Protest Song Of The Week: 'America Back' By Jill Sobule
Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule died in a house fire in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area in Minnesota. She was 66, and tributes for Sobule have poured in from fellow artists, activists, friends, and others who greatly appreciated her vibrant spirit as a musician.
“We are deeply saddened to hear of the tragic passing of Jill Sobule. Let us listen to her music to honor the wonderful singer-songwriter she was. Our hearts go out to her family, friends and fans,” said singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman.
English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg reacted, “Very sorry to hear of the untimely death of Jill Sobule. She was a great songwriter, an incredibly engaging performer, a radical activist who dealt with the music industry on her own terms and a lot of fun to work with,” He shared audio of them performing Mott the Hoople’s “All The Young Dudes” during an encore in 2004.
Guitarist and singer-songwriter Tom Morello simply said, “Rest in peace dear friend,” and shared video from 2015 of Sobule joining him on stage with an esteemed group of guests—Wayne Kramer, Tim Armstrong, Carl Restivo, and Delila Paz and Edgey Pires of The Last Internationale. They sang a rendition of the classic protest song “Which Side Are You On?” by Florence Reese.
At some point during the Occupy movement, I became aware of Sobule’s music. She contributed a song called “Under the Bridge” to the 2012 compilation, “Occupy This Album.” It was dedicated to Occupy organizers as well as poor, working, and middle class Americans who suddenly found themselves jobless or without a home.
“Under the Bridge” was a “Protest Song of the Week” on March 28, 2016. So, too, was another catchy and unforgettable tune called “America Back” that I featured on September 20, 2016.
Sobule zeroed in on the absolute absurdity of a large swath of Americans, who could not handle the various ways that the United States had become a little less of a white supremacist country.
The opening verse cheekily romanticizes the origin of man, along with the frontier and revolutionary eras of American history. It spoke about a shared longing for a time when immigrants weren’t so darker-skinned. “Life had a paler shade of white.”
In the second verse, the Statue of Liberty is a “whore” that is “still alerting, with strangers she's flirting. Inviting them into our beds.” The tone of the song remains whimsical, but Sobule quite clearly ridiculed those who see immigrants as predators taking advantage of freedoms that only certain people born here should enjoy.
The chorus makes it a quintessential protest song:
When they say we want our America back
Our America back
Our America back
When they say we want our America back
Well what the fuck do they mean?
Sobule developed the song before producing a music video that was posted on September 1, 2016. The mariachi band with brass instruments punctuating the chorus made the tune even more bright and fun. The video also included delightful marionette puppets acting out the history of immigrants and anti-immigrant sentiment in America.
Around a month before the tragedy that ended Sobule’s life, she marked the tenth anniversary. “Ten years ago, I wrote this song about the history of anti-immigration sentiment and…the possibility of Trump as president. Here is the glorious end of the song.”
The end of the music video features Sobule and the mariachi band on a rooftop. Later, we see the band follow her down a street while gleefully roasting the shitlords of hate that have thrown a wrench into efforts for equality, justice, and human dignity.
Jill Sobule’s first album, “Things Here Are Different” (1990), was produced by Todd Rundgren. She was part of an esteemed group of ‘90s singer-songwriters, like Juliana Hatfield, Lisa Loeb, and Alanis Morissette, and had two big singles: the queer anthem “I Kissed A Girl” and then “Supermodel,” a satirical tune that appeared in the movie “Clueless.”
As Sobule’s website recalls, her music often grappled with “LGBTQ rights, teen mental health, our unhealthy obsession with staying forever young” and our collective failure to address the present. Musicians like John Doe, Don Henley, Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, and Neil Young embraced her as an artist. And Sobule had a song that she performed, “You Better Not Fuck In Texas,” about the state’s laws against women’s reproductive freedom.
Sobule was the kind of musician that we need in this political moment. She could make you smile and feel warm while simultaneously encouraging people to give the bastards getting us down the middle finger.
To celebrate Jill Sobule and her fine career as a troubadour musician, listen or watch “America Back”:
Rest in peace. She was brilliant.
Nice.
Portlandia showed my America and made fun of it — conflated it with health-Boomer consumerism — but my heroes had died from America dying already by then; and I hope to help lift them to the Olympus they deserve. :)