Martina McBride Song And Video of Independence Day

So I'm going to move forward again on "Independence Day". Although Mrs. McBride has a concert coming up soon on August 2nd, I believe, I'd rather like to turn again to "Independence Day", which is (I think) commonly known as having been written by Gretchen Peters. If there is a message and a messenger, it would seem that Mrs. McBride is the most familiar messenger, but I think the truer messenger in terms of the message of this song, is in fact Ms. Peters. However, Ms. Peters has implied the issue is ambiguous, if you will, because although she did intend for the mother to die in the song (as well as the husband) she says that "it's been interpreted both ways." And that is a quote from her interview with SF, which is at SongFacts.com.

So first, let's assume that you would prefer the interpretation that the mother *doesn't* die...

[And here, I'd like to say to Dayna and the M2 community: A song (as a work of art) can and is analyzed by whomever, whenever, wherever. We know this because an entire college course was taught on the subject of... none other than Mrs. Martina McBride and her music. (Although I must confess that I don't know if the course discussed songs that were not written by McBride herself.) And in college courses involving lyrics, music, themes, tones, images, interpretations, etc., teachers and students typically analyze lyrics -- often to the hilt.

People can, and do, analyze art -- often, at extremely deep and very intricately complicated levels. If you've taken college courses in Literature and the Humanities, you probably have experienced this -- not just vicariously, but in reality. People don't just analyze charts, graphs, and computer program code; they analyze art, too. (Besides, music and lyrics aren't only about art: they have scientific components, too. Rhyming follows patterns, and we can describe those patterns in terms of science in addition to describing them in terms of art.]

OK, so back to the interpretation that the mother *doesn't* die in the lyrics. If that's true -- and if only the husband dies -- then we have this set of items: daughter is eight years old; abuse occurs during daughter's life; daughter "always seemed to get in the way"; daughter leaves house one day to visit the fair in town...

Now, there are no clear indications in the lyrics of the song that the fair is on July 4, except "Well, she lit up the sky that Fourth of July (the date celebrated in the United States to mark July 4, 1776 as a remembrance of the Colonists' declaration of liberation from British Royalty). But that's wondrous strange, because according to the page (referenced in the above link at Songfacts.com) Ms. Peters has clearly stated, according to Songfacts.com, which she herself referred me to for info on the song, that it "has nothing to do with patriotism or anything like that." But we can't overlook the fact that there is no source cited for that quote. So I'm not assuming that that's true (although it would help get to the bottom of the song for interpretation's sake):

"I know that [Sean Hannity is] using it, I know he's completely disregarding what the song's about. It has nothing to do with patriotism or anything like that. But that's an old story. That's a really old story." (source)







Developing.....

Permalink: http://www.thedailydecibel.com/2012/07/martina-mcbride-song-independence-day.html