From Kabul Karaoke to Berlin Techno: How Lee Greenwood Became the World’s Accidental Ambassador of American Swagger

Lee Greenwood and the Curious Export of American Chest-Thumping
By Our Man in Exile, Somewhere Over the Pacific

The name Lee Greenwood still rings a bell in certain karaoke bars from Manila to Murmansk, usually right after the host announces “Free shots for anyone who hits the high note on the chorus.” For those who managed to sleep through the 1980s, Greenwood is the Nashville smoothie who gifted the planet “God Bless the U.S.A.,” a three-and-a-half-minute pledge of allegiance set to a power-ballad key change. The song has lately become Washington’s favorite diplomatic party favor—wheeled out at military parades, naturalization ceremonies, and, more recently, campaign rallies where the republic’s future is debated with all the nuance of a fireworks stand.

Internationally, the tune functions like an acoustic tariff: easy to hum, hard to ignore, and impossible to un-hear once deployed. After the 9/11 attacks, U.S. embassies blasted it from loudspeakers in Kabul, a city where most residents had never been formally introduced to either God or the U.S.A., let alone their combined endorsement. NATO allies politely tapped their boots; local interpreters nodded along, calculating hazard pay. A decade later, the song followed American troops to Iraq, where it competed for airtime with muezzins and mortar fire. One British officer confessed to me over lukewarm tea that the chorus was “a bit like having your in-laws sing ‘Happy Birthday’ at you—heartwarming the first time, slightly menacing the tenth.”

The broader significance, if we must call it that, is how Greenwood’s anthem has become a sonic passport for American exceptionalism. Wherever it plays, it signals that Uncle Sam has unpacked his luggage and intends to stay for dessert. In South Korea, the song is piped through speakers at Camp Humphreys during Fourth of July fireworks, ensuring that the neighbors in Pyeongtaek can enjoy the bass line in their bones. In the Philippines, the U.S. Navy’s liberty ports have embraced it as a mating call: sailors bellow the refrain while local entrepreneurs hawk knock-off MAGA caps from makeshift stalls. Nothing says “strategic partnership” like shared tinnitus.

Of course, the global south has responded with its own counter-programming. Cuban state TV once ran a salsa remix titled “Dios Bendiga la Revolución,” timing the release to coincide with a regional summit in Panama. Zimbabwe’s ruling party tried something similar, but the brass section kept defecting to Botswana. Meanwhile, streaming algorithms have turned Greenwood into an accidental world citizen: Tokyo gym playlists slot the track between K-pop and death metal; Berlin techno DJs splice the chorus into 128-BPM odes to late capitalism. If irony had a frequent-flyer account, it would demand retroactive miles.

The darker joke is that the song’s promises—freedom, prosperity, the right to pretend your suburb is the only suburb—have aged like unrefrigerated camembert. Global inflation now makes the line about “standing up next to you” sound like a threat to personal space. Climate change ensures that the “mountains and prairies” are increasingly either on fire or underwater. And yet the chorus persists, a stubborn earworm in the collective skull of a planet that’s running out of both patience and polar ice.

So what does Lee Greenwood mean to a world that never asked for his blessing? He is proof that soft power sometimes comes wrapped in a key of G major and a rhinestone jacket. He is the elevator music of empire, relentlessly ascending while the cables fray. And—if one adopts the long, cynical view—he is a handy reminder that every empire eventually learns to sing its own lullaby, if only to drown out the sound of its foundations cracking.

Which brings us, dear reader, to the inevitable conclusion: next time you find yourself in an airport lounge from Abu Dhabi to Anchorage and that familiar refrain kicks in, resist the urge to roll your eyes. Instead, order another overpriced beer and toast the sheer absurdity of a species that can turn nationalism into karaoke. Somewhere, Lee Greenwood is still collecting royalties, and somewhere else, a customs officer is humming along while confiscating your duty-free chocolate. God bless synergy.