Lee Greenwood Didn’t Want “God Bless The U.S.A.” To Be A Single When It Was First Released: “40 Years Later, It’s Like, Thank You! Oh My God”

The greatest patriotic song ever.

Of course, Lee Greenwood released his iconic hit “God Bless the U.S.A.” in May of 1984, after it appeared on his third album, You’ve Got a Good Love Comin’. It debuted at number seven on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, and of course, went onto become his signature hit and an American classic.

Aside from that one, Greenwood has an impressive seven #1 country hits across his long career, with songs like “Somebody’s Gonna Love You,” “Going, Going, Gone” and “Don’t Underestimate My Love For You.” And he’s also won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year for “I.O.U” back in 1984, along with an ACM Award for Top Male Vocalist and CMA Awards for Male Vocalist of the Year and Song of the Year.

But of course, nothing beats “U.S.A.,” and during a recent interview with Clint Black on his Talking in Circles show, Greenwood told a story I’ve never heard before about how it became a single.

Greenwood was on Nashville label MCA records with other acts like the Oak Ridge boys and Reba McEntire, and they were determined to things their own way, without being dictated to by the LA label heads.

Well, Greenwood took a bit of a different approach, actually.

He had been in town to film a show, and once he was done, he still had hours before his flight back to Nashville. He had the cassette for “God Bless the U.S.A” in his pocket, which he called his “baby,” so he decided to drive by the label’s top executive’s house, Irving Azoff, on Halloween night in 1983:

“We don’t like Los Angeles making a call on Nashville’s profit center. Barbara and I, same mentality, the Oak Ridge boys, Reba McEntire, we are a separate entity. I’m proud to be at the MCA in Nashville, and we’re not gonna let LA dictate to us. However, I write ‘God bless USA’ in 1983 in September. I have three hits already on the radio, Marilyn McCoo with The 5th Dimension became a close friend of mine when I was performing in Vegas. She then becomes the MC for ‘Solid Gold,’ a television [show] Los Angeles. So we’re invited to go there. I just recorded ‘USA’ and I had it on a cassette.

We record ‘Solid Gold.’ We finish on Halloween night. This is October 31, 1983. Marilyn McCoo comes out at the end of the show, gives me a bottle of champagne. She says, ‘Come back when you get a couple more hits. We’ll have you back on the show.’ Great. I go get my stretch limo, and I go to head for the airport. It’s 8 o’clock, I got the redeye. The redeye leaves at one o’clock in the morning for Nashville. I’ve got four hours, and I’ve got this little baby in my pocket that I want everybody to hear.

And I said to the driver, ‘Where does Irving Azoff live?’ Now let me just tell you, Irving Azoff at the time was the most important, influential man in Los Angeles, in all of the recording industry. He owned and managed, Universal Pictures, Universal Records, MCA Records country and pop. I said to the limo driver, ‘Take me to his house.’ So we drive up in front of Irving Azoff ‘s house, it’s not a gated community. It is Halloween night. Irving Azoff is standing at the front door of his home, and his three little children dressed his bumblebee go trick-or-treating, and they’re running off the Barbra Streisand‘s house down the block.

I get out of the limo, walk 10 yards right up to him. I grabbed the bottle of champagne, take the cassette up, I went, ‘Trick-or-treat.’ I kid you not. I know. He said, ‘Who are you?’ I’m Lee Greenwood, I’m on your Nashville label.’ He said, ‘Oh, great, I know who you are. Come on in.’ He said, ‘What are you doing in LA?’

I mean… talk about a bold move.

Azoff listened to the whole song, and told Greenwood to return once the project was complete so he could hear the whole thing. Greenwood was excited to have an “in” now , so to speak, and he did return with the finished album several months later. Azoff asked him what he thought the single should be, though Greenwood let him decide even though he did really have a favorite:

“And I said, ‘Well, I just recorded ‘Solid Gold’ And I said, ‘But I have something I want you to hear.’ And so he puts the cassette in, listens to three minutes and 2o seconds. He said, ‘Interesting. Do you have a project? So I said, ‘Well, we’re working on something.’ He said, ‘When you finish it, bring it to LA, I wanna hear it.’ There’s open door.

From the first time Jerry and I talk, we said, let’s get LA behind this record. Unlike all of the other acts in Nashville, I’m gonna go and I’m gonna ask Los Angeles to get behind this record. So we fly out to Los Angeles, we finish the record, it’s called ‘You Got A Good Love Comin’.’ And he gets all his guys up there, and it’s tape, so we play the whole album. And after the albums over, he looks at me and he says, ‘What do you think oughta be the single?”

They went with “USA,” though Greenwood was actually not that thrilled about it… he wanted the title track “You Got A Good Love Comin'” to be the lead single, because he had already invested a lot of his own money into it.

Of course, decades later, he’s extremely happy that they went with that one:

“And I said, ‘How about you making that choice?’ ‘God Bless The USA.’ Had he not said that, no one would have ever heard that song. We’d have released ‘You Got A Good Love Coming,’ and we have a video, go to YouTube you’ll find it. It’s got Patrick Duffy making a cameo. I got $25,000 in that song of my own money, and I wanted that to be the single.

And when he said, ‘USA,’ I’m like, ‘Ugh. How could you say that?’ You know? So 40 years later, it’s like, ‘Thank you! Oh my God.'”

Greenwood was adamant that no one would have heard the song had things not happened that way, but Black disagreed because of just how amazing it is. He thought it would have eventually found its way to the top, and I wholeheartedly agree:

“It’s too great a song for anyone with patriotism in their heart, that I think it would’ve found its way through. It set the bar for anyone who wants to write a patriotic song after that. There’s just no way to top it.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself…

Greenwood has gone onto sing it for presidents, at inaugurations and tons of other historic events, and it’s of course a very popular song on this Fourth of July holiday, because it’s such a beautiful reminder of how truly lucky and blessed we are to call this great country home, flaws and all.

He makes it easy to remember why we should be proud to call ourselves Americans, and I know I’ll have it turned up to 10 later today…

Here’s the interview if you’re interested. It’s a great story:

The post Lee Greenwood Didn’t Want “God Bless The U.S.A.” To Be A Single When It Was First Released: “40 Years Later, It’s Like, Thank You! Oh My God” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.