The Killers offer up a blistering critique of America under President Donald Trump in new protest song “Land of the Free.”
The rock band’s frontman, Brandon Flowers, sings about institutional racism, immigration, incarceration and gun violence in the track released Monday.
And on Trump’s proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall, Flowers muses:
“Down at the border, they’re gonna put up a wall,
Concrete and Rebar Steel beams (I’m standing crying),
High enough to keep all those filthy hands off,
Of our hopes and our dreams (I’m standing crying),
People who just want the same things we do,
In the land of the free.”
Check out the music video, directed by Spike Lee, here:
In an Instagram post, Flowers revealed the genesis of the song actually came in December 2012 — following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in which six adults and 20 children were killed.
“The news was devastating,” he wrote. “Heart wrenching. A gut punch. But, sadly not as shocking as it should have been.”
“If there was a single moment that I mentally began to assemble ‘Land of the Free,’ that was it.”
Check out the post here:
Flowers added in a swipe at the Trump administration’s immigration policies that Americans “dishonor our values, our ancestors and our heritage when we tear gas our brothers and sisters seeking asylum.”
“I see my family in the faces of these vulnerable people,” he added. “After all, it wasn’t that long ago that my grandmother and her family immigrated from Lithuania to escape the U.S.S.R.’s oppression. They chose to leave everything they knew behind to come to America and work grueling jobs in dangerous coal mines, rather than endure tyranny at home.”
Video director Spike Lee said on Instagram that the song “Could Not Have Dropped At A Better Time” and sent his prayers to the hundreds of thousands of federal workers currently working without pay or furloughed due to the ongoing government shutdown.