"God Bless the USA" is an American patriotic song written and recorded by country music artist Lee Greenwood. The first album it appears on is 1984's You've Got a Good Love Comin'. It reached No. 7 on the Billboard magazine Hot Country Singles chart when originally released in the spring of 1984, and was played at the 1984 Republican National Convention with President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan in attendance, but the song gained greater prominence during the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, as a way of boosting morale.
The popularity of the song rose sharply after the September 11 attacks and during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the song was re-released as a single, re-entering the country music charts at No. 16. The song was also re-recorded in 2003 and released as "God Bless the USA 2003". The song could often be heard on the radio after those events, and versions of the song are widely distributed online. Lee Greenwood also wrote a Canadian version of this song called God Bless Canada. The song also rose up in popularity in May 2011 when Osama bin Laden was killed by an American raid in Pakistan.
Read more about God Bless The USA: Background and Writing, Music Video, Chart Positions, Other Notable Versions
Famous quotes containing the words god, bless and/or usa:
“O God of battles, steel my soldiers’ hearts.
Possess them not with fear. Take from them now
The sense of reckoning, ere th’ opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.”
—Bible: Hebrew 15:10, Deuteronomy.
“It is hereby earnestly proposed that the USA would be much better off if that big, sprawling, incoherent, shapeless, slobbering civic idiot in the family of American communities, the City of Los Angeles, could be declared incompetent and placed in charge of a guardian like any individual mental defective.”
—Westbrook Pegler (1894–1969)