The 1970s were a time filled with anti-establishment propaganda and anti-war protests across the United States. With a large percentage of the nation’s youth being against the war in Vietnam, many musical artists took their frustrations with the government and expressed it in their work. I’ve already written about Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” but today I’m discussing The Guess Who’s “American Woman.”

This song was released in 1970, at the peak of not only the Vietnam War itself but citizen resistance against the war. While the band is Canadian, they still felt as though they needed to make a statement about their disagreement with the war. At the time of the song’s release, President Nixon’s daughter was a huge fan of the band. So much so that she was influential in getting the band to perform at the White House. However, before they arrived to play, it was requested by Mrs. Nixon that the band did not perform “American Woman” due to word getting around of its true nature.

That being said, you’re probably wondering, “okay so what is the song really about then? How are lyrics asking a woman from America to stay away political?” But don’t you worry, this is where we delve into the lyrical analysis. First and foremost, when the lyrics refer to an “American woman,” the band is really referring to the United States Government. In an interview, the band’s guitarist Randy Bachman said, “instead of saying ‘Uncle Sam, stay away from me’ or ‘Richard Nixon, stay away from me,’ it was ‘American Woman.'” The lines throughout the song insinuate the band’s distaste for the war.

The lead singer many decades after the songs’ release did an interview in which he explained, “we had just toured the states, and I couldn’t help but notice that the American teenage girls were growing up much faster than the girls I had known back in Canada. You had 14-15-year-old girls looking like they were 20.” He goes on to say how when the song was released, Vietnam was at a high point in escalation, which made the American people read more into it than he intended. While there may have indeed been political underlings in the song initially, it was actually a spur-the-moment kind of creation. It was entirely improvisation the first time it was sung, and luckily for the band, someone in the crowd was making a bootleg of the performance. The rest is history.

The dispute over the song’s true meaning has spanned over decades, with even certain band members disagreeing with each other on what the lyrics represent. However, no matter what each of the members say the song is actually about, there is all one thing they agree on- the war in Vietnam had taken over the United States. In the video above, Bachman speaks about how when they crossed the Canadian border into North Dakota, a border patrol agent from the United States told them to go to a building a few feet a way to sign up for the draft – so they could be sent to Vietnam. Soon after they drove right back up into Canada and performed at a curling hall and sang what was soon to be their greatest hit for the first time.

Did you know this song was an anti-war anthem? Leave a comment below, lets chat. #TurningHippie