This song is a prime example of why Randy Newman is a genius and why his audience (which includes me) is so small. I know this sounds negative but most Americans do not have the ability to recognize good satire when they hear it. In addition, most Americans don't posses enough historical knowledge to use when hearing a song like this.
I love how Randy Newman seems to play the character of a salesmen attempting to persuade the African people to come to America. I agree with Mycology 101's point though that the song actually expands beyond that perimeter. It sounds to me as if Randy Newman's sales pitch is going out to the whole world and the pitch is based on America's tendency to believe that our country is by far the most superior. He jabs at the idea of how free we think we are versus how free we actually are. The song is rife with sarcasm (in America youu just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day) that gives the song a second layer of depth. !st and foremost the song is a song about how slavery, but it also expands to critique the fallacy of "the American dream".
Newman actually expands on the concept of our tendency to blindly embrace the idea that our way of life, the American way of life, is superior to everything else on a song that appears on that same album called "Political Science".
This song is a prime example of why Randy Newman is a genius and why his audience (which includes me) is so small. I know this sounds negative but most Americans do not have the ability to recognize good satire when they hear it. In addition, most Americans don't posses enough historical knowledge to use when hearing a song like this.
I love how Randy Newman seems to play the character of a salesmen attempting to persuade the African people to come to America. I agree with Mycology 101's point though that the song actually expands beyond that perimeter. It sounds to me as if Randy Newman's sales pitch is going out to the whole world and the pitch is based on America's tendency to believe that our country is by far the most superior. He jabs at the idea of how free we think we are versus how free we actually are. The song is rife with sarcasm (in America youu just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day) that gives the song a second layer of depth. !st and foremost the song is a song about how slavery, but it also expands to critique the fallacy of "the American dream".
Newman actually expands on the concept of our tendency to blindly embrace the idea that our way of life, the American way of life, is superior to everything else on a song that appears on that same album called "Political Science".