10 Rock Songs You Didn't Realize Were Protest Tracks
7. In God's Country - U2
When you think of U2’s most popular songs, they’re usually talking about something a little more political than most. They do have their sensitive side based on tracks like One and With or Without You, but you also have that balanced out by New Year’s Day and Gloria. And in between the best moments of The Joshua Tree, you have this bite sized piece of cynicism about their supposed promised land.
Going through Rattle and Hum, you can see the band’s complicated relationship with finally coming to America, taking their love for the country and seeing the superficial side of it all in one go. This wasn’t the kind of land that they were promised, and In God’s Country tries to understand what the real America looks like. Though Bono already had the cynical bite on Bullet the Blue Sky earlier in the record, he sounds more disheartened on this song than anything else, looking through the desert skies and the dreams that are laid at his feet, only to see the professional treadmill that you have to operate to stay at the top.
It may seem like the land that God had been proud to call his own, but the City That Never Sleeps mentality doesn’t apply to just New York, becoming almost a relief from the neverending rollercoaster that happens day in and day out. The key line behind the country is In God We Trust…just be wary of the crooked crosses that you dodge along the way.