem graphically commemorates the exploits of King Christian: "His sword was hammering so fast/ Through Gothic helm and brain it passed." Or the Chinese, whose national ditty is a paean to the prospect of "using our flesh and blood to build a new Great Wall." Guatemalans are admonished never to permit "tyrants to spit in thy face." And who could forget the immortal words in the second verse of the Bulgarian national song: "Countless warriors bravely die/ For the people's sacred cause." Such a roster would be incomplete without the heady draught...