Pat Boone Back on the Charts
As Pat Boone rattles off the list of artists that his single “Under
God” has passed on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Sales
Chart (currently at Number Twenty-five), it’s clear the
clean-living crooner takes pride at creeping ahead of the likes of
J.Lo and Jay-Z and having struck a chord with a new generation of
fans.
The song was written in response to a lawsuit filed in San
Francisco by an agnostic who claimed his daughter’s Constitutional
rights were violated by having to say the words “under God” each
day when her school recites the Pledge of Allegiance.
“It is a musical, four-minute synopsis of the early history of
why ‘under God’ is in the pledge of allegiance,” says Boone of the
track. “It’s what the framers and founding fathers were intending
when they established something we now call the United States of
America.
“The ACLU stoutly defends the Nazis’ right to march and wear
swastikas,” he continues. “But they don’t want kids to say ‘under
God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance. There’s a terrific dichotomy and
contradiction there.”
And Boone doesn’t see any contradiction between his pro-God
stance and covering the Prince of Darkness. “I think that’s what
Ozzy [Osbourne] was getting at in ‘Crazy Train,'” he says. “It’s
the reason I like the song so much and recorded it (on 1997’s
In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy). It talks about the
contradictions and hypocrisy young people face today and he says,
‘It’s driving me insane/And I’m running off the rails of a crazy
train.'”
Strangely, Boone claims that market research has shown his
single is popular with a demographic that was thirty years from
being born when the sixty-eight-year-old singer first broke through
in 1955 with his version of “Ain’t That a Shame.”
“That’s psychology,” says Boone. “You don’t tell kids what they
can’t listen to.”