The song ‘Party in the U.S.A.’ celebrates making it in America

July 2, 2023 1:12 AM

The song captures in vivid terms the blind optimism it can take to survive — and stay sane — in immigrant America. “Party in the U.S.A.” was released in 2009. By last year, the song had hit 1 billion streams on Spotify. Over the same period, America’s reckonings with things like racial inequality, police brutality, and poverty have dominated the American discourse. “This can’t be the same USA Miley was partying in,” a recent tweet noted. It got nearly 200,000 likes on Twitter.
posted by folklore724 (30 comments total)

archive.today link
posted by Etrigan at 4:38 AM on July 2, 2023

“This can’t be the same USA Miley was partying in”

Yeah, because racial inequality, police brutality, and poverty didn't exist before 2009.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:24 AM on July 2, 2023 [8 favorites]

Okay, for me it's about the unease you feel when you move to a new city and you feel like you're out of place but then you hear one of your favorite songs, something familiar, and it shakes you out of your "fish out of water" blues for just a minute.

Different people can find different things in art; wonderful thing, that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:50 AM on July 2, 2023 [18 favorites]

Next you're going to tell me that Weird Al's "Party In The CIA" is not longer speaking about the CIA that Al was partying at!
posted by dogbusonline at 5:52 AM on July 2, 2023 [12 favorites]

What is “Twitter”?
posted by bendy at 6:12 AM on July 2, 2023 [6 favorites]

Who gives a shit about "likes on Twitter"? This community is painfully progressive: why is it engaging with Phony Stark's platform of hatred and irrelevance?
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:30 AM on July 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

I also like the original version.
posted by q*ben at 6:38 AM on July 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

Who gives a shit about "likes on Twitter"?

Less so now that one has to have an account to see things on the platform.

The purpose of the 200K mention was to provide some external validation to the idea quoted. I'd prefer that to "some people are saying" or 'On TikTok' as the reference.
posted by rough ashlar at 6:48 AM on July 2, 2023 [6 favorites]

Y'all the post just mentions twitter, doesn't even link to it - there's a whole open thread to bitch about twitter in, take it there.

I had no idea this was originally written by/for Jessie J. I do think the lyrics make more sense as someone arriving to LAX from abroad vs from Nashville. It's not like Nashville is particularly non-commercial...

Thanks for sharing this perspective!
posted by the primroses were over at 6:49 AM on July 2, 2023 [11 favorites]

Who gives a shit about "likes on Twitter"?

The sentence you are objecting to is a pullquote from the article, so I don't think it is very fair to even treat it as an endorsement by the OP, much less this whole community.
posted by solotoro at 6:56 AM on July 2, 2023 [11 favorites]

Not all immigrant experiences are the same. If someone comes to America as a white, middle-class, English-speaking talented professional, then it does, at times, feel like a party, the kind of party where the drunk women at the at the bar tells you how much she loves your accent, and then later in the night a conversation turns to “the immigrant problem”, so you point out “*I’m an immigrant too” and they say something revealing like “no, no, not you… you’re the kind of immigrant we want here”. If you’re fresh off that boat, then yea, at times it does still feel like a party in the USA, even in 2023.
posted by rh at 7:31 AM on July 2, 2023 [9 favorites]

I've always found that song's lyrics ironically funny. She's super nervous until she hears a Jay Z song and a Britney Spears song in LA? That's like being super nervous until you see a red and white hamburger joint in LA. "This place is so different from my home town, but wait- they also mostly play super popular songs on the radio and at clubs here too? Whoa. Mind blown. "
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:38 AM on July 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

My partner, a 40something child of immigrants, loves this song. I think he likes the literalness of putting it on when he's trying to gin up a party atmosphere. Like, by definition, this is now a party. You don't think it's a party? Listen to the music. It says it's a party, in the USA. Are we in the USA? The facts align!! WHERE IS YOUR PARTY SPIRIT

But yeah it's really a song about how a tiny handful of media conglomerates have near total control over what songs become hits, and the resulting homogenization of American population culture, right? Used to be, a generation or two ago, you might actually expect to hear something different in the club or on the radio depending on what region you were in. And the song is Miley celebrating because she's both symptom and beneficiary of this development? Am I doing this right
posted by potrzebie at 9:58 AM on July 2, 2023 [17 favorites]

It's a fun song and I enjoy it, and I'm glad the article's author Kalle Oskari Mattila likes it too. I'm glad I got to read this article. Really appreciated the ending:

....In a nation of immigrants, the themes of arrival, survival, and belonging will always resonate.

I’ve lived in the States now for almost a decade. The years here have felt exhilarating — but also tenuous, like a house of cards that could collapse at any moment. Added to my sometimes uncertain immigration status are more unknowns: haphazard freelance income and periods of no health insurance. There have been times when I have been really, really close to calling it quits. As Cyrus sings in the song, “Feel like hoppin’ on a flight / Back to my hometown tonight.” But then, as the lyrics say, “Something stops me every time.”

Because here’s the contradiction: “Party in the U.S.A.” also captures for me how euphoric it can be to live in this country. When the song comes on at gay bars in West Hollywood, I am reminded of the things that made me want to move here in the first place: the freedom to be queerer than I can be in my homeland, the opportunity to pursue my dreams (and maybe even make it big), and the pure exhilaration that it is to start a new life somewhere else, in a bigger city, where anything is possible. So, as the song says, I got my hands up, they’re playing my song, I know I’m gonna be OK.

BTW, the emphasis of the article is "I, an immigrant, like this song" rather than "immigrants as a whole love this song." Most of the article is very descriptive about the author's personal experience of the song and he only occasionally shares thoughts about why other people, including other immigrants, enjoy this song.
posted by brainwane at 10:58 AM on July 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

The fundamental declaration of ignorance of making this song after the Iraq War, and the torture at Abu Ghraib and, well, bigotry by that ignorance in the original is part of what makes Party in the CIA so necessary


And a better Dental plan than the FBIIIIII!
posted by eustatic at 11:28 AM on July 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's almost like America has been living under a black umbrella for as long as we can remember.
posted by belarius at 11:28 AM on July 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

Party in the USA is singular. But in the plural, there can be only one: Parties in the USA. Which totally rules in comparison. Not only in my humble opinion but as a moral spiritual physical scientific incontrovertible fact no matter what the grammatical number may be. This is the hill upon which I will live forever.
posted by y2karl at 12:48 PM on July 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Next you're going to tell me that Weird Al's "Party In The CIA" is not longer speaking about the CIA that Al was partying at!

😐
posted by clavdivs at 1:06 PM on July 2, 2023

Upon review: damn you, q*ben, damn you!
/Charlton Omega Man Heston
posted by y2karl at 1:21 PM on July 2, 2023

This can’t be the same USA Miley was partying in

Mostly because it’s not possible to see the Hollywood Sign form LAX in any case, especially in the direction she mentions in her song.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 1:52 PM on July 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

eustatic: "The fundamental declaration of ignorance of making this song after the Iraq War, and the torture at Abu Ghraib and, well, bigotry by that ignorance in the original is part of what makes Party in the CIA so necessary"

Huh. That video making torture and political assasination look cute was certainly a choice.
posted by signal at 2:00 PM on July 2, 2023

Huh. That video making torture and political assasination look cute was certainly a choice.

I just watched the video and when it was done i said to myself, "wow, that was dark." I think the cutesiness works well.
posted by ropeladder at 2:31 PM on July 2, 2023

Mostly because it’s not possible to see the Hollywood Sign form LAX in any case, especially in the direction she mentions in her song.

Thanks, killjoy. I bet next you will tell us some city boy couldn't take the train from South Detroit going anywhere!
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 4:05 PM on July 2, 2023 [12 favorites]

some city boy couldn't take the train from South Detroit going anywhere

not with THAT attitude
posted by credulous at 5:31 PM on July 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

I am a white, middle-class English-speaking immigrant to the US who still has an appreciable accent and I relish telling people "thanks, I've been practicing" when they compliment my accent.

It did feel like a bit of a party when I arrived, but I think the party ended a year or three after I showed up.
posted by onetime dormouse at 6:07 PM on July 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Tired is Miley Cyrus writing 'Party In The USA' in the context of the forever war of the 2000s

Wired is Chuck Berry visiting Australia, being so horrified at its race relations, that he wrote 'Back In The USA', including the spicily ambiguous (for 1959!) lyrics:

Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge / let alone just to be at my home back in old St. Lou

posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:52 PM on July 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mixed feelings about the words, but the melody is a BOP and I still love it. It brings back memories of my friends covering it at five bars in my 20s.
posted by samthemander at 8:04 PM on July 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I just have to share that my 5-year-old daughter loves this song, except she calls it "the Gritney song comes on". Not Britney, Gritney. I assume Gritney is the female version of the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty, who she calls "the orange baseball bear".
posted by madcaptenor at 7:16 AM on July 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm just grateful that someone was able to discover this gem: Miley Cyrus - Party In The U.S.A. Reversed and Slowed
posted by wobh at 10:27 PM on July 3, 2023

Mostly because it’s not possible to see the Hollywood Sign form LAX in any case, especially in the direction she mentions in her song.

This is the least LA answer ever. Like, why would you assume she can see it literally from LAX? LA is not NYC, I'm sure the party where everyone was wearing stilletos she went to wasn't anywhere near LAX - it's many miles away. Who is she seeing in a cab near LAX that is famous? And much of LA is on roughly 1 mile square street grid (once you get off the highways), so you can see the Hollywood sign from the right side of your car traveling from LAX, though the majority of time it would be on your left.

A more motivated person than me could probably identify all the potential streets she was on, though the club she goes to is unspecified.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:26 AM on July 5, 2023