Reception
Although the song was recorded and released several months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Brooks feels that the song got grouped in with other, similarly patriotic songs which were released in response to the attacks. The song was also featured in the beginning of the Oliver Stone film World Trade Center. Rolling Stone reviewer Andrew Dansby described the song was an "advertisement waiting to happen". Chris Neal of Country Weekly called the song a "flag-waving opener" to Steers & Stripes, but nonetheless made note of the song's "rock-solid riff".
"Only in America" was used extensively during president George W. Bush's successful 2004 re-election campaign. It has been used extensively on the Campaign trail, John Kerry also had it played at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. The song also played when Obama announced Joe Biden as his vice president in Springfield, Illinois in 2008. It was also featured after Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's acceptance speech in Denver on August 28, 2008 and has been used at campaign events in Obama's 2012 reelection campaign. "Only in America" has been used often in campaign events for Newt Gingrich in his bid to receive the 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination. Scott Walker (R-WI) also used the song after his first speech since he survived a Gubernatorial recall on June 5, 2012. Mitt Romney also uses the song in many of his political rallies.
This song became an inspiring song after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14, 2012. Which left 27 dead from the school shooting (including the perpetrator), plus his mother (killed at home); 28 total. 20 of whom were elementary school kids between the ages of 6 and 7. Becoming the second worst school shooting in United States history.
Read more about this topic: Only In America (song)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)