“The first time I listened to Pete Seeger, it felt like he directly addressed me in a call to action. His use of rhetorical questions, subterranean imagery, and repetition are the blueprints of all protest music. “Am I American?” was written on an acoustic guitar (as Pete would’ve preferred), but to more expressively convey the sentiment, I knew we’d need to go electric. I wanted the track to sound compressed and overdriven like an old Patti Smith or Iggy Pop & The Stooges record,” says Ethan Samuel Brown about his contagious new track “Am I American?”
While we head into election day, everyone might be questioning many an item on the agenda, but the song title can mean many an item as we head into November 5th. Glide is premiering “Am I American,” the blistering lead single from his highly anticipated album Small Actors on October 24th. This thought-provoking track, born from the ashes of Nashville’s 2020 Christmas Day bombing, serves as a potent commentary on modern American identity.
“Am I American?” is a critique of conventional righteousness. 2020 was obviously a traumatic year for everyone. Unfortunately, Nashvillians caught one final cheap shot on Christmas Day in the form of a suicide bombing. The knee-jerk reaction from the media inspired me,” says Brown.
Brown, known for his incisive lyrics and genre-defying sound, doesn’t pull punches on the track. The song’s razor-sharp verses cut through the noise of talk radio rhetoric, challenging listeners to examine their definitions of citizenship and belonging. With lines that paint a vivid picture of suburban complacency and blind patriotism, Brown holds up a mirror to society, asking uncomfortable but necessary questions.
