{"id":309,"date":"2017-10-31T02:30:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T02:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/?p=309"},"modified":"2017-10-31T02:30:45","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T02:30:45","slug":"back-in-the-ussr-parody-or-political-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/assignments\/music-power-politics\/back-in-the-ussr-parody-or-political-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"“Back In the USSR”: Parody or Political Statement?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In early 1968 <\/a>, The Beatles went on a meditation retreat in Rishikesh, India. They aimed to study Transcendental Meditation with their guru Maharishi, and eventually become teachers of this craft. Mike Love, from the Beach Boys, was also on this trip.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Beatles with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Love recalls<\/a>\u00a0 \u201csitting at the breakfast table and McCartney came down with his acoustic guitar and he was playing ‘Back In The U.S.S.R.’ and I told him that what you ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, The Ukraine and Georgia. [Paul] was plenty creative not to need any lyrical help from me but I gave him the idea for that little section\u201d. McCartney did <\/em>in fact take Love\u2019s suggestion and wrote about admiring girls from Georgia, Ukraine, and Moscow, all locations represented in the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Album Sleeve<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

A performance of “Back in the USSR” by the Beatles<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBack to the USSR\u201d represents influence and power that music has in creating political controversy. When the song was released in 1968, America was at war with Vietnam. Because Russia supported the Viet Cong<\/a>, conservative Americans immediately rejected this song, believing the Beatles were sympathizing with the enemy and promoting communism. The lyrics<\/a>\u00a0to this song fueled anger in Americans, especially the John Birch Society<\/a>, who were particularly offended by the lines \u201cYou don\u2019t know how lucky you are, boys\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Additionally, this song caused controversy in Russia. Rock and roll was not respected at the time and the Beatles were not either. This said, Back in the USSR<\/em> became wildly popular in Russia, and people sought to listen to the song even from tapes smuggled<\/a>\u00a0into the country. Elton John performed the song in Moscow a year after Americans had boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Russia and wrote <\/a>\u201cthey went ape s—. It was like playing \u2018Philadelphia Freedom\u2019 in Philadelphia\u201d. The fact that there was such varied reactions to this song only made it more controversial.<\/p>\n

Paul McCartney argues the claims of this song being politically charged by explaining this song as a parody of Chuck Berry\u2019s hit \u201cBack in the USA\u201d.<\/p>\n

McCartney says<\/a> \u201cI just liked the idea of Georgia girls\u2026and talking about places like the Ukraine as if they were California, you know?…Its a jokey song, but it\u2019s also become a bit of an anthem now\u2026In my mind its just about a [Russian] spy who\u2019s been in America for a long time and he\u2019s become very American but when he gets back to the USSR he\u2019s saying \u2018Leave it \u2018til tomorrow to unpack my case, Honey, disconnect the phone\u2019\u201d. It is interesting that McCartney had to defend himself for attempting to humanize young people <\/a>on the other side of the world, and was also forced to defend the feeling of pride and comfort when a person returns home.<\/p>\n

Performance of “Back In the USA” by Chuck Berry<\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the article<\/a> \u201cColin Kaepernick and the Radical Uses of the Star Spangled Banner\u201d, Robin writes \u201cOur national symbols are always more complicated than their original myths\u201d. Kneeling at a football game to illuminate long-standing racism is viewed as a disrespectful and criminal act amongst conservatives. This can relate to Back in the USSR. <\/em>Just as kneeling down during the Star Spangled Banner has become a controversial symbol of a larger national issue, Back in the USSR<\/em> developed into a symbol of controversy during a time when a war was taking place . A parody song aiming to humanize non-American young people became a highly political debate.<\/p>\n

This topic is very relevant to our class so far because we have focused so much on audience reception, the power of change and imitation, and how composers adapted to political ideals or brought to light political issues in their music. Politics and music will always be intertwined because politics inspires the cultural environment. As music is a pillar of culture, it is fair to say that these two will always have a powerful connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In early 1968 , The Beatles went on a meditation retreat in Rishikesh, India. They aimed to study Transcendental Meditation with their guru Maharishi, and eventually become teachers of this craft. Mike Love, from the Beach Boys, was also on this trip. Love recalls\u00a0 \u201csitting at the breakfast table and McCartney came down with his … <\/p>\n

Continue reading ““Back In the USSR”: Parody or Political Statement?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6,26,112,7,134,133],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-power-politics","tag-music","tag-music-history","tag-politics","tag-technology","tag-the-beatles","tag-ussr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":332,"href":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions\/332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcornish.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/MHS123_Fall2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}